I’m sure everyone knows the main theme of the story – Alice follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world, filled with talking creatures and magical food, and in Through the Looking Glass Alice slips into a mirror world, which is largely shaped around a giant game of chess.

I think the joy of these stories is in the fantastical creatures and scenarios. The characters do and say the strangest things, and are described so clearly that you really do feel like you’re looking at how you imagined things as a child.  Alice as a central character carries the story along.

I found the stories didn’t have much of a direction, though I’m sure that as a child this wouldn’t have troubled me at all – maybe it’s only as an adult that I expect a story to follow a clear structure. It was worth reading these books, as they paint such a lovely picture of a different world. I did enjoy stepping back into my younger imagination.

After a bit of research, I couldn’t really find any pre-made treasure hunts online. So I wrote my own.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and we were really lucky with the weather – it was a beautiful, sunny winter’s day. It was freezing, but I made sure we had a meet point in the middle for a sneaky drink so that got around that issue.

The route:

Treasure hunt isn’t quite the right title, it was a kind of scavenger hunt with various tasks. But one of the main objectives was to take people on a nice route through London.

I arranged for us to meet at London Bridge, and the route took the teams through Borough Market and then along the river, stopping off for drinks near the Royal Festival Hall, and then crossing the river, taking in the Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden area, finishing with drinks in a bar near Seven Dials between Covent Garden and Soho.

This is one of my favourite routes in London. I used to walk part of it to work every day, and frequently walk sections of it when I go back to London. There are some great sights, and some unusual things to see. I won’t give details of all of the tasks (there were 45 in total), but here were some of my favourites:

• Buy something nice to eat in Borough market – this was ideal, as the first task it meant people had the option to get a snack (high priority in my mind) and also made it easy to split the teams up – it’s hard to follow the other teams in there as it’s very busy.
• Various photos, including doing your best thespian pose outside a theatre (the route takes in several, including the Globe and the National), capture all of your team in a photo with St Paul’s Cathedral in the background from Millenium Bridge, streets which feature on the Monopoly board (there are quite a few in the Trafalgar Square area).  We had fun with this, and there are just so many good cues for photos.
• Buying various things relating to the bride-to-be including a postcard from an art gallery (and writing a nice message on it), the most unusual souvenir possible, various snacks.
• Finding unusual things – like the Moomin shop that’s recently opened in Coven Garden.
• There’s so much history and art everywhere you look – Blue Plaques, various murals along the foot tunnels underneath bridges, also often there are artworks or inscriptions in the floor at certain points. I fitted in quite a few questions about history and interesting facts – for example, what body part can be found sculpted onto the Admiralty Arches?

Some good extra pointers

There are quite a few information signs in London, which highlight a map of where you currently are and provide information and a map for the immediate area. These help if you don’t quite know where you are, especially for people don’t know London, though it is good to mix the teams so no-one gets completely lost!

I planned the route out, and gave people maps of the locations of the meeting points. I also gave them the postcodes for the bars, so those with maps on their phones could use them.

Timings:

I wrote 45 tasks for people to complete, thinking that they wouldn’t finish them all. But everyone got them all, though they had to go at a fair pace! Total time available for actual hunting was about 2 hours 45 minutes. Obviously this didn’t include the break in the middle for drinks. So it easily fills up an afternoon.

Points:

I allocated points for each task, but didn’t weight them. I should have done, it’d be even better if some tasks were worth more than others, especially when there’s a bit of time pressure. The teams were fairly even, and I made sure there were prizes for everyone, but it would work equally well with a more competitive focus.

Some resources I used for planning:

• Openplaques.org - which details what is on blue plaques, and where they’re located
• Openstreetmap.org for looking at the route in detail
• I googled quite a few things
• I also asked other people to check through the plan I’d made. A second opinion is always good, and they added a few extras in too.

For anyone thinking of doing something similar:

I think this worked really well. I enjoyed putting it together – it meant I could pick out all of the places I love and share them with other people in a fun way. There is so much to see, it would be easy to create a longer or shorter version, and I’d love to try writing one for different parts of London. It can also be really personal to the individual and is a great way to bring a group together. It didn’t cost me anything, though if we visited any galleries I made sure I donated to them. We saw some lovely sights, and got some great photos. And everyone felt they deserved a nice dinner at the end of it.

Arthur & George tells the stor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Edalji. Their stories are told alongside each other for the first part of the book, generally switching from one to the other. The stories cross paths as a result of the Great Wyrley Outrages.

The stories are based around true events and characters, and I find that period of literary history fascinating. I love Conan Doyle novels, and many of the other authors of the time, so each time another author’s name is mentioned it made me want to read more into this period. Throughout the book a range of sources are quoted widely, and there is a note at the end of the book to state that, with the exception of one letter, all quotes are authentic. I love this, as the story has been pieced together so fluidly, and incorporates a lot of detail which is taken from primary source material. It’s an amazing combination of imagination, story telling and historical narrative.

One of the things I love about reading is that it always inspires me to read more. Reading Arthur & George has made me want to read more novels from the same period, as well as make sure I put some time aside to read a bit more history, which I talked about a few months ago but haven’t really made much progress on. A few more to add to the list, but after reading Arthur & George I can’t wait to get onto my next book.

One of my resolutions is to read a book a week. I was a little embarrassed by how few of the books on the Guardian’s ’1000 novels everyone must read’ list I’ve actually read. I’m way short of 1000. I just don’t allow enough time to read. I’m pretty sure I’ll find that I haven’t read enough non-fiction either, so I’ll be trying to slot a few of those in too.

On the Guardian’s list of 1000, I’ve only read 65. I’m not sticking rigidly to the list though – the first two books I’ve read this year aren’t on this list. I love lists, but there’s a fine line and I don’t want to become a list obsessive.

I’m going to do a quick write up of each book here, because if I do manage to achieve my goal I’ll struggle to remember by the end of the year what I read at the start.

I run a fair bit, but I’ve never taken the time to consider why. Just for the last few years, I have, and in the back of my mind I put that down to having a very desk based job, when I’m quite an active person.

Why We Run is written by a runner, as he goes from being a marathon runner to taking on ultra marathons and the Spartathlon. In truth, before I saw Robin Harvie’s talk, I didn’t even know such things existed, for me a marathon is definitely enough.  So this was a bit of an eye opener. Reading about all of the training was grimly fascinating, though one of the things I really liked about the book is that the reader is largely spared the seriously gory details. It must be pretty tempting to put all of those in, as I know how much I like to share tales of running injuries.

It’s a very broad book, referencing a whole host of runners and athletes, explorers, and the history of running as a discipline. As you would expect, it’s also a very personal story, told with a light tone which doesn’t feel too self reflective.

The main thing that I took from the book is that running is different for everyone. I’m pretty sure I’ll never get further than a marathon, and this year I’m only planning a few half marathons. But I didn’t feel belittled by reading this – I still think running a marathon was a huge achievement for me. It has given me chance to pause and reflect, and to consider why I run. The book refers a lot to nature, and being closer to your surroundings. With spring approaching I’m going to keep this in mind as the days get lighter and I get out running in the countryside a bit more.

I stopped drinking alcohol the week before the race. I think you’re supposed to stop a little earlier than that, and next time I probably would just to see if that made a difference. I made sure I ate plenty, and tried to eat a bit more pasta and rice. I wasn’t too well in the weeks before the race, I had a funeral to attend in the week of the marathon, and seemed to come down with some kind of cold or tiredness type bug. I made sure that I got plenty of rest to try to get rid of the bug as quickly as I could.

I did my last long run about 2 weeks before the marathon, and after that did shorter runs of 5 or 6 miles, cutting it down to 3 or 4 miles in the week before the race. I started to get quite nervous at this point, but going out for a run every so often did really help with this.

The day before the race I made sure I didn’t do too much walking. I was staying in Edinburgh so went out for a nice dinner and made sure I got taxis everywhere.

The day of the race:

I woke up very early, so watched some TV. I was really nervous. In part, it was the not knowing what a marathon would be like. And in part it was also a bit of fear of letting myself down – I’d trained for over 6 months and didn’t want to waste that.

I had a normal breakfast and headed to the start of the race with my other half to meet my parents at the start. Thinking back now I can remember how scared I was at this point, but having family there was a big help. None of them are runners, and I think they might have been a bit nervous too.

The race itself:

As ever, once I started running I stopped being anxious. It was a fairly flat route, which I wasn’t prepared for. A lot of my training was off road in the Peaks, whereas this was on road along the coast. This was a mistake, as my feet didn’t take very well to it and after 10 miles I could really feel the impact of the road. And while running up hills is tough, you also get a break going down hill, which you don’t get on the flat. So if I were to do this again, I’d check out the course gradient and do at least one training session a week on similar ground.

I kept checking the miles off, and with each one took the approach of ‘Well, that’s one less mile to complete’. I can’t really say that I did much thinking beyond thinking to the next mile marker. If I were to run another marathon, I’d really study the route more so that I knew where the turning points were. Visualising where I had to get to would have made it easier to push on to the next milestone.

I managed to run a bit quicker in the last mile, and finished in 4hrs23mins. I was pretty pleased with this result. Of all the things, I was pleased to see my family at the end as running for that long on my own did get a bit tedious. I did chat to people along the way, but it was general small talk. If I was to do another marathon, I’d probably want to see if someone else wanted to run it too. It’s a long time to spend thinking about the next mile, and a bit more conversation along the way would have been very welcome.

There are a few things that I did which I think helped me to keep going, as well as a few things I’d probably change.

Setting goals

I set myself goals for long runs at the weekend, but not for training during the week. At the time, this worked well as I was fairly anxious about goal setting. If I was to train for a marathon again, I’d be much tougher on goal setting as I have now realised that goals are achievable.

Running outside

Living in Sheffield, it’s very easy to access the Peak District. Once I got my distances up, I could run from my house out onto the moors. For long runs I drove to various spots in the Peaks to run. It seemed like a good idea to make the most it as it’s so close, and I think now it’s something I’ll always do.

Audiobooks

I’ve always run with music, though since the marathon I’ve learned to get past this. I changed my running playlists frequently, but when running for 3 hours I got bored pretty quickly. So I tried out audiobooks, which I’ve always wanted to do. I absolutely love them. I got through three of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, and three of the Harry Potter books. I went for books that I’ve read (many) times before, but in future I think I’d try out some books I haven’t read as well.

Eating plenty

I’m a vegetarian, which I doubt is very unusual, but it did give me an extra thing to think about. My training book had some information on food. I also bought a book on nutrition so I could look up what foods contained things like protein and certain vitamins. I think this was a good call, and meant I thought a bit more about what I ate as well as increasing how much I ate. I didn’t give up drinking until a week before the marathon, but the thought of a long run on a Saturday morning was enough to keep me to one or two glasses of wine on a Friday night anyway.

Trainers and kit

I love my trainers, and replaced them with the same model. I don’t think I’ll ever change that. The one thing I would do is buy some more new kit. I found that anytime I had bought something new, I enjoyed testing it out on my next run so it gave me something new to think about. If I were to train for anything like this again, I’d buy myself some new kit every so often.

So overall, there were a few things that I did that made it a bit easier to keep going. But I think the main thing that helped was to tell people about it. I found I quite enjoyed talking about training, and colleagues, friends and family were all very kind in listening to what I had to say.

As training for my first marathon coincided with moving to a new city, a long daily commute and a very cold winter, in November I decided to join a gym for 3 months.

The positives

• It was warm, when there was up to 2 foot of snow outside. A definite bonus.
• I could go early in the morning before getting the train, or after work. At both times of day it was dark, which put me off road running as I didn’t know the city very well.
• It did push me to use a slightly wider variety of equipment – I used the exercise bikes quite a bit, and managed a few weights.

I started training fully in November, which was quite far in advance of the marathon which was in May. So I wasn’t under a huge a amount of pressure. For November and December I did a few short runs in the week, and generally a slightly longer one on a Saturday morning. It did take me this two months to get to grips with running different distances on different days. I’d spent the last 18 months doing the same length run time and again. I just wasn’t used to flexibility and adjusting my thinking about each run.

After I made my plan at Christmas time, I started to get a bit more confident about being flexible. So I’d try to train 3 or 4 evenings a week, and on a Saturday. I chose to try to avoid running on Sundays, as I wanted to try to always have a day off.

Weekday evenings: 

1 hour gym session: exercise bike or treadmill plus a few legs and abs weights

or

8 mile road run involving various hills

plus some weeks

13 – 15 mile road run involving various hills

Weekend run:

Increasing in length each week – started off at 12 – 13 miles and increased up to 24 miles. Mostly on trails and soft ground, again involving quite a lot of hills

The problem with this plan…

This plan definitely lacked variety, and looking back through the training book again, I was only following a bit of what it suggested. A lot of this was down to lack of confidence – thinking about training is something I’ve never done before, so although I’m pleased with what I managed, it would have been better to try out more.

I managed about 6 or 7 interval training sessions in the gym, but other than running up lots of hills that were on my routes, I didn’t do any specific hill training. I could have really varied my training a lot more, and also perhaps done some swimming and core strength work like yoga.

I’m pretty sure I could have managed these things quite comfortably, I just didn’t think so at the time. The main thing I learned from this is that being brave is quite important in any kind of training plan.

Fortunately, I’m quite obstinate (or, putting a positive spin on that, ‘disciplined’) so once I got my head out from the sand and made a training plan I was ok at sticking to it.

Obstacle 1: Getting round to making a plan

I’ve run a half marathon before, but my running level for the last 18 months had been a 5-6 mile run two or three times a week. As soon as you look at any marathon training plans you’ll see that this doesn’t really help much – as I’ve never focused on progression, just keeping up a certain level of fitness.

For the first few months of training, I kept up with my few runs a week, but realised that this wasn’t really helping me to improve. Fortunately, for Christmas I was given a copy of ‘The Marathon and Half Marathon : A Training Guide’ by Graeme Hilditch. This was a much needed shove for me – I’d never gotten around to typing ‘marathon training plan’ into Google, which was obviously a bit of an avoidance tactic. I realised that being generally fit wasn’t good enough. I needed to make a plan.

Obstacle 2: Actually making a plan

As you can tell, I didn’t have too much experience to go on. So the book was massively helpful. There are lots of books and websites and magazines available. I found that the difficulty was actually sitting down to read one and then translating that into something that I could follow.

I vaguely followed the beginner’s marathon training plan, with some elements of the advanced plan added in. I realised that neither quite suited me, so I picked bits from both.

Obstacle 3: Getting myself to follow a plan

I’m very objective driven. Consequently, if I’m not able to meet an objective, I’ll find that quite difficult to deal with. This meant that I couldn’t write a plan out fully – because if life threw up unexpected events that ruined my plan, I’d get quite knocked off course by missing a particular target.

So I knew in my head vaguely what I needed to achieve each week, and the key distance milestones for the months leading up to the event. I noted down in my diary when I planned to run, but never how far or where.

I still, on the whole, managed to train 5 times a week, and met the milestones for distances at key points. So my plan was never a firm table drawn up and stuck to the fridge door and ticked off. If you’re able to do that, I think it’d really help. But having the plan vaguely sketched out and clear in my mind was enough to get me to progress whilst not allowing it to take over my every waking thought.