Hitting the road-running hard now. Being ‘off-running’ over Christmas until about the end of February did not help my training plan.

I had picked up (apparently) a stress fracture in my left hip which had made the impact of running fairly painful, and though it would come and go (occasionally I’d do a 5k or something to ‘test it out’ and it’d be fine, and two days later it would hurt to stand up from a chair), I got concerned and providentially went to see a physio just in the nick.

He referred me to a sports physiologist who (for the first time EVER in my life) himself referred to me as an ‘athlete’. After the initial shock, several Cat Scans, X Rays and CT Scans later we soon discovered what it was, and that I’d caught it early enough. I had aggravated it by over-training and needed simply to rest it.

Not so easy, though, especially with only 10 weeks before the Marathon. In the days and weeks since, I have been filling up my training periods with swimming, swimming, swimming and more cycling, and working on the core in the gym. Now, however, with 7 weeks left until the crack of the start gun, I need to make up the time I missed pounding out the long miles.

It seems my training has been pretty cross-applicable to running as I haven’t died (yet) but the really long runs are still to come. I am forcing myself out as often as I can manage during the week and telling myself to go 1km further than the last run every time. It’s the only way I’ll be able to build up to the 35km I’d like to have under my belt before the Big Day itself.

Like smelly cheese, fine wines and high maintenance women, running is an acquired taste. I’ve always been bad at it, and never particularly fond of it. It’s kind of a hate-hate relationship, but I am hoping that, like Turner and Hooch, Matthau and Lemmon, Arnie and that girl in Kindergarten Cop, we’ll fall for each other eventually. Persistence is the key to the greatest love affairs.

The funny thing about running is that I would, sitting here, have thought that I would, while running, have thought about everything I had done that day, about what I had to do when I got back to the office, and about what else I needed to do to raise funds / plan my party (more in the next instalment) / organise my next holiday. I thought my mind would be flooded with a cacophony of impenetrable ‘to-dos’: but it was empty. I just sat there (okay, not quite ‘sat’) drinking in the beauty of the Houses of Parliament, the simple magic of the incandescent blue fairy lights outside the National, or reminiscing about David Blaine’s ‘hanging’ next to Tower Bridge (proud to be English: the best support we gave him was by hitting golf balls and throwing sandwiches against the plexiglass….ha!).

It strangely empties your mind. And it’s just road running. Treadmill running is the most boring, soul-destroying, nothing-else-to-think-about-except-why-on-earth-all-the-big-screens-are-tuned-to-CBeebies form of exercise in the world. So screw them! Hit the road. All you need is a pair of running shoes and a little motivation. Your own pace is always fast enough, run until you’re knackered. You need no more indication than that and you’re getting fitter.

I have been told that the more you do it a) the easier it gets (one would certainly hope so) and b) the more you actually enjoy it. Having seen the faces of marathon finishers over the years the jury is still out on both those accounts but we will see. As you can see from my more than equivocal standpoint, I have seen the attractions and want more, but still fear the pain.