The start of Monster month has not been too scary. Tuesday's sprint session felt hard, but I achieved it in the required times.

Thursday saw me doing a ‘brisk’ session, exactly the same schedule as I had done 2 weeks previous. Only this week I managed it nearly 2 minutes quicker, a sure sign that the training is working.

On Sunday my Runners World schedule called for me to run a half marathon. The Adidas Silverstone Half Marathon is an official ‘London Marathon Half Marathon’ event so this seemed like a good choice to me.

It was three laps on and around Silverstone racetrack. There were 10,000 runners – a big event. We arrived in good time to browse around the sponsor’s stands, Adidas and Lucozade had plenty to offer and the atmosphere was starting to buzz.

As suggested I went to the start line with about 15 minutes to spare but unfortunately there was a 15-minute delay for the start. I stood there wondering if I would have had time to pop to the loo again, but decided against it, as I would have had to battle my way back through 10,000 runners! I hoped it would wear off as I started to sweat!

I looked around me and was surprised to spot an Acorns running vest. It was John, a fellow London Marathon gold bond runner for Acorns who I met at the Children’s Hospice the other week. So that was a nice surprise, neither of us realised each other was going to be at Silverstone.

The first half of the run was great and I felt on top form. I was hitting each mile marker pretty much spot on my predicted split times. But unfortunately at mile seven I couldn’t hold off that visit to the loo any longer and had to ‘stop to go’ so to speak!

Getting back into my rhythm took a few minutes but I was much more comfortable until mile nine when I fell victim to fuelling up with too much Lucozade at one of the pit stops and felt a bit sickly and bloated for about a mile.

I then picked up again after drinking water at the next station and finished in 1hr 42mins and 06 seconds! Two minutes slower than my personal best for a half marathon. I was a little disappointed by this, as I’m feeling fit and strong and thought I may have been a bit faster today. However, this disappointment was short-lived when I checked the results and noticed that from about 10,000 starting the race I came home 1004th, 88th woman to finish and 13th in my age category. The route itself started and finished on the track and incorporated some of the surrounding service roads. There were several celebrities running and Dave Bedford started us off. A good ‘practice’ for London and as expected an extremely well-organised event.

Another significant event this week was a Malvern Joggers social evening. I joined the Joggers about a year ago and I have not looked back. They are a very supportive and good fun group of people of all ages and abilities.

Early evening conversation was dominated by marathon talk! Several of the Joggers are running marathons in the near future including London, Paris, Edinburgh and Stratford so it was a great time to swap stories, tips and fears.

If you are interested in starting to run/jog or have been running alone and have wondered about joining a group I can highly recommend the Malvern Joggers. Have a look at www.malvernjoggers.co.uk.

Thanks very much to those of you that have already sponsored me. Those of you who would like to donate can go to www.justgiving.com/vikkisivertsen. Ron and I spent three hours in the foyer of the Co-op in Malvern Link on Sunday with our Acorns collecting tins and we were thrilled with the £90 collected from the customers. Thank you all very much.