-mail, every column in RUNNER’S WORLD, commits me more deeply to this unthinkable madness. All that can save me now is a Blighty – a running injury so persistent and deep-seated that the Trans 333 would be entirely out of the question. Such an injury would

of the suicidal ordeals he undertakes each year, alongside the equally crazed Sir Ranulph. It was humiliating that, despite a tendon and cartilage injury that should have confined him to bed for a fortnight and kept him out of competition for three months, he left

, fit, young. If he’d beaten me in his first marathon, I’d have had to saw my own head off.As for the others, Denise, after weeks of training through a knee injury, managed a good time, and counts her first marathon among the great adventures of her life

, and my field of vision is restricted to a 15° arc on either side of my nose.Until I wrecked my suspension during last year’s Swiss Alpine Sad Old Nutters’ 78K Marathon, my only serious running injury had been incurred while stretching. But now I was a

implant and bright green, the creature offered no obvious sign of traumatic injury. Perhaps, assailed by the baking sun and the remorseless gradient of Mile-And-A-Quarter Hill, he had simply lost the will to live. I could identify with that.Now I

of Blackford has been synonymous in Mauritania with colonial exploitation of the worst – or more accurately, the wurst – kind. For me to attempt to enter the country would be suicide.Actually, you may be surprised to learn that none of that is true. I invented

, manageable ache. In an attempt to work around this chronic injury, I have devised a weird, contorted gait – like that of Quasimodo tiptoeing barefoot across a lawn of razorblades.I shivered. An enormous percentage (I forget just how enormous) of the body

sprinter until his knee injury. He now drinks 14 pints of beer a night, is roughly the size of a detached house and devotes himself to bare knuckle fighting in Wokingham high street.Anyway, the Samoan has started on the cheesecake, my Pinot Grigio

?I’d like to think it’s because I’m such a finely-tuned running machine that my on-board computer reviews all the significant functions: length of race; severity of climb, temperature and humidity; status of recent injuries; what I had for breakfast