For 2011 I have decided to set myself a new challenge. Not content with all my open water escapades last year and keen not to rest on my laurels I have set myself the, some might say daunting, some might say ridiculous task of taking part in this year’s London Marathon.

I love this race, I love the determination people show to haul themselves round and I love the fact that first time runners can compete against world class athletes. I actually blogged back in April about how much I want to take part in this event http://www.rockupandroll.com/post/548460797/marvelling-at-the-marathon.

For the 15 years I have been in a chair this is something that I have wanted to do. The thing that has always been a deterrent in taking on this challenge has been the cost of a racing chair which can set you back anything up to £3000. However, after this year’s race I decided that I no longer wanted to sit on the side of the road and cheer people on. I wanted it to be me that people felt inspired by as I trundled past in my chair, puffing like a good un but at least giving it a go. So, after this year’s race I resigned myself to the fact that if the worst came to the worst I could just stick a chair on my credit card and worry about the pennies later. After making the decision to give it a crack I decided to break the habit of a lifetime and actually do some research rather than just heading into it like a Tasmanian devil after drinking too much Sunny Delight and a bag of Tangfastic Haribo without really knowing what I was letting myself into.

My first port of call, like most things now in life, was Google and back in June 2010 I fired up the old laptop and typed ‘racing wheelchair London’ into the search engine. Try yourself and you will see that the unbelievably the very first page on the very first website the search returns has the heading ‘Do you need a racing wheelchair?’I kid you not. As you can imagine my answer was an emphatic HELL YEAH! The site in question belongs to UK Athletics, http://www.uka.org.uk/training-zone/academy/aviva-parallel-success/wheelchair-racing/. They have teamed up with the London Marathon, the British Wheelchair Racing Association and a charity called Wheel Power, http://www.wheelpower.org.uk/WPower/, to provide racing wheelchairs to aspiring athletes.  Amazingly all you need to do is fill out a short form, prove you meet the criteria and a racing chair is yours. It really is as simple as that and it means that without sounding too cheesy they can help people like me have their dreams come true.

The only downside to the whole situation has been the length of time it has taken me to get the chair. I place no blame at anyone’s door for this and accept that these things take time, I am also unlucky that due to my 6ft7 height it has taken a couple of attempts to get me the right chair. However, taking the extra time to make sure I got the right chair has been to my enormous advantage and at the weekend I took delivery of a beautiful new Draft racing chair. It really is wonderful and I am incredibly grateful to the people at Draft, who coincidentally make chairs for current marathon greats David Weir and Shelly Woods, for their expertise and support. You can see their site here http://www.draftwheelchairs.com/.

I am, it is fair to say, a naturally impatient kind of guy and rather than accepting it would be some months before getting a chair and aiming for the 2012 event I have maybe foolishly set my heart on April 2011. This leaves me with four months to train hard to get to a stage where I can drag myself around the 26 mile iconic course. There is a catch though. Although I have a place in the race this is entirely dependent on me achieving a qualifying time of about 1 hour 15 minutes for a half marathon or 2 hours 30 for a full distance. If I was to tell you that my previous best for a half marathon was 2 hours 24 minutes you can see I face one hell of a challenge. Still not to be put off I have entered two half marathons before the 6 March, which is the last date I can try and achieve the necessary time. These are the Race Your Pace Eton Half Marathon, http://www.humanrace.co.uk/, on the 20 February and the Silverstone Half Marathon, http://adidashalfmarathon.co.uk/, at the beginning of March.

It is fair to say though that I wasn’t quite prepared for how hard this might actually be. Like an eager beaver in a fetching blue cycle helmet I took my chair out for its first spin in Greenwich Park on Sunday and it was unlike anything I had tried before. Getting in the chair is in itself knackered me out and that was before I had to get used to kneeling rather than sitting and the different way you have to push, steer and brake. Still I managed a good two miles and didn’t injure myself or any small dogs or renegade children, which I will take as a positive start.

I will of course be keeping regular updates on here and if all goes to plan and I manage to get a place I will be trying to raise money again for Aspire.