Mission Accomplished

Just over 7 months since this challenge began I finally reached the last event at today's Cardiff Half Marathon.  It's a really strange feeling to have reached number 20 but I'm certainly glad that it's here.  It doesn't seem that long ago that I did the first one, the Pontypool 10k back in February.  Since then there has been plenty of sweat and even some blood and tears along the way.

The run itself today wasn't anything spectacular time wise or performance wise to be honest.  It certainly wasn't going out with a bang but I got around with the help of my Dad alongside me and we managed to match our time from the Newport Half Marathon back in March.  I appreciate that this means I haven't made an improvement in all that time but I haven't been able to do any specific training for this and I've hardly trained at all in the last 2 weeks with various injuries.  I suppose with that taken into account it's not that bad after all!

It's been a fantastic experience doing all these events this year and I certainly taken on things that I would never have thought possible a year ago.  Strangely though I still haven't put everything together yet in my head, it feels like a lot of little achievements rather than one big one. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing to be honest and I'm sure it will start to sink in over the next few weeks.  There is as well the one black mark on the book for me in Wimbleball and I've already signed up to take that on again next year.  I'm determined it won't beat me twice!

I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has sponsored me because without you then all this would have been pointless.  I also want to say thanks for reading this, for every single good luck and well done message that I have received and also the help and support I've had from so many people in the tri club with my training but especially Ben, Gareth & Nic.  Thanks also to Laura, Paul, Ben and my Dad for keeping my company and dragging me around some of the events.  Things could have gone very differently in some of the events if you hadn't been there.

Finally I want to say a massive thank you to my Mam and Dad who have not only come along to almost every event to cheer me on but also supported me from the very start when I began putting all of this together and throughout the year with my training.

I'll do another update once all the sponsorship money has come in to let you know the final total which will hopefully be in a couple of weeks time.  I'm now going to have a couple of days to enjoy this before I start training for next years big challenge - Ironman Wales!