five miles, the stiles had no dog gates and I had to hoik the smug Belgian sod from field to field. Eventually we reached Sandsend, where I gratefully embraced the prospect of a flat, two-mile jog along hard-packed sand to Whitby. But the sand wasn

will sink forever beneath the timeless sands of Niger.”And so it was with a cruel hangover that I stumbled last Sunday from The Old Slaughterhouse with the World’s Fittest Dog. My legs seemed to operate independently of my torso, like those of Barbie

-coloured waistcoat while I hold forth upon the agonies of running up and down sand dunes and the dangers posed by scorpions.Why do I do it? Well, partly because I have an unquenchable curiosity as to the extent of my own folly. Am I really about to embark upon a 333

of Venice Beach. The henna-tattoo merchants were setting out their stalls, the restaurateurs were brushing the night’s accumulation of sand from the boardwalk. I would soon catch up with the runner in front of me – a tall, broad-shouldered type in shades

that was once the River Dollis; wouldn’t wind my way between the pits on the Heath Extension, where once was mined the sand that soaked up the spit on the floors of Victorian boozers. So much romance, so much history.The boys were kind. They pretended to listen

was the perfect training for the MDS – which is really about trudging up endless down escalators of sand with half a ton of useless junk on your back. And now I’ve discovered that, in terms of running fitness, 20 minutes of boxing achieves as much as an hour