Detour

Having arrived at a plan for a series of blogs I find that already I am being diverted from that route. The idea was to look at music and the effect it has had on my life in general, but now by way of a detour I must introduce you to GRIM8

By way of introduction let me take you back 5 years when I first got involved in a charity known as The Muscle Help  Foundation, and it's founder one Michael Mcgrath. Those of you who have met Michael will fully understand the effect that he had on me. The charities aim is to deliver "Muscle Dreams" to children with muscular dystrophy. These dreams can take the form of meeting your favourite footballer or driving around Silverstone in a Porsche.

My first encounter was by way of a charity auction and I expected that to be it. Oh how wrong can one person be. I have since attended several auctions and on one occasion was lucky enough to procure a working copy of the script for the film "Chariots of Fire" signed by one of the writers.

Last year I was privileged enough to accompany some of the children and their families to the Paralympics. I have to say not only were the exploits of the athletes (especially the wheelchair rugby) but also the effect it had on the children themselves very humbling.

This brings me to GRIM8. This is an event that involves running around a course. The 8 refers to the 8.5 miles distance of the course, the GRIM refers to the fact that it takes place in December each year, and it is around the army vehicle testing ground in Aldershot. I have now done this 3 years running.

Year one Michael convinced me that it would be a good idea so I got 9 colleges to join me and round about October thought it would be a good idea to do some training (Sort of). We had an absolute blast, it was tremendous fun but boy did I feel it afterwards.

Year 2 the nine college fell by the wayside and December was cancelled due to snow and it took place in January. You can imagine training after the effects of christmas. Also my time was 2 hours 2 minutes which frustrated me no end.

Last year I was determined to break the 2 hour mark so did train from the summer onwards, and the result was a time of 1 hour 47 minutes.

I have now signed up already for this year and this brings me to the point of this blog if you are still with me, Anyone who has ever done road running training will know how boring it can be. I have therefore loaded my phone with a selection of music to run with. However not all tunes are suitable due to the rhythm etc. Have you tried running to "Bohemian Rhapsody" not easy. The only one I have found that gives a good running pace for me is Alan Jackson "Chasing that neon rainbow" However it can get very boring on replay.

So a plea.... do you know of any good running tunes that I can use as it's a long time till December and I'm not sure I can remain sane listening to the same thing over and over again.


Please go to: http://www.musclehelp.com/ to learn more about the Muscle help Foundation
            and: http://www.grimchallenge.co.uk/grim-8/ to learn more about GRIM8