as fast as today’s sorry bunch.“Ah! Good morrow, Mister Blackford!” At least Norman managed a semblance of cheery bonhomie. Harry just grunted at the dog, and Big Ron barely raised a grimace.“You’re slow today,” I replied as I tagged on to their flank

, fit, young. If he’d beaten me in his first marathon, I’d have had to saw my own head off.As for the others, Denise, after weeks of training through a knee injury, managed a good time, and counts her first marathon among the great adventures of her life

only mean occasionally declining the third pint of Guinness and the dry-roasted peanuts after work.In fact, for the most part, it’s a weak and lily-livered waste of space. How I ever managed to drag it from Wadi Rum to Petra with a seven-kilo pack

by us Buddhists when we manage to accumulate a spot of merit through good karma. Moments later, I was jogging along beside the lovely River Dollis – as dismal a rivulet of suppurating, rat-infested filth as you’ll find anywhere in the effluent South East

momentarily to reveal a few scattered stars. The billion-year-old light etched out the scarp of Dartmoor, grey-black against the deepest of blues.Not for the first time since our 4.30am alarm call, I called into question the sanity of this expedition

felt nauseous at the end of a run, but on this occasion I managed to throw up at the start line. As many of you will recall (with a patient sigh, no doubt), one of my many rib-fracturing incidents occurred shortly before my first big adventure run

Given that I dislike New York and loathe marathons, I enjoyed the New York City Marathon immensely.It started well – I managed to avoid getting peed on from the upper deck of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. I’ve always maintained that during

Desert Cup was going along nicely – I’d managed the Cape Wrath ultra without collapsing in a pool of my own bile. I’d jogged a couple of twenties with Oscar, The World’s Fittest Dog, and I can safely say I looked better than he did by the end, as we

me now – old before my time – the heartless glare of the Sahara indelibly etched into the wadis of my brow. And all because of Seaton and his diabolical journal.You’ll know how he’s had me scramble up the Himalayan precipice And founder

Bilbo Baggins, I reflected, I had grown weary of the safe and the familiar. It was time for me to turn my back on my beloved Shire, so to speak – not without a tear or two – and to strike out into the unknown. There would be dangers, of course – yet what