One Month and Counting

I really can't believe it - there is now just one month to go until the marathon. In fact, as I'm writing this at 7 pm, I'm hoping that one month from now I will be sitting down somewhere warm and dry with a pint of Hoegaarden in front of me, having completed the challenge I set myself a year ago (effectively, since that's when the ballot entries opened). I will be basking in the glory of my achievement and flashing my medal at all whom I meet. In truth, I shall probably be in agony and slightly delirious. I will have started hallucinating around the 20-mile mark and, hopefully, will have not given in to the huge temptation to stop and sit down when I hit "The Wall" - the point when your muscles realise they have no glycogen left to burn and you are forced to survive the last few miles fuelled by fat stores and adrenalin. In my last post, I mentioned wanting to get on with it - now I really do want to just get on with it. I probably need these last few weeks of training if I'm to do my best, but equally I have surpassed the minimum training distance that all the books and plans say you must have achieved in order to get round a marathon, so bring it on!

By the way, the picture's of our cat, Ozzy, telling us exactly what he thinks of this running malarkey!

One of my friends, on reading about our Kilomathon exploits, complained to me that it was us two who prevented him from leaving his house that Sunday. I responded that it clearly was just James and me who had caused this inconvenience as we had run past his house, put on an invisibility cloak and run back again and then repeated this process several thousand times with the sole purpose of annoying him. I'm not sure where exactly he lives, but I think it's more at the Derby end than the Nottingham end of the run and the likelihood of me being able to perform such a feat having run 15-odd miles is pretty small. And my invisibility cloak hasn't arrived from Amazon yet.

Another friend asked me the other day why I'd chosen to run one of the longest marathons. After a 15 minute discussion on the history of the marathon distance (more on that later) it was clear that she still did not quite get it that in order for it to be called a marathon, it had to be a distance of 26 miles 385 yards. Anything less than this was *not* a marathon and anything more than this was also *not* a marathon, but could be classed as an *ultra* marathon. The thought did cross my mind that, in terms of time, at least, London is one of the longest marathons - because they still allow people to record a time up to 9 hours after the start (and in special circumstances, several weeks later!), whereas other marathons have a cut-off after 5 or 6 hours, it is possible to make the London marathon last longer and still count as a finisher. Talk about getting value for money...!

I said above that I would provide more on the history of the marathon distance. I'm not going to go into all the ins and outs of it (primarily because I can't be bothered, but also because there isn't really any concrete information on the distance of the original marathon) but when the marathon was introduced to the modern era Olympic Games in 1896 it was run over a course of about 40km or 25 miles. When the Games were staged in London in 1908, a series of problems (protests that in the last few miles the runners would have to negotiate tram lines and cobblestones) and royal requests meant that the distance was lengthened to 26 miles 586 yards, which comprised 26 miles from the King's private terrace at Windsor Castle to the new White City Stadium, plus a 586 yard lap of the stadium track to finish under the Royal Box in view of Queen Alexandra. In the end, it was discovered that the planned use of the royal entrance to the stadium wouldn't work as there was in fact no access to the track (!) so it was decided to use a different entrance and have the runners go the "wrong" (clockwise) way round the track to finish under the royal box. This reduced the planned distance to 26 miles 385 yards, a completely arbitrary measurement which was eventually adopted by the International Amateur Athletic Federation in 1921 as the official marathon distance. Two of the most important course-lengthening elements were included at the whim of Queen Alexandra - the start on the King's private terrace (so the royal children could look on) and the finish under the Royal Box (so that the Queen herself could see) - and it is for this reason that I, along with thousands of others, will be shouting "God save the Queen" as I go through the 25-mile mark; this has become traditional, as without the meddling of Queen Alexandra, we would all be finishing at that point!

A final thought for this post (before I tell you to sponsor us again) - yet another friend has said that she has enjoyed reading this blog while we've been training for the marathon, so I have to take on another challenge when I've done it so that I can keep blogging. I've thought about swimming the Channel (though I imagine (hope) I'm allergic to goosefat or wetsuits or something) and I've thought about doing an Ironman triathlon (but I can't ride a bike, at least not very well, so that could be tricky)- if you have any ideas of what I could do next, let me know - answers on a postcard...

Oh, er, and PLEASE SPONSOR US!! We're up to £1909.33 now - not far to go to that magical £2,000 mark!