Where have I gone?

The Sidley Singers at the Legal
Harmony choral competition

Yeah, I know, I went missing again.  This time, life got in the way and that meant that last week was a rest week.  The combination of singing in a choral competition at Southwark Cathedral, having to finish making a quilt for a retiring vicar and my husband's birthday meant that I didn't have any time at all to do any training - all those early mornings that I would have been swimming or cycling were spent in my loft stitching and all my evenings were taken up with netball, more quilting, the choral competition itself and a birthday party.


My plan was, therefore, to get back on the bike and back in the pool (and, I suppose, back into my running shoes) this week to prepare myself for the triathlon, which is now less than two weeks away.  However, now I have another problem - I'm ill.  I have a cough-type thing which is really annoying and is probably only going to get worse if I start exerting myself too much.  I've figured that I'd rather do the triathlon and be slightly under-prepared than try training too much while ill and not make it to race day.  I will be doing a bit, but given that I should be into my taper now anyway, I won't be overdoing it.

The Quilt

It seems, therefore, that now is a good time to be reminding both myself and you why it is that I'm putting myself through all this.  As I have mentioned before, the reason I initially entered the triathlon was that I wanted to do something to support my Uncle Donald, who was suffering from oesophogeal cancer.  He was still at home at that point and my parents were caring for him, but he was deteriorating and had to go into hospital soon after.  Because I live and work so far away from the family home, and also because of the very nature of his illness, I felt like I wasn't able to actually do anything to make it better.  Therefore, I hit on the idea of raising some money for Marie Curie Cancer Care, a charity that our family may ultimately have needed to use the services of in one way or another.  As it happened, Uncle Donald's condition deteriorated very quickly and he died in hospital on 12 March, before we had been in contact with Marie Curie.

Marie Curie provide home nurses and hospice care to patients who are at the end of their lives.  They enable people to be cared for in the place that they wish, whether that be in their own home or in a specialist environment.  In addition, they provide invaluable support to families and carers, giving advice and encouragement and just generally being there to call on when needed.  It must take an extremely special kind of person to be an end of life care nurse - this is something I had first hand experience of witnessing in the hospital where my uncle spent his last weeks; although they were not Marie Curie nurses, their job is similar, and I could not believe the amount of understanding, compassion, care, cheerfulness and love they showed to their patients.  These people deserve our support for the amazing job that they do, and one of the ways that we can support them is by donating money.

This is why I decided to do the triathlon - I would be extremely grateful if you could show your support for my efforts by making a donation to Marie Curie Cancer Care.  You can do that by going to this page, clicking the "donate" button and following the instructions.  Thank you all for being with me on this journey.