{"id":2196,"date":"2017-07-21T11:23:03","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T11:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=2196"},"modified":"2022-04-13T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:14:23","slug":"meet-teamcardiff-julie-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2017\/07\/21\/meet-teamcardiff-julie-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet #TeamCardiff – Julie Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to take part in the 2017 Cardiff University\/Cardiff Half Marathon as a personal challenge.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0After previously only running on\u00a0a treadmill,\u00a0last\u00a0year\u00a0I ran a 5k\u00a0and\u00a0realised\u00a0I prefer to run outside. Last Christmas, I went for a run and ended up doing just under 10k; I\u00a0joked to my husband that maybe I should go for a half marathon \u2013 the rest is history!<\/p>\n

I saw\u00a0Cardiff University were offering free places<\/strong> for people who signed up\u00a0to\u00a0raise money for two of their research causes,\u00a0I thought I’d give it a go, never expecting that I would be offered a place as a 46 year old woman (I will be 47 when the\u00a0half marathon takes place) who has never completed one before and had no links to Cardiff University.<\/p>\n

I decided to\u00a0raise money for Cardiff University neuroscience and mental health research<\/strong> as this research covers Alzheimer\u2019s. Both my in-laws had Alzheimer’s, so I have first-hand experience of how this impacts on\u00a0a person and their families. I also work in Children’s Services and see how mental health impacts\u00a0young people and parents, and the little support that is provided to people with mental health issues. I hope more research into these areas will mean support is provided at an earlier stage.<\/p>\n

My training has been going really well<\/strong>: I have attended two training runs\u00a0with Run 4 Wales. It was great to speak to fellow runners about their training and\u00a0half marathon experience.\u00a0 I also took part\u00a0in the Cardiff Bay 10k run and the Women\u2019s Running Series 10k, which I have found helpful for getting used to running in crowds. I am also\u00a0planning on running the Cardiff 10k in September!<\/p>\n

Every Sunday, I run on my own with my headphones in<\/strong>, taking in the beautiful views\u00a0running\u00a0from my hometown of Barry to Barry Island. My longest run to date has been 10 miles; I plan to only run 11 miles in training saving\u00a0the full 13.1\u00a0miles for\u00a0race\u00a0day!\u00a0 I’ve found training frequently and mixing running with other forms of exercise works well for me, alongside realising you can\u2019t expect to run long distances without building up the distance slowly but surely.\u00a0Another thing I have learnt is to listen to your body; when you may have planned to go for a long run but feel tired, cut it short – there is always another day to run.<\/p>\n

Whilst I am looking forward to the day, I am also slightly nervous<\/strong>\u00a0 it will be the biggest crowd that I have ever run in. Additionally, Penarth Road seems never ending – will I get to the top of it?! I\u2019m hoping so as my cousin said that she will be by Baron’s Court with the Jelly Babies\u2026 and I have to get to the finish as my husband will be waiting for me,\u00a0with chocolate cake and coffee!<\/p>\n

So far I have raised \u00a3110<\/strong> and as the run draws closer I will be sharing my JustGiving page more frequently to hopefully reach and exceed my \u00a3150 target. I update my JustGiving page regularly with my progress on the miles that I have managed to cover.<\/p>\n

See you on the 1 October!<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you would like to support Julie you can do so on her JustGiving page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I decided to raise money for Cardiff University Neuroscience and Mental Health research as this research covers Alzheimer\u2019s. Both my in-laws had Alzheimer's, so I have first-hand experience of how this impacts on a person and their families.","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":2200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-donate","category-news"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1080"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2313,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions\/2313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}