Peter: Last but one session of a busy week training completed and feeling pretty good. Leg injury is mending I still get a stabbing pain every so often but nothing like it was, so happy days. Saved the worst training bike ride to the end of this week as we troop off down to the New Forest for a quick 80 miler. The organisers have indicated that this is a far easier ride than the brutal Surrey ups and downs of two weeks ago – we shall see!!

Count down to the main event is really on now very few days left for training before the real thing.. I’m actually really looking forward to it cannot wait to get started – let’s just have a blast!

Very interesting week at the start. It was all doom and gloom, very fed up with a leg injury that I thought would screw up my chances of making the start line in 5/6 weeks time – so some serious talking to myself and some expert work and more importantly some great advise by my new physio mate, means I am back bashing out the Km on the bike and treadmill and lengths in the pool – the big difference is that I am stretching out after each session far better than before using the foam roller to work each musle group. This means they (musles) are recovering better – more sessions and hopefully more good advise from Dave the NZ physio will get me to that start line feeling positive and in good shape – the race is on.

Peter: Ok so back in the gym this morning .. was it a mistake, too soon after my injury ? I pushed through a 25 minute ride on the bike at a very, very low resistance managed 14K with mild discomfort actually in truth a bit more than mild! But as instructed by my physio loads and loads of stretching and foam roller work which was good – I am not feeling too bad if I’m honest, swimming tonight – Back on it!

Peter: Well the good news is I’m told there is no tear in the hamstring like I was told by the physio I saw on Sunday !! however the big New Zealand rugby player of a physio I saw yesterday told me that I have a slight strain (caused probably by using a new bike with the saddle too high and cleats for the first time) also he says I don’t stretch out enough after exercise so the musle does not have time to recover or repair before exercise again. So to fix this – 4 intensive sessions with this physio he said ‘I will get you sorted one way or the other’ and a load of self massaging exercises with a foam roll – all in all quite positive. I certainly feel better than I did after Sunday.

Now the focus must be on getting this right whilst getting back to the training Happy days?

Peter: Who would have believed it I actually found the swimming pool and doggy paddled 70 lengths which is nearly the distance required – cannot say I enjoyed it as there seemed to be 20 other people in my lane some faster but the majority slower agh! – still its a start and more to come.

Peter: With little over 8 weeks to go until the big day the first injury scare has reared its ugly head …my back has decided to go into spasm !! standing on the train into London is I’m sure making it worse. It is an old injury I know what I should do to put it right BUT that means no exercise for a couple of weeks, don’t think I can afford that amount off time away from running or the bike? However it means I can get in the pool and perfect my doggy paddle just so I don’t look too silly on the day – Backs ah! Pain in the a***

Peter: Count down to the big day seems to get quicker, not long now until all this hard work hopefully pays off! Gym this morning was packed never seen it so full at that time still completed my 35 minute bike ride and 5 minutes of stretching – often wonder if its worth all the time it takes to pack my bag the night before with work clothes just to do a short session each morning, BUT yes of course it is oddly enough I quite enjoy it, must be an age thing – keep at it!

David: So today a quick test to see if all the indoor bike training is working, 36 mile ride good pace but hard work, still enjoyed it.

OK, so Tony Russell (he of Ironman Triathlon Sickness) has asked me to pen a short piece for his blog to bring you all up to speed with what’s happening at Headcase and where exactly your donations will be going…..

You may already know that Headcase is currently funding two 3 Year Research Programmes at the University of Portsmouth both of which have produced some exciting results so far. However the really exciting news is that in the Spring we are also going to be starting a 2 Year Patient Trial in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth, Southampton General Hospital and the University of Bergen, Norway. The trial will be assessing patients with recurrent GBM using a drug called Clomipramine which has shown very good responses in earlier trials and ad hoc patient survival cases (10 years in the longest case). Clomipramine is an old anti-depressant drug which has been around since the 1960’s. All of the money raised by Tony and the guys will be going directly into the Trial.

To put that into perspective £200 will pay for a day of the Trial (it will cost around £40,000 annually) but perhaps most importantly nearly all of our donations go directly to our research, or in this case Trial. Headcase is an extremely efficient Charity where 98.2% of donations go directly to research, and if you add Gift Aid to the equation then for every £1 we receive we actually spend £1.05 on research! We’re able to do this because our model is that we don’t employ anyone and no-one takes a single penny from Headcase as salary and we guarantee that they never will! Headcase is a modern Charity using modern marketing and fundraising strategies which don’t rely on costly manpower like the traditional charities.  

Please support Tony and the guys as best you can and remember…… The Future Gets WrittenToday.

All of the information about the upcoming Trial and the Research Results to date are on the website http://www.headcase.org.uk/heads-up. 

Cheers,

Col

Colin Speirs
Head Fundraiser
Headcase Cancer Trust