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

is oversubscribed by a factor of five. There remains only the technical question of how one trains for these hyper-mega-ultra events. After all, to prepare for a marathon, you need to put in a handful of 20-mile training runs. So should I bash off three or four 100

Naylor fell pump was stuffed with the front page of a newspaper announcing the death of George the Fifth. For sentimental reasons, I’ve hung on to my favourite set of Playtex ‘Anapurna’ golf and general loafers, as worn by Bernard Cribbins in Carry On Up

and Stanley Matthews football shorts. My compatriots here at the Hotel Bunda, Davos, giggle nervously and do that ‘scary’ thing with their eyes and fingers. But as a newly registered entrant in the Zen UltraMarathon of Life, I don’t see what all the fuss