and dispossessed. How could I run through fragrant meadows that have never seen a dumped mattress or a crumbling mound of discarded plasterboard? Or linger beside a tinkling brook devoid of car tyres and broken buggies and the ammoniacal understench of chemical

I was and I just felt like crap again.”But I digress. This boxing thing has reached the level of an obsession. It began harmlessly enough – just a bit of light sparring at the end of a run or the beginning of a weights session. But now it’s all I can

and Abbot already enquire, “Pint of cider, Andy?” as I stagger into the pub at 6.50, still shaking from the lunatic race up the A1 on the Ducati.Life in Litlington is like an endless edition of the Archers. Nothing wrong in that. I remember doing

ascetic I secretly aspire to be.Second, I’d love to run a sub-3:00 marathon before I drop. And I feel I’d stand a better chance if I didn’t have to drag my liver behind me in a dog cart.Lastly, I’m interested in what makes us happy. What is happiness

by greedy giants? It was hard to say. At any rate, in a little over a month, I was expected to run 50 miles along the Thames towpath in the so-called Thames Meander. To attempt that ordeal in my present condition could have disastrous consequences – not only

? For the uninitiated, the 333 is the last word in idiocy. Three hundred and thirty three kilometres across the featureless vacuum that is Niger. Apparently I’m running it. This December. Along with a handful of battle hardened mercenaries, self

and sacrifice. Blackford, they said, you must run up-country, into the very heart of darkness, and persuade Seaton to give himself up.For days, I jogged along forest tracks with no sustenance except two pieces of string and a sackful of unpronounceable medicines

reduced my stock of old running shoes from 23 pairs to two. One pair of elderly Bradford & Bingley Airsoles were host to a remarkable species of lichen previously unrecorded, according to a botanically-minded acquaintance, outside Micronesia.An old Joss

from the double bone graft, “See you in February for the implants. Bring six thousand pounds.”I haven’t been able to run since that day. The grafts came from a bone bank in San Francisco and were granular. They’re held in by little plates of Teflon

, 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