The daily slog of training

An update from the tarmac

I am now within the last 6 months before I head into London to run my first ever marathon. For a couple of months before the school summer holidays I had been dipping my toes back in the water having not conducted any running since my injuries back in 2007 (the impact of my injuries is explained here). My plan for the first few months was to push my boundaries to establish a benchmark - and I did so, by hitting 10 miles in 2 hours.

However, over the summer, we were incredbly busy in the TechVets team, with us wrapping up our financial year, establishing new partners, unveiling new training, and taking record numbers on our books to ensure the Forces community are accessing great careers in tech. This, in concert with the fab, but very hot summer heavily impacted my training - so I had a month off!

Now I am back in training mode and training properly. This is in part due to the great support that the Army Benevolent Fund have provided, and having teamed upn with Coopah I now have access to great advice and have my formal training plan.

With all this said and done, it is certainly not that simple. With my injuries I fight the same battle after each training session, the pain and discomfort that can quickly consume my focus and energy. I have certain methods for pain management as I refuse to go back on painkillers after years on Tramadol, I also have a very supportive wife who is the other half of my two person team....

...but ultimately what gets me through is my mental strength. My will to succeed, and my resilience.

What is mental resilience? According to the American Psychological Association , "Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands."

Whilst running the marathon takes physical endurance, strength, and resilience, my greatest challenge is the mental aspect of this training.

Having had a life changing injury that affected most parts of my daily life, I have spent the past 16+ years living a life adapted from how I lived previously. Now, my mental strength is required on a daily basis as I have to motivate myself to push past the pain and discomfort and go again.

Mental resilience is one of the many common traits that are developed throughout Military service. My situation pales in comparison to many others who have pushed through far greater challenges with much more significant impairments or disabilities. I think immediately of Mark Harding who incredibly walked from John O'Groats to Land's End for Scotty's Little Soldiers .

His C5 and C6 spinal segments were completely shattered, resulting in him becoming paralysed from the neck down. Despite being told multiple times that he would never walk again, Mark slowly started to regain some movement, and has now completed a challenge that his doctors would have thought impossible – walking the entire length of the UK!

Perhaps the phenomenal Hari Budha Magar MBE FRGS , the first double above-the-knee amputee to summit Everest.

When I climb, I use different legs and we have installed heating socks to make it warm so that I don’t lose any more limbs, because I can’t afford to lose more. I just climb one step at a time.

Mental resilience is incredibly important in all aspects of our lives, whether that is marathon training or in the work place. With the average person spending a considerable amount of their lives working, in concert with the pressure and stress that can bring, and then add to that the fast pace of change with technology, and all with a backdrop of uncertainty and sometimes fear with current events whether conflict between Israel and Gaza or Russia and Ukraine - mental resilience is critical.

Of the 56 foundational skills identified by 麦肯锡 that will help people thrive in a future workforce, the following were identified under self-leadership:

• self-motivation and wellness
• courage and risk-taking
• grit and persistence
• coping with uncertainty
• self-development

All of these are core threads within my approach to this marathon. Despite my daily pain and discomfort, I focus my mind on the positives as much as possible and this certainly helps. I have lost some weight (I even had two lovely people tell me this at the recent Cyber Security EXPO ), I feel better for getting out and physically pushing myself, I get more time away from screens, the list goes on.

I will be running London Marathon 2024 for ABF - The Soldiers Charity, who are delivering incredible impact. In 2022/23 alone, the Army's national charity helped 70,000 people in 45 countries worldwide, and funded 74 other charities and organisations that deliver frontline services. This is supporting members of the Army family with independent living, eldery care, training & education, mental wellbeing, housing, and more.

Sometimes, we need a little support from the right people to help us get our mental strength back and this is the type of amazing support those who need it can receive from the Army Benevolent Fund as you can read from Joyce's story.

I have also been supported, but this incredible support is the generous donations of all those who have helped me to hit my minimum fundraising target. Particular mention, and huge thanks goes to my two big funders for this run, Andrew Vaughan at Jolly Good Web and Luke Davey and the team from dt-squad with both companies donating ￡1,000 each!

Jolly Good Web are a veteran-owned company with four UK based staff. They have experience working with businesses and companies of all sizes, from founder-led SMEs to universities and publicly traded tech companies.

They have packages to suit all companies but also have an incredibly competitive website package for the Forces community starting up their own business.

dt-squad have helped 30 people from the Forces community learn how to code. The team have spent over 1,700 hours training and supporting those students in 1-2-1 individualised sessions. All of those sessions were completely free of charge for the students and come with zero obligations.

The dt-squad vision is to build a substantial IT consulting and delivery business that is 80% owned and controlled by the employees who will be predominantly ex-Forces.

This has meant that I can focus more of my energy and efforts to the training without worrying about reaching the minimum target.

If anyone reading this is forunate enough to be able to support my first marathon run by donating, please do so here - any amount is incredible and I am very grateful. If you can't donate, please share my page with others so we can raise as much as possible to help more amazing people like Tom, Reece, Carly, and Ena.

So here is to enjoying the journey through the next 5 months before we hit race day!!!