in case I had hypochondria. I get it when I’m meditating, too. I’m supposed to count out 10 breaths while concentrating wholly on my breathing. If my mind strays to anything else – Ducati motorcycles, the size of mangoes, the Shania Twain video – then I

to straighten me out. And while I am now satisfied that pain does not exist, I’m having a hard time convincing certain wayward elements in my non-existent body. Take my right hamstring, for instance. It all began 20 years ago when I fell down the lighthouse

the Regent’s Park Canal, I can’t help thinking I might have overcooked it a bit. Still, it certainly kept the taxman off my back, so I mustn’t grumble. First came the dental work. When I was 15, I paid a visit to my dentist in Middlesborough

children like pulling the legs off flies.I’ve always hated stretching. Warming up, it seemed to me, was a waste of time. As far as I was concerned, the first 10 miles of the race was my warm-up. Result: I am barely able to touch my knees, let alone my toes

this week I decided to secure a bit of moral support: I called up my old Marathon de Sade crew and tried talking them into joining me on the Jordan caper. Eadie, a veteran of the Himalayan 100, was cheerfully apologetic. “Sorry, sport, I’m doing a 200-miler

If the ‘World’s Toughest Foot Race’ was merely a race to develop the world’s toughest foot, I’d be laughing. I’d spend a couple of weeks firewalking in Haiti, soak the old plates of meat in permanganate, and bingo! – I’d be quaffing my Special Brew from the Jordan Desert Cup by C...

Why I should have imagined that a 14-mile run along the Cleveland Way in August might be good training for the 105-mile Jordan Desert Cup, remains a mystery. Perhaps I reasoned, not unreasonably, that August = Summer = Heat

by the Creative Circle. I decided to extend the experiment: perhaps if I worked less, I might be paid more? In my new regime, I rolled into work at 11am, read the papers, pondered which restaurant most deserved my patronage at lunchtime, summoned a company cab

-eighties. In two weeks, I would be embarking on a 105-mile non-stop run across the Jordan desert with a full pack and a 62-hour deadline. And here was I, close to collapse after just 45 minutes of gentle ascent in the world’s most rapturously inviting climate

Harriers’ morning run. It can’t resist lounging in the pub at lunchtime when it promised Barry it would go to the gym with him. It can’t walk past the Agra Tandoori House at 11.15pm. It can’t bear to shed two stones of its unsightly flab, when this would