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

In the last 20 years, running has become inextricably entangled with fund-raising.Correct me if I’m wrong, but until the first London Marathon we ran only for ourselves. When we turned up in the rain to plod round the Cabbage Patch 10, the last

‘won’t’ as can’t. Back in the 1950s, my mother caused a scandal when she ran away with a sausage salesman from Penge. They met at a ballroom dancing class and rumba’d round the world for a year before settling in Mauritania. By this time, she

Life, I have concluded, is more like a fartlek session than a marathon. It jogs along for years at a steady pace – then it passes the second lamppost after the church and vroom! – its head goes down and suddenly it’s thundering along at a five

.“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

lake for the 200m Skinny Dip and you got arrested for frightening the Muscovy Ducks?”“Yes, but…”“And what about the time we did the Midsummer Madness race and Roger had six pints of Tanglefoot and a cream tea and we had to carry him over the finish line

it will never catch, I am reduced to the ruin who scratches out these sorry lines for you tonight.Was it only 20 years ago that, fresh of face and fleet of foot, I carved out my daily mile around the South Circular, from Clapham Common to Streatham Hill? Behold

and tracks that were supposed to lead us to the ridge of the Malverns.Steeple chase: the race was run against a backdrop of villages, churches and rolling hillsI suppose propelling us up a 1:4 incline bearing 10kg rucksacks at the height of a heatwave

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

As the Trans 333 looms ever closer, a frisson of pure terror is rippling through our little band of British ‘disties’ – we who are either too old, too fat, too lame or generally too congenitally useless to run anything under 100 miles in a time