£1 per day challenge - Days 1 & 2

According to Unicef 1.2 billion people live below the line every day and over a period of 5 days an average of 40,000 children will die from malnutrition.

The idea of the challenge is to live below the line for 5 days; so that's a food and drink budget of £5 for 5 days. I've chosen to start the challenge on Monday 18th August. Initially, I had wanted to push the challenge further and try 10 days on £10 but, due to training for Kilimanjaro, I can't really afford for my diet (in terms of nutrition rather than weight loss) to slip too much.

On my way to work on Monday morning I went to Tesco to "stock up" for the week. I started off at the reduced shelf where items due to go out of date or damaged items are sold at a fraction of their original price. I was able to find some cup-a-soups reduced to 50p as the box was damaged - that was all 5 lunches for the week sorted straight away! I also got a bag of porridge oats for 75p, two tins of spaghetti in tomato sauce for 20p each and a pack of 5 cereal bars for £1.

On Monday I had a cereal bar for breakfast and a cup-a-soup for lunch. By mid-afternoon I was quite hungry but after a dinner of 2 slices of toast (loaf of bread purchased on the way home from work for 75p) and half a tin of spaghetti, I had enough energy to go to the gym for an hour. Not being able to eat following a workout was very difficult and as I went to bed on Monday night I felt very hungry and a little light headed. I was however, proud that I made it through day one quite effortlessly.

Today (Tuesday) has been much more difficult. After a tough day at work all I've wanted to do is eat and go for a run/work out at the gym. The reality of the situation is that I've eat 2 slices of plain toast for my dinner and barely have the energy to type let alone go to the gym (ok, so that is a slight exaggeration but after having had a cereal bar for breakfast and cup-a-soup for lunch I am pretty tired right now).

Today I've really thought a lot about the meaning of this challenge and about the wonderful children in Ghana. I've thought about how little they have to eat and drink yet how energetic they are all the time whether it be at school, playing outdoors or working on the farm/helping out with their families and friends. I'm really not looking forward to the rest of the week, especially as Sean is eating all he wants, but knowing that any sponsorship money raised will be going towards the Child Care Centre and ensuring that they don't have to live below the line is making it worthwhile.

I would be really grateful if you could sponsor me just £1 per day that I complete this challenge to help me reach the 16 Month Challenge target of £3,000:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=danielleandsean&isTeam=true

An apology, an excuse and a Marathon

I'd like to start off by saying a huge sorry to all of our hundreds (maybe even thousands) of fans for being so completely and utterly rubbish on the Blogging front!

My excuse? I asked Sean to write the Blogs for the Marathon and Rat Race Dirty Weekend but, as you can tell, these never appeared!

So, sat in bed on a Saturday morning nursing a slight hangover, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and update you all on our recent adventures.

Training had been going well with both Sean and myself putting in the miles almost every evening in the lead up to our trip to Paris. We both invested in some new running shoes with plenty of time to wear them in (although mine were incredibly comfy from the first time I wore them) and I purchased new running clothes in the hope that, if all else failed, I'd still look ok whilst running! 

We flew out to Paris a couple of days before the Marathon, although we arrived quite late at night so the first day didn't really count. After a restless first night we decided that we are now both too old to be staying in Hostels (Sean is nearly 30 so it's hardly surprising!). We had signed up for the Paris Marathon Breakfast run which was a 5km run the morning before Marathon day. 

The weather was brilliant for the Breakfast Run and the atmosphere was great too. There were people from all over the world signed up for the warm up run and some people who were signed up to the Marathon were running the Breakfast Run with family members who had come along to support the main event. There was a couple there from South Africa, both of whom were in their 70s and ran a Marathon together every year - at that point, I thought that would be us when we were older but I quickly changed my mind the next day at about 10km in!!! 

The Breakfast Run took in some of the main sights in Paris ending just next to the Eiffel Tower where we got breakfast of croissants, fruit and tea in the sunshine. As the run ended at around 9.30am we had the rest of the day to head down to the Expo, register and take in the full Marathon experience. 

The Expo was brilliant and definitely formed a big part of the Marathon experience as a whole. We both spent a lot of money on overpriced running clothes because they had "Paris Marathon 2014" printed on them and we convinced each other that we HAD to buy some sort of memorabilia - so why not buy it all? We collected our running packs from the Expo which had our running numbers and important information in. This turned out to be more educational than I initially anticipated. Previously I had no idea that I needed to bring bandages for this reason:

We spent the afternoon of the first day wandering around close to our Hostel. We visited La Sacre Coeur and explored some of the smaller side streets but were conscious of not doing anything too strenuous the day before the big run. 

We got up early on the morning of the Marathon and got the metro over to the start area. We were in an early wave but the streets were packed. It was a lovely sunny day and the atmosphere was amazing. I must admit that, standing in the crowds at the start line, I was actually excited. The start line was well managed and once our wave moved forwards, the approach to the start line wasn't too crowded and it didn't take long at all for us to cross over the line once our wave started. 

Rather surprisingly there's not too much to say about the running part of the Marathon. We ran. And ran. And then we ran some more. After that, we ran a bit more and then we were roughly halfway so we kept running. We ran for around 5 and a half hours and it was really difficult! 

We had both agreed beforehand that we were just going to run at a slow pace and try and run for as long as we could before we walked or took a break. This tactic seemed to work well and we only paused to pick up water and orange slices at the designated refreshment points for a while. The atmosphere and support was brilliant throughout the route with various live bands and a constant crowd of people lining the streets. 

I really started to struggle at around 25-30km and from that point I had to walk quite a bit. My feet and ankles hurt a lot and every single step was painful. Over the last 10km or so a lot of people were dropping out and sat at the side of the road but we kept going and crossed the line in just over 5 hours 30 minutes to be greeted by a guy throwing up right next to my feet!

The first thing I did, pretty much immediately after we crossed the line was call my mum. I was so tired and proud of myself for actually finishing that I cried, mumbled something about finishing the Marathon and then hung up.

The walk back to the Metro station was extremely painful and took a hundred times longer than it should have done but it wasn't as painful as climbing the Eiffel Tower stairs the day after (clearly, we are always full of good ideas!)

Between us we raised a lot of money from you guys sponsoring us for this event so a huge thank you. 

I have put together a video from the Marathon but don't worry it's not 5 and a half hours of us just running.