Hedge your bets!

I have officially 66 days left of training left before the big 26.2 miles and I still have a few more goals to achieve before then:

- Increase my longest run by a mere 7 miles (up to a max run of 22 miles on 24th March)
- Reduce my average mile pace to my ideal marathon pace of 10 mins 30
- Raise another £1300

The pace issue is just about running faster - who knew? So on Tuesday's 6 mile run I focussed on setting a fast pace and achieved an amazing average pace of 9 mins 44  per mile which was a huge improvement on my previous PB of 9 mins 59. However there is no way I can keep that kind of pace up for a whole marathon but I would like to improve my average long run pace of 11 mins 17. Sadly though the faster I run the more I look like Phoebe from Friends (click here if you want a preview), which when coupled with my really appalling running wardrobe (80s legwarmers, child's high vis jacket, luminous shorts over supermarket leggings and ski sweatband) you can see why I have been avoiding it until now. Hey ho London must have seen worse...?

The money raising, though, is more of an issue. My penny pots are slowly infiltrating friends' mantelpieces, desks and kitchens and the two I have already had returned have raised a staggering £29.45... although I am fully expecting this average to be drastically reduced.

So I have stolen borrowed a great fundraising idea from the remarkable Ms Johns and have created a human version of "guess the number of sweets in a jar"... I can tell you are on the edge of your seat now.... which is "guess my London marathon time". Riveting huh! I have listed 240 time spots between 4:30:00 through to 5:29:45 and loaded the document onto Google docs (click here) so feel free to dive in and nab your best guess (or guesses) cos you could be a winner! For just £1 per go the winner will be the guess closest to my official marathon time and they will receive 26.2 pence for every time slot bought. So if all 240 time slots get bought the winner will win a staggering £62.88.... that has got to be better odds than the national lottery! So go on buy a time slot, pay your £1 (or multiples of as I am sure you want to buy more than one) via my just giving page here or give me the cash when you next see me and you could be set to make a small fortune (small being the operative word).