Union Canal. If I stop for more than 40 minutes at one time, I will be deemed to have left the race. As any ordinary, well-adjusted person will tell you, this is an impossible feat. But I predict that in 20 years’ time, Michael Winner and Brian Sewell

to run for causes. However, this year I’m breaking with tradition. Foot and mouth disease has put paid to almost every race in my calendar – except one. The organisers of the Trans 333 have scoured the entire planet for the place that bears the closest

This week, I pulled out of the Trans 333 – the desert race that I’ve been banging on about for months. Why? It’s a long story. At the last minute, the race venue was switched from Niger to Mauritania. And I won’t run in Mauritania. Well, not so much

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

As I once remarked to Rob Wright, a founder member of Numbskulls AC, “You know, running is a mental thing.” He nodded vigorously. “It certainly is, mate. Do you remember the Nude Year’s Eve Triathlon when we had to break the ice on Regent’s Park

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

of ultrarunners. Rory Coleman, the race director, was characteristically neither peaceful nor nervous. “First of all, welcome to the first-ever Children With Leukaemia Marathon of Britain! For 12 months, this has been my dream – now I want it to be your dream!” He

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

that wouldn’t invite the derision of our friends and relations.The fear was fuelled by a meeting in the Yorkshire Grey, at which James Henderson, a veteran of last year’s event in Mauritania, described his experiences with a chilling matter-of-factness. Some