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

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

-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

bush. Here I was spotted by Tim, ex- treasurer of the Totteridge Tossers, who spent the next three, excruciating miles telling me how he got lost during the Rhubarb Patch 10K in 1983. The sun was like a great, bronze gong, ringing in my ears. Tim

the first race in 1979.Horses, having twice as many legs as people, invariably win – despite compulsory vet inspections. This is just as well for sponsors William Hill, because they’re offering £20,000 to any runner who beats the horses to the finish line

me for dead. He dropped out at Tor 22, ashen-faced with pain and cursing without prejudice the entire sentient universe. (However in the great tradition of serious traumatic injuries miraculously repairing themselves, he would skip nimbly up

.“It’s me back,” muttered Big Ron. “It hasn’t been right since London.”Good Lord, someone had actually run a race! Perhaps there was hope for us yet!“You never told me you were doing the London, Ron. How did you get on?”“Not this year,” he snapped. “1996.”“1994

heavy for my body. Still, I’m sure that once my heart rate drops below 185 and my pectorals come out of spasm and the acute pain from my tennis elbow abates to the point where I can remove the stick from between my teeth, I’ll feel like a million dollars