First Donations!

Thanks to Fi at work and the nice people at Pet-tacular rescue for starting the wheel (ha!) rolling with the first donations. I'm 1/100th of the way there! And I've not even started yet. It's all the encouragement I need to keep pushing forward with this.

Things to do:

Contact Local Press - Inverness Courier, Highland News, P&J etc. I'll need to get a hold of the names and contacts in other local papers around the country.

Contact Local radio stations.

Contact companies for sponsorship.

Brainstorm Marketing ideas.

Disaster!!

7am this morning:

I get up nice and early after a good night sleep, raring to go and with the intention of doing some situps and a bit of Yoga.

7am and 30 seconds:

I'm lying at the bottom of the stairs in a crumpled heap after slipping on one of the steps and heading bum first to the bottom.

Bugger.

After freaking out my daughter by going a funny colour and muttering to her 'you'd best phone an ambulance, daddy doesn't feel very well' (she went and hid in her room!) I managed to get it together enough to knock on my neighbours door and get a lift up to A&E. The staff at Raigmore were brilliant and I was seen within half an hour and had the attention of a doctor very soon afterwards.

The end result:

A busted toe - the nail is ready to fall off but the doc managed to push it back under the nail bed (grim, really grim) and it should hopefully heal ok.

Bruises and scrapes down my right side. In particular a very sore arse! Lovely.

I ache all over at the moment and I can't see me doing much over the next few days. The Doctor has advised me to go easy on the bike until the toe is healed.

It could have been a lot worse - the stairs are very steep (45 degree angle), made of wood and there's a kitchen unit right at the bottom of them. I'll try and get a photo uploaded at some point.

I'm feeling pretty wiped out at the moment and it feels like all my muscles have taken a serious beating! I'll need to take it pretty easy over the weekend and hopefully get back into things by the beginning of the week.

More training, fundraising and Sportives

Charities

Things are starting to take shape now and I've settled on The Guide Dogs for the Blind as the main charity. It's close to my heart as my mum is registered blind and has had Guide Dogs since I was 8 years old. I've even spent a bit of time working at the kennels in Forfar.

The second group I'm raising money for is Coisir Og Inbhir Nis, this is a Gaelic Youth choir based in Inverness and is open to all school age children in the Inverness area that attend Gaelic Medium education or who are fluent Gaelic speakers. Travelling to and from competitions, uniforms and hiring venues is a costly business and I am more than happy to fund raise for them. My daughter attends Bun Sgoil Gaidhlig Inbhir Nis and is a member of the choir so again it's an organisation close to my heart.

Training

It's going slowly but steadily, I recieved my new road bike (more on that in my next post) and I've had a couple of training runs out on it. I gave it's first middle distance run on Sunday, approx 25 miles round the Beauly Firth in just under 2 hours. We weren't exactly tanking it so I felt reasonably fresh afterwards.

Sportives

I've entered the Ullapool Mór Sportive for the 26th September, it's 130 miles long and is the motivation I sorely need to get me on the road to being fit for next year. I'll be paying for my entry to the Cairngorm Sportive at the end of this month (pay day!).

You can see my name on the entrants list for the Ullapool Mor here. Just to prove that I am actually going ahead with it!