Home run

Bruce Moore’s audience is enthralled, for this is a man with precious information to impart.

‘It’s about whether you’re pronating or non-pronating,’ he reveals, and we nod, knowingly. ‘Trainers make you want to put your heel down.’

Precious information indeed, but clearly Mr Moore is not - as one might expect from the group chief executive of 19,000-home Hanover, who has 16 years’ experience in the housing sector to his name - pronouncing on the current state of the market, or the future of provision for older people, in which his organisation specialises.

His insights into the mechanics of runners’ feet are of more value if, like the group listening to him in a snug central London meeting room, you are preparing to haul yourself round 26 miles and 385 yards in five weeks’ time.

Gathered are the Housing Action Charity’s London Marathon runners - or five of us, at least. The benefits of the ‘bare foot’ running technique, and its related pronation, are just one topic of conversation. We’ve also covered nutrition, route choice and fellow runners’ sharp elbows.

Myself and Gary Lashko, chief executive of housing provider Carr-Gomm, hang particularly keenly on Mr Moore’s words. We are marathon virgins, whereas this will be Mr Moore’s fourth such race in a year, and London is where he hopes to break the three-hour mark. It all seems to come rather easily to him. ‘Just enjoy it,’ is his top tip. ‘Don’t try to over run it, just run as close as you can to normal.’

Making up the group is another chief executive, Paul Bridge of arm’s-length management organisation Homes for Haringey, and Inside Housing assistant editor Caroline Thorpe. Mr Bridge, who ran last year and raised a whopping £4,500 for homelessness charity Crisis, agrees the experience should be relished, although he is less bothered by the clock. ‘The thing that got me through was, I had raised all this money, and even if I crawled through the finish line, it didn’t matter,’ he says. ‘My tip is: remember it doesn’t matter what your time is, enjoy it, because it’s great fun.’

Hact - as the Housing Action Charity is better known - will be hoping Mr Bridge can repeat his fundraising feat, and that its other runners - 11 in all - will be inspired to do the same. This is a big year for the charity. It is celebrating 50 years of helping housing providers to improve the lives of people in poor and marginalised communities, and the marathon team is part of the golden jubilee celebrations. It has also unveiled a new identity - morphing from the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust into the Housing Action Charity. The change may be subtle, but it is significant, according to chief executive Heather Petch who hopes to use the jubilee to raise both cash and the profile of an organisation that hitherto has exhibited a tendency to let its contribution go unnoticed.

‘We’re very much positioning around what we can do to support the sector,’ she explains. ‘So having runners from the sector is a good symbol of this being a partnership.’

The London Marathon is the largest annual one-day fundraising event in the world. Last year 36,000 runners raised £47.2 million for charity, and this time Hact can look forward to its share. Each of its runners has pledged to raise at least £1,500. The cash will help pay for a series of jubilee projects. Age to Age, for example, aims to build bridges between generations through initiatives including finding older people with some basic support needs, who are willing to offer a spare room in their home to younger people in housing need.

The funds will also be used to provide cash prizes for Hact’s golden jubilee initiatives competition, due to launch in June. Associations will be invited to propose projects on three themes - creating opportunities for residents, building good relations within communities, and engaging people. ‘The idea is we lever in some money from charitable trusts and [housing providers] put in some of their own resources,’ says Ms Petch.

The cause certainly inspires our distance-running chief executives to keep prodding potential sponsors. ‘Walk round Mayfair, just for an afternoon, and see the money,’ Mr Lashko advises, leaning forward with enthusiasm. ‘I’m never embarrassed about asking for money now, there is so much out there. But the people that Hact look after have nothing.’

Mr Moore is less brazen in his approach, admitting that he finds the fundraising harder than the training. But he appreciates Hact is a worthy recipient: ‘It is making sure we don’t just become businesses but we stay close to the reasons we were set up for.’

Conversation moves on to training techniques. Mr Lashko is finding the going tough and wonders whether the bare foot technique might ease his discomfort. ‘It’s painful all the time,’ he laments. ‘You’re in pain when you’re running, you’re in pain the next day, then the next day you’re running again, so you’re in pain.’

Not so for Mr Moore. ‘I’ve never gone running and not come back feeling better about myself,’ he says, and once again the room nods. His one-time jogging companion, a Labrador named Lottie, appears to feel otherwise. ‘The dog ran with me [when I started training],’ explains the Hanover boss. ‘Now she sees me put my kit on and hides.’

And who can blame the poor pooch? We head out into the blustery afternoon for a group jog, with Mr Moore setting a blistering pace. Our day-glo sports gear is proudly on display - Caroline the only one not belatedly embracing the nu-rave scene - and Inside Housing’s photographer weaves through the traffic, snapping away with alarming disregard for his own safety.

Mr Bridge and I prefer to lurk at the back of the group, and while we run, I pick his brains about his first London Marathon. ‘I got very nervous and couldn’t sleep the night before the race,’ he warns. ‘About 3am I was Googling “How do you finish a marathon on no sleep?”’

Finish he did though, helped by a stranger wielding a loudspeaker. ‘I had my name written on my chest and someone called out to me through a megaphone as I was running down The Mall,’ Mr Bridge recalls, as we negotiate a narrow canal towpath. ‘That really meant something. I didn’t know who they were. But that’s something I took back to work - if people who don’t know you can inspire you to do something, imagine what we can do to inspire each other, in a team.’

No public address is necessary today; we take the 3km in our stride and return to Hact’s HQ barely puffed.

‘It’s inspirational, I couldn’t run the marathon,’ says Ms Petch, who thought ‘very, very briefly’ about signing up herself. Three long, cold months into the training and the group agrees there have been moments when we have all wondered about the wisdom of such an undertaking. Come 25 April though, whatever running technique is employed and however long it takes us to cross the line, with the incentive of raising precious funds for such a grateful cause, it really is the taking part that counts.

Sponsor Caroline and Leonie to run the London Marathon for Hact at www.justgiving.com/carolineandleonie

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