Whilst you are reading this!

I knew this day would come quicker than we’d imagined. I remember when we sat down and planned what we were going to do, thinking that it was literally a million years away, and here it is.

Whilst you are reading this myself, and the legendary Dan Evans are running 40 miles, passing over 300 London Hotels, all in one day. We’ve raised over £3400 for NSPCC, we have over 20 hoteliers joining us on the run, over 10 lastminue.com staff joining us also – including some of the most senior guys at lastminute.com.

Myself & Dan currently are in a bizarre mix of both excitement and sheer sheer terror, yet, whatever happens today, we’ll have fun, we are the first people/nutters to ever do this kind of event, and we are mighty proud, and the fact that we’ve raised a great amount for charity in the mix, well, it’s all good – maybe, just maybe, it will be an annual event!

So, if you’re reading this on June 1st, please give us a cheer n’ a wave (itinerary below), and if you’re one of the many that have already supported/sponsored/ shown the love, huge huge huge thanks. This is the kind of thing that reminds us all that sometimes we can make a difference, we can do more than just sit at our desks each day, life is short people, let’s do everything we can to make it a great one. Ok! that’s it from me. The next time you hear from me will be with the full report blow by blow on how June 1st actually played out. Peace.

Training at the May Fair Hotel Gym

Now, look, when Dan & I first came up with running past all of our london hotel partners in one day, it didn’t seem like a crazy idea at all. Then we sat down and drew out the map… ah…the course will cover 40miles. Forty, four o. Ah. Still, we’ve done our marathons before, we’ve climbed up 1000 stairs for charity in 9 minutes, heck – Dan reckons he can eat five shredded wheat in one sitting.

So we mulled it over, and it didn’t seem so bad – what’s the worst that can happen? (err, don’t answer that), then we thought of our contingency plan if things got too much – walk! Simple, easy, walking. Except I know from experience (painful painful experience – in fact, the kind of experience where you burst into tears), after running more than 20 miles, you can’t even shuffle straight, let alone walk. Still, I convinced Dan (hahah my bad) and then oh dear… I had to convince myself hmm.

As the weeks went on we raised a bit of cash for chariddy, things seemed a bit more positive, yeah we can do it, easy peasy, we’ll do it and then do another one the day after for 40 days after that.

So, all cool, until Friday just gone…..  The May Fair Hotel very very kindly offered us a session with personal trainer to the stars; Benjamin Kilner. So off we trotted (well we took a cab) to meet Ben….

Well, first off Ben knows his onions (and he knows a thing or two about training too), he gave us a mountain of sound advice, asked us why the heck we were running 40 miles in one day, and told us everything we could do to prepare ourselves for the big day. Ben then put me and Dan through various challenges & a circuit of various techniques in how to get the best from our ultra-marathon. He certainly put us through the test, and hopefully we didn’t look too shabby (ok, we did).

Fantastic, except that when we left… ah…. NOW we’re terrifiedddddddddddddddddddd! Why are we doing this!!! why why, we were so panicked both of us went home and did various resistance & sprinting techniques we’d been through with Ben. Omg omg omg omg omg, we’re idiots! Well I don’t know are we (please someone tell us otherwise).

If anything all I could think of was something I saw on the first time I did the London marathon back in 2004. Round about mile 17 in the docklands I saw a massive banner ‘Pain is temporary, Pride is forever’, that got me through till back to Tower Bridge, just that simple slogan, and you know what, it’s true. So what if we suffer for a few hours? We’ll have something to be proud of for a while, and we’re helping the NSPCC along the way, perfect.

So thanks Ben for terrifying us and giving us a reality check, I think we needed it, it’s a good job we didn’t see Ben before we made the 40 mile decision as I might not have been writing this now!!!

London runners from lastminute.com to cover 40 miles and visit 300-plus hotels for NSPCC fundraising event

London runners from lastminute.com to cover 40 miles and visit 300-plus hotels for NSPCC fundraising event

Two London hotel account managers for lastminute.com will run 40 miles and pass all of their 300-plus hotel partners on June 1st.

Martin Kleinman (35) and Dan Evans (30) hope to complete the mammoth run – starting near Scotland Yard at 7am – in under seven hours. Both are keen amateur runners and have completed other events for charity, including the London Marathon and the Royal Parks Half Marathon.

The pair are raising money for the NSPCC and have been joined by their hotel partners for sponsorship and support.
Fund-raising helpers from The Marriott Hotel group have created a money-cannot-buy auction package consisting of an unbelievable London luxury weekend, dining in Gordon Ramsay restaurants, staying in their luxury hotels, and trips to the London Eye and 25th anniversary show of Les Miserables included.

The package is to be auctioned on Ebay and similar auctions will follow once the Marriott package has been won.

The run will start in London’s Victoria Street opposite Scotland Yard near the Crowne Plaza St. James Hotel and the route will pass 300-plus hotels with staff and hoteliers cheering the guys on.

Radisson Edwardian hotels are providing ‘power breaks’, Hilton providing foot massages, and others organising “Mexican waves”. Some hoteliers have pledged to join them for part of the run – and there is even a stop scheduled for ice-cream in Park Lane!

Simultaneous events are taking place in both Paris and Amsterdam (by bicycle in Amsterdam!).

For more information: http://www.thelondonhotelexperts.com/june-1st-run/ 

EDITORIAL CONTACT: Mike Beardall, Oakfield Media on 01273 495619 or 07889 707807. E-mail: editor@mikebeardall.com

lastminute.com contact: Martin Kleinman on 0207 866 4212 (direct line) or 07824 691583. E-mail: mkleinman@lastminute.com

and the winner is…. London!

Well, on true London marathon day form it began raining, but honestly - that’s a good thing, once you get moving from Greenwich, you need that light spray to keep you cool, and anyway, after about 11ish it soon brightened up!

Yesterday in training for the big london hotels run on June 1st I ran 20 miles across the nearby forest, it was a liberating run. This time (pop-pickers) I was mainly listening to the Doors, the stones, and quite randomly (for me anyway) Glen Campbell (I know, I think by listening to Glen Campbell AND using the phrase ‘pop pickers’ I can safely extract myself from the ‘young’ bracket, and it doesn’t matter how much txt spk I use 2 b spr trendy (trendy?! ha, another giveaway – don’t tell my rents), err, where was I?

Seeing the London marathon is an astonishing spectacle & hugely overwhelming. Firstly on marathon morning – you gotta get there! Me I always travelled in from London so this meant getting onto the train at London Bridge, the great news is that a train leaves every few minutes… bad news is every single one of those sardine cans is jam packed, albeit with friendly fellow runners. So you squeeze on the train, swap a few angst-ridden thoughts with virgin runners (or scare them by saying you’ve done the marathon loads, either way), then 10 mins later you walk (passing the Novotel London Greenwich of course – hi guys!), and then you find your start zone. There are millions of people everywhere which is great, setting the amazing atmosphere already, and as per the advice of all marathon runners…. you got to go to the loo! The queues of course are a mile long, but let’s leave that part there! You jumble into the start zone, and while you wait there for 15mins or so the same thoughts always go through your mind….

What am I doing here?
I haven’t done enough training
I’ve got 26.2 miles in front of me
I am dying for a weeee
Everyone else looks fit and has shiny expensive trainers
Breathe breathe breathe….

and then you’re off, everyone’s cheering, you feel good, you feel elated, man – this is going to be a great chilled run, I might even do my personal best, ah this is a breeze…… and you haven’t even passed the start line yet – that’s another 5 mins away!

At first you’re milling through the streets of Woolwich & Greenwich, it’s all very chilled, there’s a couple of cracking pubs initially that you pass, usually they’re blaring out goodwill messages on a PA, though I do recall in ‘07 there was an Elvis singing his choons on the top of the pub roof – classy.

6 miles and you’re juusstt about passing Greenwich observatory & the Cutty Sark, the streets are crammed here full of spectators, charities are cheering you on, children are handing you out jelly babies, oranges, sausages, all sorts of stuff, and then you head on up to Deptford & Rotherhithe. This is a long road (Salter Road) but wide ‘n nice, and there’s a cracking shower spray to run through. It’s around this point (mile 9ish I think) that you begin to think, yeah, I can do this, I have trained well, and loads of people have sponsored me, am not gonna let them down, and then before you know it – you’re at Tower Bridge – the almost half-way point – this is a great point on the route. Running over Tower Bridge, you (or I) feel proud. You feel proud to be alive, proud to be running, proud to be in London/a Londoner, my god, you could be prime minister if you wanted to be, anything is now possible. The noise on Tower Bridge is immense, you are a hero, it is a fact, but then….

You turn right en-route to the Docklands (yet you know that the end of the route is left – turn around turn around!), and then disaster! for the first time on the route you get to see the mega-athletes, the Paula Radcliffes running the opposite way towards the finish – they’ve already done 21 miles, and you – you’ve not even gone passed the 14 mile mark AND you’ve got to do a while big b*stard run around the whole of the Docklands. This is where you need a boost, the biggest boost in fact. For a few marathons (ahem) I did, I ran for Cancer Research UK, and they have a few main roadside support bases along the way, I think one of these was on mile 15, the cheer they give you when you run past them is all you need to give you the all-important motivation boost (love you guys), but still 6 or 7 miles round the docks… there’s no getting away from it, you just got to get your head down, turn up the i-pod and pray that James Brown will get you through.

Somehow, you emerge out of the docklands! You pass the old mint building, you glimpse a site of St Katherine’s Dock down some side streets, then, lllaaaaaaa, like the sun screaming out from behind the clouds you see Tower Bridge again, but it is not like before, this time it is even brighter, even bigger, even better, because – you’re only 5 miles from the end baby, only 5 miles after those 21 – easy peasy, or is it

No, it’s not. “The Wall” if it happens to you, usually happens here. You stop dead. You don’t want to, but nothing moves. The crowd are cheering at fever pitch, your emotions are playing havoc in your mind, you want to cry (I did once), you want to dissappear, you want to do anything but just stand there as 1000s fly by you, but you can’t – you’ve hit the wall.

Somehow… you scrape yourself off the floor, your legs somehow begin to move again, somehow you don’t feel the pain, and somehow just thinking of why you are doing this (your family, your friends, the loved ones you have lost, your sponsors, the charity you’re running for, the pain & suffering in the world that you’re making a small contribution to making right, the camaraderie of the runners telling you to ‘come on son, nearly the end’, the spectators screaming & willing you to go on, they’re standing there all day in the rain supporting you, London for relentlessly raising millions and providing an incredible day for the whole city) spurs you on to somehow getting to the holy finish line.

The last mile always seems to be the longest (errr, well it is actually 0.2miles longer) away, Buckingham Palace seems furter away than normal, but seriously – this is where the crowd sing you magically to the end. You fly through the finish line, if you’re a first timer you cry (I did  – all the year’s training, the highs and lows, it all comes out when you cross that line) and then you say you will never do it again (but you do the next year & do it even better because now you have learnt how to improve & the magic of the day is so immense you cannot imagine NOT doing it).

Phew, I think that may well just about describe the run on the day.

It is the greatest day in London by miles (geddit?) and I will always be proud to be a part of it.

Congrats to Julian Payne, GM of the Threadneedles Hotel, who completed the London Marathon today in 4h 2mins, he’s a true ledge.

The ballot for the 2011 London marathon opens on 4th May 2010.