Jim 'Fixes it!' from beyond the grave!

Dear Jim,

Can you fix it for me to have a charity event that is filled with generous people and goes without a hitch, a 24hr cycling marathon with ten amazing people (that all come home safely), a support team to cater to their every whim, and smash a fund raising target of £4000 for the Butterwick Children's hospice?

Well, sir Jimmy is a pretty chilled out geezer and he's helping us step by step. With the help of his little elves, he's delivered everything we have asked for so far and I'm sure he'll keep supporting us in his big golden shell suit in the sky!

We've got a start venue, we've got a cycle route, we've got a party venue, we've got 10 riders, we've got everything we need for the party night, we've got some support from various companies which will help the riders, and we've got many other things in the pipe line including team clothing, and equipment.

The next few big things are; creating maximum exposure by doing a few hours on rollers in public places with a banner and a bucket (got a couple of places in mind!), hitting local businesses, for steam sponsorship, raffle prizes and donations to the just giving, and 10x rollers/turbos/static bikes!

It's all good in the hood and we are making definite strides in the right direction.

 . . . Dear sir Jimmy,if you could keep fixing it for us we would be much obliged.

Maffyou
Age 9

" . . .erm, sure I've forgotten something . . . .Aargh! Start training!"

So, if we have a charity, we have a target (£4000), we have enough riders, we have both venues required and we have a route in the planning, surely that's everything? So, we can sit back and relax, safe in the knwoledge that people like Dawn McManus of Red Dreams, Victoria Rogers of Butterwick and Yvonne Tindale of Sound Solutions UK, will have everything sorted and the endurance event on 12th May will go off without a hitch! Right lads I'm off to hibernate this winter, I'll see you all in May sometime. . . . .got a feeling I'm forgetting something?

Aaaaarrrgh! Two very important things! We all need to be fit enough to complete the challenge especially when I say I'm really expecting 350 plus miles from every rider (not to much I hope?) and we need to RAISE FOUR GRAND CASH as well. No pressure, but the latter is kind of the whole point. So now the foundation is in place, we hammer the other two.

We raise our game with the training, motivate and push each other along, teach each other with our own mistakes and share good practice and build in a safe and positive way together. We also need to start robbing banks, selling our families heirlooms and . . you only need one kidney!?!*

The gates are open boys, first one to raise £500 gets a free pen and and I'm calling the 'Petrofac Thistle's' donation so I'm on £300 already!!!!!

Sleep no longer exists, family are but a distant memory and who needs a career ( my wife is not in the room as I type this!).

I think we can all have Christmas Day off though lol!!!!

Oh and 'Dear Santa, we really need some rollers!".

Bit More Publicity & A Few Good Memories

Today our internal comms manager at work asked me to provide a few photos for an article she is doing about HET in our work newsletter that has a circulation not just in Sunderland but in Newcastle, Bradford and branches nationwide.

Scrabbling to meet the deadline I dug out a few from my BlackBerry and in my horror when I got home and looked at them on full screen and saw they were all ones of me lycra clad (the least flattering material for a man of my BMI) apart from two, one of which shows me beating Matthew Turnbull in a race........

......OK, OK before Matt starts burning up the keyboard I'll come clean.  The race was about 45 seconds old and it was our 2011 debut in the Burn Road Harriers Old Monks Race.  The older chap I'm overtaking is a guy called Vaughan Godber who did something similar to what we intend to do next year in the past in running the Coast to Coast.

If our training for the 2012 Challenges is even halfway as funny and mad as the night time training session Matt and I enjoyed last January when we, undeterred by the dark and the snow and the ice and the mud decided to recce the Old Monk Course navigated by a route I'd downloaded to my BlackBerry from my Garmin.  I'd actually run the route with a friend about a month earlier and recorded it on the Garmin then went straight out on the drink and lost about 80% of my recollection of that day, hence the requirement to re-familiarise myself.

Headtorches (and torches stolen from infant children), warm dayglo gear, getting lost in the woods and Matt suspsciously running a lot faster through the Monk Heseldon Cemetery were the order of the evening.

Bring on some more crazy training sessions!

Ultra Riders Overdose on Fructose!

I've been a busy bee and started an organised plan to minimise individual costs to those who participate in the endurance events for the team. I'm in the process of sending begging letters to subsidise the following areas of the challenges.

• Nutrition and hydration
• Team Clothing
• Raffle prizes
• Race related items (shoes, socks, shorts, bike accessories and perishables)
• Race fees
• Advertising donation
• Charity donations

Today I've picked off all the leading brands of nutrition suppliers and hopefully at least one will take pity on us and bung a few gels, bars or drinks our way. Here's today's nutrition hit list.

ZipVits, Shotz, Go SiS, High5, Power Bar, NUUN, Clif Bar, Squashy Sports, GU, Mule Bar, Hammer, Crank Sports and Lucosade! . . .if we get something from them all, we'll be well sorted!

So we're slowly hitting the places that need to be hit and the lads will all hammer things from their ends as well. We've also got Paul Godley of Godley's cycles on side who is willing to support in whatever way he can and will look to sorting us out with some bits and bobs and possibly a raffle prize! But more importantly, he's a guy who's done this stuff before, lead and organised events and knows people who know people . . a very useful geezer to know! Think that deserves his company logo on the blog and web for definate. Plus he sorted me out with an awesome new Orbea Onix for an unbelievable price! I'll post a picture of that soon as well lol!

Enter The (Fat) Dragon

OK - It's time someone else posted other than Matt.  Not that we don't all enjoy Matts musings but it's Saturday afternoon, I've now officially retired from rugby so I'm bored and am flicking between the online coverage of Ironman Florida and Facebook.

This challenge for me probably carries a number of different aspects to other people in the group.  For a start I'm a relative newbie to multisport having completed Stokesleey Duathlon last March and done nothing since.

Running long distances holds no fear for me, I'm a plodder and my favourite distance is half marathon but what has become apparent since I set my personal best of 1h:32m:06 in 1995 is that I have got fat, not just tubby but proper fat.  At 5 stone 7" and 15 stone my knees kindly reminded me that if I'm going to f*** about running further than 20 miles in one go they are going to complain about it, loudly, more loudly than a drunk fishwife who's just been queuejumped at a Take That concert.

So first challenge along with getting the time on the road in is to drop some weight.  Having got down to just over 14 stone I think I need to go a bit further and get to maybe 12 stone or so.

Second challenge is to speed up a bit so that I'm not plodding 20 miles behind everyone else.

Third challenge is to get my shoulder, the reason for the retirement from rugby into a fit state for swimming in time for Stockton triathlon in August.  By swimming I also need to mean moving through the water faster than a baby elephant with concrete shoes on too.

Still things are looking up, I've clocked 6 hours a week training in the last 2 weeks, I feel good even this early in the base phase and I'm looking forward to getting through the winter and coming out the other side a bit leaner and faster and ready to smash a few races.

James

Ingredients for a 24hr - 300 mile bike ride.

My shopping bag won't fit this lot, so I'm hoping some of the other lads are going to nip into the 'Endurance Ride' super market and pick up some things . . .preferably fro free!

1. 1 x Community room to start the challenge
2. 10 x Training rollers or turbo trainers
3. 10 x Team race clothing - Tee - shirts (with sponsorship adverts)
4. 1 x Safety car + driver for road leg of race
5. Assortment of sponsors to advertise (any donation for web and blog but £50 for tTee-shirts and banner?)
6. 240 x 500ml bottles of sports replacement drinks
7. 240 x Energy gels (Glucose/fructose)
8. Assortment of bananas, flap jacks and chocolates
9. Assorted replacement bike parts, inner tubes or spare bike for safety car
10. A few multi frequency HH radios
11. 10x local inflammatory gels (volterol)
12. 10x travel size E45 cream
13. Assorted first aid equipment and materials
14. 1 x account to deposit donations it that can only be accessed by more than one team member
15. Assorted monitory donations from local businesses to offset costs for riders (hopefully £200/300 should cover everything and ensure that riders do not incur personal costs
16. 500/1000 A4 paper and envelopes for letters and promotion
17. Printing costs for literature and letters
18. Assorted raffle prizes (as many as possible and wide ranging)

I'm sure this is only the start of the list of things we need, but i know that we have a team of people that will make it happen. The face book page has been a great forum and we all talk pretty much every day and tell each other what, we're doing, what we've done and the developments we've made. 

All good in the hood!!!

It's a bit blurry but I can definitely see something!

It's been a really productive week here at camp Hartlepool Endurance . . . sorry, that sounds a bit wrong, we're not THAT camp! We've had our first group training session courtesy of Fit4Less, which saw JC, Bryan and myself sweating all over their nice new gym equipment (not pretty). The team is growing for the endurance ride and we have 7 potentially 8 riders at the moment and I'm sure that will grow as our stupidity, sorry I mean determination, inspires others. We have raised £320 with nothing but Blarney having not peddled a stroke in anger yet!

As well as this, and quite importantly, we have a date to work to. We have booked May 12th at Springs Leisure Spa for the party/ charity night and final leg of our  cycling challenge. All we need now is a venue to host the first five hours and a good solid, safe road cycling route and someone to follow us with a car full of fluid, cakes and bike parts!

The lovely people at Red Dreams Performing Arts Charity (who have mucho experience in matters such as this) are going to support us in making a blitzing evening of the charity night and are even going to supply a couple of top notch turns (that's artistes and bands to you and me), to make the night pop! Sound Solutions UK Entertainment are sending along their Platinum multi media disco to see the night off and MC the event and we have guests such as Arthur Puckrin making it all the more special!

 . . . and finally, we have got the raffle prizes of the ground with a lovely donation from Mr Darren Rowbotham of a signed HUFC shirt, a months free gym membership courtesy of those lovely people at Fit4Less and (this is a really lovely gesture), BTF Team GB have given us a signed photograph of the Browlee Brothers and wished us all the best with our venture.

I'm made up and and inspired by people's generousity. A good week me thinks.

We can only hope endurance is a disease and we catch it (even in a mild dose) from Arthur Puckrin!

I received a phone call from Arthur Puckrin tonight. For those of you who don't know (and where the hell have you been then?), Arthur is the god amongst men, who at 72 years old completed one of the hardest endurance challenges known to man (and a few Titans have failed as well), 'The World DOUBLE Decca Biathlon". This is nothing more than a 48mile swim and a . . . . . . .2240 mile bike ride, (I feel ill!).

Arthur ringing was like Superman turning up to a woman hanging off the side of a building by one arm - we are no longer shrieking with fear at the prospect of our two major endurance challenges, we are in good hands.

I had a million questions for Arthur who was more than happy to impart his knowledge and experience for both our bike and run projects. He is happy to be at the end of the batphone on standby for training and technique emergencies.

Over the course of our short but totally mind blowing conversation, he filled my head with loads of good ideas, things to watch out for, things I never even considered and amazed me with his willingness to support a bunch of strangers, once again in the name of such a great cause.

I will post a list of his main bits of advice, but food for thought; feet can swell so much that we may need to consider cutting the ends off a pair of trainers for the latter stages, Achilles tendons cannot really be trained but must be really protected on such long runs and any twinge must result in dead stod and walk for a while, the intensity of the run will allow for a wider range of nutrition including decent meals throughout, knees need to be protected and may need strapping up from the outset, and . . . . .it may not be necessary to train any more than 14 miles in any one session, but consider the endurance of time by completing up to 3 or four medium length sessions in one day, broke up with other activities.

I am inspired by our conversation and Arthur said we can contact him at any time for advice AND he is willing to get involved in a more active way as we get closer to our challenges and will be a guest of honour at the charity night when we complete our bike challenge, maybe giving out raffle prizes or making a short speech. 

Here's to Arthur Puckrin for taking HET seriously and making me feel like we are a proper team. Lets do this lads!

"I'll get my people to ring your people . . .we'll make it happen!"

11am today and Hartlepool Endurance Team was a bunch of Hartlepool athletes with loads of ideas, bags of enthusiasm and quite a high pain threshold. By 12pm this afternoon, we became a well organised, focused machine,  ready to start putting our ideas into reality.

I met with Victoria Rogers from 'The Butterwick', and like a corporate trouble shooter, she thrashed our pencil drawn sketches into a work of art. Amazing woman! So here's how it stands now.

1. We train like mad so we do not look like idiots when we set out on both our 24hr bike marathon or our 26.2hr ultra run.

2. We promote our backsides off for a small pot of money to pay for perishables, emergency kit, race clothing and nutrition by asking all our loved ones with businesses to slip a few quid in order to advertise on said kit and literature etc.

3. We tell everyone who will listen that they will be struck by the spirit of the Joo-Joo if they do not visit our just giving page and donate their spleen! (justgiving.com/hartlepool-endurance-team)

4. Direct them also to our blog to see how seriously we take ourselves and to learn a little more about us (team-hartlepool.blogspot.com). Simple profile and mission web page TBA.

5. We start to tell the world the following; On a date yet to be arranged in April/May, we HET will be setting off on a 24hr bike marathon starting with a 'Dark hours Bike Roller Session' at a venue (also yet to be arranged, but hopefully Springs). We will then set off at the first sign of daylight on a 12/14 hr sportive style pack riding road challenge and return to the venue as the sun sets, ( I will ask Mr Wilson and Mr Hackett for their supreme knowledge of road riding to be our guide and propose an interesting if a little challenging route). A Butterwick/Red Dreams charity night will have begun; a ticket do with food, raffle, band and disco to raise more funds to be split evenly between these two exceptional charities. We, (the riders - and this is the good bit!), continue our 24hr challenge at the centre of this charity night, pushed on by our loved ones, fed copious amounts of caffeine and red bull until we collapse in a head at a count down to midnight!!!

6. When all the details are finalised, we all try and sell as many tickets as possible to this do and with the help of the Butterwick publicity machine (Victoria has this one in the bag), we sell the lot easily - potentially 180. What better way to end a 24hr challenge when you are tired, in pain, sweaty and miserable - happy people drinking!

7. When I have collated a list of very useful contacts from Victoria, we each take a couple and follow up on to see if we can secure a little more support both financially and with various donations of equipment etc.

8. Offer any suggestion to improve on the above ideas.

I'll hold off on discussion propositions for the ultra run for a while to get our heads around this challenge first, suffice to say that we have a preliminary range of dates (July/Aug) and a proposed route (5 mile loop around Seaton), and once again, Victoria from Butterwick had some excellent suggestions to help it run smoothly and gain maximum exposure.

Officially excited by this part of the project. Please let me know what you think!

Potholes - Hartlepool Steals Crown From Blackburn Lancashire!

I knew that when I came up with this hair brained scheme, organisation was going to be and issue, and I'm sure that there will be much red tape and brick wall to surmount in the future! But Hartlepool Council haven't made things any easier already.

Whilst out today on reconnaissance for the Ultra Marathon loop with fellow HET member James Campbell, I was shocked at how unusable Hartlepool's streets are for runners.You could literally lose whole people down some of the pot holes in the pavement, fill some of the cracks with water and manoeuvre a barge freely along them and create a colour chart for a goths bedroom with the amount of mismatched and raised strips of tarmac due to the amount that has been dug up and relaid over the years!

So, Our 26.2mile loop that reduced to 13.1 to stop our runners from throwing themselves under late night freight lorries on the A689, has now diminished to a 5 to 6 mile loop around the best of paths and tracks around the Seaton area to avoid snapped ankles. It seemed to be the sensible thing to do anyway as we will be doing at least 40% of our running in the dark and with a smaller loop, support, aid and companionship will be much easier.

Big meeting with Butterwick tomorrow that I'm both excited for and dreading as I'm a soft get and don't want to get upset at the amazing things that go on over in Stockton.

PS. note to historians. you might want to check if the record books have any evidence of the following people visiting Hartlepool in their final days: Lord Lucan, Richie from the Manci Street Peachers and Glenn Miller. I'm  sure I heard Jive Bunny whilst riding down Catcote Rd!!!!!!

"Petrofac and Thistle" Say it again, it rolls off the tongue like sweet nectar!!

That's us off the ground. We now have to step up and earn the £300 donated by this multi national engineering company. One Mr P Stephenson has worked some magic and secured us our first major donation and will officially ride his little bike all the way to the bank to deposit this sum when he returns from his most recent exotic off shore adventure.

Crikey! This means it's real! No more procrastinating about nutrition plans, routes, conditioning and training . . .we've actually got to do the lot!

Joking aside. I am under no illusion as to the enormity of what we are planning, but I have ultimate faith in the team of lads to step up to the plate and do amazing things in the name of 'The Butterwick Hospice'. This is one thing I am excited about; my mates achieve more than they thought possible and immensely more than others think they are capable of.

It all starts now Hartlepool endurance Team . . . good luck and once again, massive thanks to Petrofac and Thistle!

The Generosity of Strangers

It always amazes me, the faith people have in you when you are trying to do something good. It's not true that humans are cynical and mistrusting by nature . . .they don't want to be! Hartlepool Endurance Team look like a rag bag bunch (on paper and in real life). Jimbo with his rugby players build and cropped hair, Darren with his tattoos and football shirt, Andy with his facial hair and Scouse accent and me . . . . well I look like I could kill you as soon as look at you (yer right!). Suppose there's only Bryan who you'd be happy to introduce to family  - I guess he'll have to be the face of H.E.T!!

Anyway! The point I'm trying to make is - before this bunch of misfits have even physically set foot on the path of ultra athletics, a multi national company is willing to contribute a substantial amount of money to the cause in the form of a donation direct to 'Butterwick' through our just giving page . . just on what little they know about us through a letter I drafted recently.

I must say a massive thanks to Paul 'Stevo' Stephenson for doing the ground work and hope that there are many other companies out there as generous as this. There name will be in lights when I find out what it is!!!

I love it when a plan comes together!!!

A new team has been born. Made up with a load of athletes as mad and passionate as me. Do something nuts like ride 176 miles in 11.25 hrs and they come out of the woodwork and sign up to the most unbelievably mad ventures . . .all in the name of charity!

So 'Hartlepool Endurance Team' is born and the members are growing. 2012 looks like an exciting year with an already expanding list of crazy events aimed at raising money for 'The Butterwick Children's Hospice'. So far we have pencilled in:

• A 24hr road bike challenge
• A 26.2hr Ultra marathon
• An endurance open water swim mimicking the channel crossing
• A full length Ironman trithlon
• Various triathlons and duathlons

So, I'll raise a glass for the team as they stand on this inaugural day; Darren, James, Andy, Bryan and myself who have committed to some of the events, and wish us all luck for the tribulations ahead.

We are the A - Team!!!!!

May we all stay safe, cement friendships, grow as people . . . and make a big difference in the lives of those less fortunate than us.