This month is without a doubt the busiest month in recent memory. With 6 essays and 3 exams all due over the next 2 weeks I am immensely busy. It has been a great opportunity to learn more about new areas of psychology though and I am finding a real interested in synthetic psychology.

It is a great combination of the technology I love and models of psychology. Creating artificial neural networks that can control robots that learn and interact with humans just sounds so 21st century! Will definitely be exploring more over the summer break.

This month has also been a big surprise on the TV commercial front. It has appeared online and on the TV! I also have a prying campaign running in many running magazines so keep an eye out for me. I have embedded the video below

I also promise to get updating this blog again as soon as this hectic month is over!

Once in a lifetime is a saying that gets easily used. When my wife and I travelled America we lauded how it was once in a lifetime. In reality we will no doubt repeat that trip in a decades time. We often use the saying when the task in actuality is easily repeated.

For once though I believe I have a once in a lifetime opportunity. I have been giving a condition place to be a London 2012 Olympic Torchbearer. The condition being I pass the security and background checks, pretty sure I will pass this easy enough!

So I am truly honoured to have been chosen. It is without a doubt the greatest reward for the past year of hard training and running. I would even rank it higher than my TV commercial!

Like most things in life there was a long string of interwoven events that led to me being nominated.

Disregarding all the training for a while, the timeline went a little like this:

I wrote a blog post about my experiences with RunKeeper and how it enabled me to train solo outdoors. This was quickly picked up by the RunKeeper team and appeared on their blog.

The Daily in New York found the story and ran an article on me.

This was quickly followed by Wired and CNN. Resulting in me filming a short for CNN that aired earlier this year. The Wired featured blog ran for a number of months and brought in lots more attention.

During the time I was writing for Wired I lost my pacing team. So I began a search for a new pacing team and perhaps the most instrumental people in the timeline were introduced.

I contacted UP & Running in the hopes they could help me piece together a pacing team. They went above and beyond and ran a small in store campaign and mentioned it on Twitter. This brought in the initial point of contact James Clay, along with James came Matt Puddy and Charlie Baxter.

Matt and Charlie took up the reigns and began to put together a team. Matt ran all the logistics, planning and organising. He was incredibly instrumental in allowing me to run my first ultra run.

With the run complete the next event was the ASICS call. They wanted a blind runner for a TV commercial and I didn’t really fit the bill. I had a quick chat and mentioned what I was doing alone and with my pacers was a better story than the one they were on the look out for. They agreed and the TV commercial was created.

These interwoven events created my running journey of the past year and were the basis of my nomination. I was kindle nominated by Charlie and Matt and was chosen. But without all those other people my story wouldn’t have got out there and the opportunity would never have presented itself.

So to all those people Thank you.

There is however one last mention. For my wife, she was there through all the difficulties of training, the time I was passed out on the bathroom floor, when my legs failed during training, when my water was stolen and most importantly she had the faith that when I said I could run alone she believed it.

2012 is looking to be a great year for projects, university and family life.

2012 will see my first year of university complete and hopefully coming out with a great grade. It has been tough going this past couple of months so I hope to have it all on track and get that all important first.

As for projects for 2012 where to start! I hope to launch a number of blogs focussing on running and fitness within the disabled community. I often forgot how lucky I am to have access to equipment and knowledge when it comes to exercise. So I plan to start a blog dedicated to making fitness accessible, from reviewing home equipment, creating audio instructions and simply workouts I hope to make fitness at home (and the gym) that little bit more accessible.

I will also be running the “Marathon Sandwich” blog that will detail the training for running the combined 52.6 miles needed to complete the sandwich (all in one go of course!). I am running this event to raise money for the SRSB which offers fabulous services to the blind. I will detail this more as time progresses.

I also have a few projects which will remain undisclosed until plans are firmed up!

As for family life, well that is always exciting. 2012 will see Graysons 2nd birthday and his first words! That is set to be a great occasion. Pretty sure there will be lots more trips to astrobound too!

I recorded a mini documentary and a TV commercial about myself for ASICS a few months ago. Recently I received an email asking me to pop to a recording studio to record some audio. I imagined I had messed up some of what I had spoke about and needed it re recorded.

Today I received my “script”, not I say script. It was more a transcription of what I had said during conversations I had with the film crew (I had a mic on all day). Reading through my script I thought to myself; I really can’t remember saying this? It sounds way to scripted? Would I have been able to come up with these lines in conversation?

When I arrived at the studio and was escorted into my little booth all my questions were answers. I had indeed said all those lines as they played an audio track of me saying them! The next 90 minutes consisted of 70+ takes of me repeating the lines of conversation I had delivered on the day.

Its a funny thing when you have to repeat lines again and again. The word level slowly turned into the word eleven, I kept dropping words and adding words. I don’t think I have a career as a voice over artist thats for sure!

The process in the end turned out to be really fun, chatting to the agency recording the audio and hearing which versions of my lines sounded the best. I must say hear that I hate the sound of my own voice, I refuse to listen to any interviews or recordings I create. I just can’t do it! But after a while today even I thought the audio track was beginning to sound good.

I can’t wait for the finished article, it has been a great privilege to shoot a TV commercial it really is something to tick of the life achievements list.

Even though university is keeping me incredibly busy I have began to think about a new running challenge. The Championship next year is a definite but I now feel the need to find something else.

I think this comes down to now realising the 100 mile run is definitely possible. With my limited training this year I was able to make it 83 miles, so how hard can that next 17 be? With another 8 months of training I am hoping not to hard.

So I have begun to think about a multi day event. I don’t really want to announce my plans yet as they are far from confirmed. I am going to email a few people and see if I can even afford to do a multi day event.

But the sheer thought of planning for my next big challenge is beginning to excite.

The blog has been quiet for a while but rather than a lack of things to blog about I have just been too busy.

Adjusting to university has been a lot harder than I had anticipated. With the commute to university being the first time I have used my long cane it has been taking its toll. I perhaps rather wrongly assumed people would be forgiving of me using the cane and be polite. This turned out to be wrong.

Today for example as I boarded the tram someone clean kicked my cane out from me. No apology they just looked at me and pushed by me. This unfortunately happens on the majority of commutes. On the flip side about once a week someone is actually helpful and assists me with something.

With the rush hour commute being difficult I decided to make a few changes to my timetable to ease the process. Thankfully i didn’t enjoy the module I dropped to ease the commute. So I suppose it did all work out for the best.

While I begin to get my studies under control I have been thinking about next years ultra running. I am definitely entering the UltraRace Championship which will see me return to the Cotswold 100 amongst many other races (90 miles in Jan I best get training!) I have begun to think about other challenges.

I have never been fond of the multi day event but the past few weeks have been thinking about how far I could run in a week. 210 miles seems perfect achievable so could I run 280? push it to 300? I have a few destinations in mind and some interesting point-to-point runs. Just need some funding! (or sponsorship!)

The past year my life has changed dramatically. Perhaps the most important I became a father. In an effort to make my life challenging I also decided to start a new career path and begin training to become an ultra endurance athlete. I began all of these new ventures in the same week; just to compound the pressure!

Now nearly a year later I have begun to reflect on where I am and how the public image I have created is perceived. My public image is created around the fact I am a blind ultra runner and to a further extent the fact I train solo outdoors. As I begin to reflect on this public image I am a little uneasy.

What image am I creating of a disabled person? Am I utilising my disability as a PR stunt?

It is these two questions that are currently making me think. When I began my journey to compete at the ultra distance I had never thought about the public discovering what I was doing. So when did that change?

It all changed when I realised how expensive training for an ultra had become and I needed to reach out to companies for support. This is where I made the choice to market myself as a blind ultra runner. I am now wondering how the public at large perceives this. I hope people don’t perceive me as constantly marketing myself on my disability in an effort to gain support.

It is such a fine line to walk; I don’t think I can escape the moniker of a blind ultra runner or if I even want to. I hope the message that does come across is the ability to adapt. That’s my core belief and the reason I own this domain name. I constantly adapt to overcome barriers and that is the message I really want to project.

I think right now I am just a little confused about the entire situation but that could be related to the opportunities I have been granted. In the past year I have appeared in magazines, newspapers, live television, international television, books and I now have a TV commercial about my running. It is difficult to process how far I have come in such a short space of time.

Perhaps the uncertainty is a good thing, as I will constantly remain thankful for the opportunities I have been given. This post has perhaps been my most scattered in a while but it is basically how I feel about the situation. I am becoming far more conscious of how I project myself and being careful of the message I carry.

However perception is always down to the individual, so knowing how people perceive my story and process it will always be personal to them. The one thing I will always be vigilant of is to not label myself beyond the boundaries of who I am. I am blind, I am an ultra runner, I am a father. Any other labels attached to myself is down to the individual.

I wrote up a small race report for Wired about my ultra so instead of repeating myself go check it out!

I do plan on talking about the race more in depth in the future and the aftermath in terms of did the race change me? So if anyone has any questions for me to answer let me know!

It has all been a little quiet over here recently about my running. Well there are 11 days to go till I approach that start line and run 100 miles.

I still plan to broadcast the race live through RunKeeper and I am currently maintaing a separate blog for the occasion. Blind100

The race starts on the 24th of June at 1200GMT the broadcast will start a little earlier and that just to make sure everything is functioning correctly.

So what condition am I in? I am coming off the back of a little bone bruising but I am ready as I can be at this point. The training miles have been put in I just need to bring my A game on the 24th and log those miles!

When I initially came up with the idea of running 100 miles I never gave a thought to running for charity.  As the day of the run drew closer I began to wonder if running for a charity would be a good idea.

Around the same time Radio 1 were doing a hike for SightSavers, listening to the difference £5 could make to someones life I knew this would be a great charity to support.  For only £5 one persons vision can be restored, for such a small amount of money that is a huge impact.

I am hopeful I will be able to raise more than enough money to save at least one persons vision per mile (or if people are generous maybe 10?).  So please donate over at Just Giving. You can make a huge difference for a tiny amount!

I have also produced a number of prints, each sale will raise enough to save one persons vision so check them out!

So please be generous and spread the word!