The Outward Bound Trust is an educational charity dedicated to unlocking the potential in young people through learning and adventure in the wild. The Trust changes the lives of thousands of disadvantaged young people every year.
Many of the participants the Trust works with suffer from low self-esteem, poor educational achievement and an inability to trust others. Through challenge and adventure in the outdoors, they have positive experiences, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They gain confidence, begin to trust others, take responsibility for their actions and understand what they are truly capable of achieving in life.
The Outward Bound Trust was founded in 1941 and hundreds of participants’ stories from across the decades can be accessed at: http://www.outwardboundgenerations.org.uk/content/stories
Some of the comments from recent participants that stuck out for me:
“The Outward Bound Trust is the most life changing
organisation that I have been to and I will never forget what I learnt and what
I can still learn from it.”
“Outward Bound has benefited me immensely by helping me
unlock my full potential, and pushing me out of my comfort zone, to make me do
things that I would never have thought to do. The activities which we did there
you would never think someone like me would do normally. It was amazing.”
“I learned that I can honestly do anything I set my mind
to, I thought that before Outward Bound I would be too scared to do anything,
but now I am 100 percent confident I can.”
Having worked in the education and children’s services sector for over 25 years, I am thrilled that the Outward Bound Trust have given me the chance to run the London Marathon and in turn I have set myself the aim of raising £2,000.
My own experiences of learning and adventure in the wild are certainly not as extensive as what is offered by the Outward Bound Trust but nevertheless have been incredibly important for me and I can easily relate to the comments above. This is the case even though my experience of outdoor challenge in recent years has been mainly limited to:
Camping at music festivals (the mud at Download Festival 2012 was a particular challenge!)….
A bit of night fishing (subject to demand big fish photos are available!)…
Some amazing walks along the Dorset coastline…
And passing some outward bound skills to the new generation…
But if I’m not getting the full Outward Bound challenge experience these days, I think I am making up for it with my marathon challenge!
On that front I am absolutely thrilled to say that since my Christmas post I have hit the targets I set myself – certainly in terms of distance. New Year’s Eve saw me reach the 13 mile mark for the first time since September and I built up to a run of 15+ miles last week. However, I’m almost jumping up and down (but the legs can’t take it at the moment!) to say that this morning I ran 17.14 miles in just under 2 hours 32 minutes! I’m particularly proud of this run as not only was I averaging at 8m52s per mile but I only slipped above a pace of 9m miles on mile eight and my fastest mile was 8m40s. That means I maintained an even pace better than I’ve ever done before at this sort of distance. Furthermore, that is the longest run I’ve done since the Brighton Marathon last April.
As my ankles, shins and calves are still regularly moaning at me, I’m trying to negotiate a deal with them. On the basis that they get me through the long weekend runs, I’m cutting down on the midweek runs and making more use of the cross-trainer and rowing machines at the gym. At least for this week we seem to have a reasonably amicable truce! I’m still working hard to maintain my progress towards meeting my target of a sub 4 hour marathon and, particularly after this morning, I still believe it is a realistic possibility.
I can’t believe the luck I’ve had with the weather this year – despite all the rain there has been over the last month or more, somehow I’ve found myself running at times when the worst I’ve faced is light drizzle. Perhaps I shouldn’t speak too early but at the moment the contrast with last winter’s training (in snow, sleet and gales) is immense – today along the Thames was wonderful.
By my next post I plan to be closing in on the 20 mile mark and, if you are near Hampton Court on Sunday 23 February, look out for me in the Hampton Court Half Marathon. Of course, after tempting fate about the weather, it might be “Dancing on Ice”!
Once again – a massive thanks for the donations and messages of support!
Very best wishes….
John
25 January 2014
