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Glen Reed runs London marathon for FMA UK

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Category: General Information

Published on Friday, 05 May 2017 13:12

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Glen Reed has raised over £1,000 for FMA UK running the London marathon this year for his wife, Charlene, who lives with fibromyalgia. Glen shared his experience with us: ‘’I would like to begin by saying a massive thank you to all who supported me and sponsored me to run this year’s London Marathon. As of writing this the total received is £1,026.58 and I can honestly say it was a huge help knowing I was raising so much money for Fibromyalgia Action UK (FMAUK). Thank you to all my friends, family, friends of friends and also the Bournemouth One Stop Stores who allowed collections within their shops as well as a raffle and their amazing customers who donated so generously.

I am not a natural endurance runner and I knew right from the start that this was going to be a very tough challenge. When I discovered I was actually in, my initial thought was “oh my god, I’ve actually got to do this now!” My training began around the end of November but unfortunately just before Christmas I injured my right calf muscle, forcing me to rest it and allow the muscle to recover. This meant I couldn’t go back to training until near the end of January and even then the injury was playing on my mind and the runs were relatively short.

I slowly and gradually increased the distances I was covering until I was reaching 18-19 miles. Then just as I thought things were going well I felt a pain in the big toe on my right foot (probably as a result of not being used to the distances I was running). It needed resting but that wasn’t an option. All I could do was to make my last run around 13-14 miles a couple of weeks before the event and then hope I’d done enough.

The actual day was a mixture of one of the best experiences of my life but also one of the most difficult physically. The first 15 or so miles were brilliant and seeing my family at the half way point was great. There were so many different people, some in crazy fancy dress, all running for different reasons and all supporting each other. Then things started to get tougher. Between miles 16 and 19 or so I began to truly realise how difficult this was going to be. I again saw my family at 22 miles and at this point I was beginning to feel horrendous. A quick hi to them and a kiss for my wife and I was on my way again for the last push. Everything was hurting at this point and I was walking for brief stages. Time stood still and a few bad thoughts of not being able to finish fleetingly crossed my mind.

 Finally I reached the final mile and this was the cue to really kick on and get this finished. Crossing the finish line was a huge relief and an amazing feeling. My time was 4:44:03. Happy with that but room to improve in the future. Again THANK YOU SO MUCH. Glen Reed’’.

To donate visit Glen’s JustGiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Glen-Reed1