was relaying a recording of the alleged comedian, Bernard Manning.Rory was right about the dream thing. The inaugural MOB, a 174-mile middle England cousin of the Marathon des Sables, was looking like the most surreal event of my running career. And I hadn

I’ve just completed the Jordan Desert Cup. I ran 120 miles in 48 hours. The experience has left me with a profound sense of awe: it’s simply astonishing what the human body can’t do. It can’t get up at 8am on a cold, wet Sunday to join the Highgate

.And yet the intense feeling of relief that overwhelmed me on that occasion was nothing compared to the all-suffusing ecstasy I experienced as I tottered off Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan at Mile 16 of the New York City Marathon.It was the contrast, I

“I can’t imagine why they’ve allowed six days for 105 miles,” read Seaton’s e-mail. “It’s non-stop after all.”If this was supposed to reassure me, it didn’t. I had to remind myself that my editor’s idea of a gentle warm-up for the Trans

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

minute/mile pace.There’s no predicting exactly when life’s going to take off, but when it does, it’s both exhilarating and alarming.It happened to me last week. On Sunday night I was gloomily contemplating another Monday morning. It was as if my first

passing illusion, and that my athletic ability is constrained only by my habitual expectations of myself. So last Saturday, I ran the race.On Monday I had to get a stairlift installed. In 22 gruelling miles of potholes, vertical descents and bottomless

If I should let drop that I’ve just run 20 miles to the gym and back, just to idle away a dull morning, I can count on one of two responses from my audience.First there’s, “Run? I can’t even run for the bus, me!” Surely, I reply, that depends on who

that winds for 20 miles along the beach. Even at 7am, the traffic was building up – mostly mountain bikers in radio hats and impossibly perfect girls on Rollerblades. I wish they all could be California… went the video soundtrack in my head. But actually, I

endured for too long the weight of too much concrete, too many people. We weren’t made to live like this, and the city built upon a mistaken assumption is now sagging – a massive, impossible monument to failure.However, right now, Manhattan is 19 miles up