I’m incredibly busy at the moment, a fact made worse by a last minute commission to do a story for The Times that needed turning around in less than 24 hours. When Mini started miaowing at 4am, I took here down to the kitchen and went back to try and get more sleep and failed… the mind started whirring and I started writing.

Great idea, right? Get it out of the way and then the day can start. Wrong! By 6am, I was knackered, shut my eyes for a second and woke up at 8.30 with a very warm lap from where the laptop was still whirring away.

Anyway, I dragged the kit on and set off but I was unmotivated, uninspired, it was hot and my right calf muscle has started to develop a little niggle. To top it all, the roads were jammed and everywhere smelt of choking car fumes.

I’d decided to just do a three miler but once out, I thought ‘in for a penny’ and carried on past the 1.5mile point of return and began to head into Croydon.

I’ve never suffered from hay fever before but there is certainly something going on this year where every so often, it feels like I have a bit of pollen or twig or something or other stuck in the back of my throat and I start coughing uncontrollably. This happened at about mile 2.2, causing me to stop just outside an NHS dentists in West Croydon, and stick my fingers in my throat, which just made me wretch more.

Luckily, I’d taken a water bottle with me and after downing half of it, the niggle had eased enough for me to run home at a really slow pace with no more dramas … but it really was an unsatisfying morning and my leg hurts even more now.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 870
Miles to date: 1,146.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Anyway, I was pretty shattered when I woke up: a week of increasing my mileage to five miles a day plus three days of cycling too and from central London, along with a long shift on Friday, staying up and studying and the mental preparation of studying for the first time in nearly 20 years had all caught up.

And so, I did just three miles this morning – I like to call it a recovery run

The course is getting more interesting now. We’ve paired up and are working out gym programmes for each other that we have to demonstrate in our assessments in a couple of weeks and have to learn correct teaching methods for all the equipment in the gym, from cardio to the resistance machines.

The way back was an interesting one: when I got back to Streatham, there was a bit of backed up traffic, so I decided to jump a curb on the bike and ended up with a flat… With no puncture kit on me it meant a nice mile and a half walk back to the house.

Just round the corner from home, there was a young couple, Im thinking 15 or 16 having a massive row in the hot afternoon heat. And so heated were they that all their pals had got involved, so there was pushing, shoving, slapping and all sorts going on. thankfully the slapping was the boy punching himself rather than his girlfriend.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 3
Target: 864
Miles to date: 1,136.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

When I first woke up, around 4am (yes, thanks again Mini for miaowing louder than a vouvouzela) I made a decision to revert back to an easy three miler today after a week of upping to five miles, but once on the street, and with my new pair of Brookes Adrenalines trainers to break in, I decided to push on and do another five.

A quick return home, shower and I was packed and off on my way on the bike to cycle over to Bankside gym in Southwark for the first day of the course. This particular module is one in gym instructing and it is quite basic – but crucial stuff. How to meet and greet people, keep them motivated, design a program for them.

There’s a real range of people on the course as well. I’m the oldest by about five years, then there’s one lady who is in her mid 30s and it plummets a little after that. Nonetheless, they seem a nice enough, and enthusiastic enough group. It will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next couple of weekends until the module is over.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 861
Miles to date: 1,133.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Did I use the time wisely? Well I answered some emails and did a bit of work but I didn’t do any last minute cramming, I have a theory that if you’ve not learnt it on the day of the exam, you’re hardly going to learn it in the last few hours before you pick up a pen.

At just after 6am, I went out for my run, heading down into grimey, industrial West Croydon and scaring a couple of blokes I passed on their way to work (“bloody hell, where did he come from”).

While showering, I caught a glimpse of myself side on in the mirror and cursed for the 1,00oth time that I did not start my fitness kick five, 10 or 15 years ago. Despite all the running, cycling and gym work, there’s still that last bit of tummy fat that I find impossible to shift.

I was working at The Express today on the travel desk and had booked my test for 9am, the earliest slot possible, and had hoped when booking that I would be quick enough to get in, get out and get to work for just after 10am.

A 35 minute, 7.5mile cycle later and I was sitting my first test bar driving since the distant days of Uni, almost 20 years ago.

I’d half expected other people sitting to be yoof but there seemed an even spread, though I was the only one with grey hairs doing an exam (they have different courses all sitting in the same room being examined at the same time). I think some of them must have wondered who the old bloke in the cycling gear with the salt-and-pepper beard was but I did get talking to one lad a little closer to my age before the exam started. He was doing his last module and had only high praise for the course so, hopefully, the fees have not gone to waste.

Thumbing your nose: the answer is saddle

I ended up finishing early – it took me about 30 minutes to go through the 50 multiple choice questions  and re-read them twice and I think I did okay. There were a couple of questions I was kicking myself over, I’m finding characterising some of the joint movements a bit complicated but feel this will right itself when I can see what the difference is between some of them when I start my practical sessions tomorrow.

Oh, and for the life of me,  I could not remember whether the thumb is a saddle joint or a condyloid joint and I spent ages umming and ahing and changing my mind before finally getting it wrong!

Anyway, I think  (I hope) I did enough to pass…

The Express is a long day on Fridays. Press day for both papers and we spend hours checking and re-checking facts and re-writing little bits to get things just right. It’s interesting work and I’d rather us get it right than not of course, but it does mean we don’t tend to leave the office until almost 8pm and then I had another 7.5 mile cycle home….

In the midst of all this, I forgot to mention I went out at lunchtime and bought a new pair of Brookes Adrenaline GTS 10 stabilising trainers. Readers who’ve been coming for a while will remember that before the Brighton Marathon, changing to these trainers saved me from a really bad bout of shin splints. Sadly I’ve passed 500 miles in them now and the wear makes them less effective at supporting my ankle when I run… they are the fourth pair of trainers I’ve been through since I started the challenge…

Anyway, must go… I’ve reading to do before the practical course over the weekend and I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 858
Miles to date: 1,128.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Given I’m going away, I gave my Brooks Adrenaline trainers a rest today as I didn’t want to pack them while still damp so I reverted to my old Asics GT2150s that had been giving me a bit of gyp. As it was just a three miler locally, I wasn’t too worried about them bringing the old shin splints back…

See you tomorrow, from the other side of the Atlantic…

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 723
Miles to date: 959.07

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

I’ve been shifting at The Express today with a bit of a late finish so it’s too late now but I’ll do a bit of a round up of the seven months on tomorrow’s post.

I have uploaded the Brighton finish to YouTube though for anyone who wants to watch it.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 648
Miles to date: 862.52

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

In the two days since the race, I’ve been out, ran both days to keep up my three-mile-a-day streak, had a sports massage, done lots of stretching and icing and not been in too much trouble.

But when I woke up in the early hours, the insides of my calves felt like they were on fire, screaming to cool down. I tried rubbing some freeze gel into them but that didn’t work and an ice pack only had temporary effect until a double dose of ibuprofen kicked in at around 5am. Cue me not going for an early morning run.

I finally went out about an hour ago, I could still do a decent pace but post run, the fire’s come back… back to the freezer I go. Why did no one mention the pain gets worse?

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 642
Miles to date: 856.37

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

So my time sent by them, which was adjusted to 3 hours 53 minutes, is the time it took me to finish from when the gun went off and doesn’t take into account the time it actually took my group of runners to get past the start line (about five minutes). It means I drop a few places in the official rankings, as without a chip time the only official time they can go on is race time, but hey ho… I know I still did 3hrs 49mins.

If anyone is interested, they can see my finish video here to prove I really did it!

Yesterday I went to see Lillian the sports massuese who spent an hour massaging the knots out of my leg and this morning’s run, while a little stiff, was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be…

But if I thought my race was tough, spare a thought for Paul Goldstein of Exodus Travel who is going to run Sunday’s London marathon with a bloody great tiger on his back. Paul is running in aid of Bengal Tigers which are nearly extinct and will have a nine foot model of a Bengal strapped to him. Click here to see more on the cause.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 639
Miles to date: 853.37

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

So after a fairly good night’s sleep I woke up this morning a little stiff but in better shape than I expected. Interestingly, the stiffness is more muscle soreness than shin splints so I’m hoping I have broken the shin splints back!

Laura tried to convince me to run later in the day to give my legs more chance to rest but I knew that unless I forced myself to get out of bed and go, it would get harder as the day went on.

I squeezed myself into some compression tights to help ease the soreness, through on a tee shirt and was off for about 7am and the three miles pretty much replicated yesterday’s race.

At first I was a little stiff but a third of the way hit my stride and started going faster. After two miles though I hit a mini wall where I started to question myself and what the hell I was doing. It brought back more memories of yesterday where from about mile 19 everything just blurred in a kaleidoscope of colours and a cacophony of sound. I remembered back to the race where some of the spectators started to annoy me.

There was one guy who, somewhere around the power station mark was stood between the runners going and coming back and was shouting at people to high five him, if they didn’t, he gave them abuse. I wanted to high five him, with the knuckles on my fist…

I also recalled people stopping to stretch out or starting to walk and I was determined to not stop and continue on for fear that if I stopped, I would never start again.

And with that thought in mind, I pushed on for another half a mile until I got to 2.5miles, where things got easier again… this running lark is really played out all in the head.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 636
Miles to date: 850.37

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Flanked by Omar and Carl at the start, just before applying the Vaseline - for chafing of course

We went down to Brighton on Saturday for the marathon, checking into the Premier Inn for the night and then going to our pals, Jo and Omar’s for dinner. Omar was also running the race, so Jo had done a huge pasta dish for the pair of us and Laura and I made sure to head back to the hotel early in an effort to rest up. Run Fatboy Run was on telly as we went to sleep – nice!

Some chance of a peaceful night, aside from getting up a dozen times in the night, I was wide awake at 5am, wishing the minutes away to the race and nervy as hell. I decided to take a bath to relax and read a bit and, after breakfast, Laura and I headed to the start line with Carl Steer, another pal who works for a company called Rooster who do the PR for Visit Brighton.

We took a slow walk up from town to Preston Park for the start and, as Carl and I both had media passes, for some reason our numbers were black and white. So what? Well the colour of your number depended on which pen you started in with blue, for instance, being for runners who expected to finish between 3hrs 45mins to 4hours and pink being for runners hoping to finish in 4 hours to 4 hours 15 minutes. There were about six colours in all.

So where were the black and white numbers? In with the elite runners… Carl and I took one look at the chaps in the corral surrounding us and swiftly moved back to another pen in order to be with runners a little closer to our ability.

14 miles in and looking more knackered than I felt

Finally, the race started with Steve Ovett firing the gun and we were off. The first part of the race, around a mile or so was around Preston Park and half way around, a bird kindly shat on me… I took it as a sign of luck and carried on.

As usual, in races, you end up going much quicker than you expect and I could tell by my watch that after a couple of miles, I was miling at around 8mins 15 seconds and just decided to go with it.

My target time of four hours meant I would have to average 9 minutes a mile and so I figured if I could do the first half of the race closer to 8 minutes, I could then take it easier in the second half and drop back to about 10 minutes per mile for the second half of the race when I was more tired.

The man with a plant on his head!

The first third of the course was a total bitch. From Preston Park, we headed back into town and then through Kemp Town, a bugger of a slow incline. The organisers had promised it was a flat course but out of Kemp Town we headed up towards the South Downs, another huge couple of hills. It was here, at around six or seven miles that we got the disparaging sight of the frontrunners – those elites I was meant to start with – coming back in the other direction!

After this, things, thankfully flattened out as we headed past the new pier, where most of the people – including Laura and Jo, were out cheering. As we passed the half way mark, I was well up on my times, doing around 1hour and 50, which made me determined to carry on ploughing on to see if I could break 3hours 40.

The diversion up Church Road in Hove put paid to this though. The road got narrower and more congested and by mile 17, I was starting to feel every step jolt through, not my shins as expected, but my butt.

Battered with a mile to go

It was then back on the coast for the last seven miles. A couple of them down to the power station towards Shoreham, the most boring part of the race as we rounded the industrial wasteland surrounding it.

Somewhere here, at around mile 20, someone had helpfully made a huge wall and pointed out that we were going through it… possibly not the most encouraging thing a marathon runner wants to hear.

Despite me having gels and Lucazade on me and there being a few Powerade stations around the course, I was pretty much running on empty from here on in, my pace slowing back to the dreaded 10 minutes a mile and my head starting to go all over the place.

On the one hand, it was telling me to stop, on the other it was pushing me to go on… people on the side of the road cheering were starting to annoy me – all a very strange state of consciousness, or maybe unconsciousness as my pal David says.

Letting the sea do the icing

The last five miles I have no idea how I did them, but I did, passing Laura and Jo again near the finish, and coming in with a time on my watch of 3 hours 49mins which left me super chuffed with myself.

Omar, despite a dodgy knee, finished five minutes behind me and, after being repatriated with the girls, we headed straight for the beach to cool the muscles in the sea.

Other stuff and things seen

This was the first Brighton Marathon – excellently organised and executed. Would definitely recommend it next year to anyone.

It was blistering hot and I am now very red faced

I started the race next to Norman Cook. People kept shouting Run Fatboy Run at him.

I saw two people running as a pair of tits!

My eye caught two Elvis’s, a Storm Trooper from Star Wars and a man running with a pot plant on his head!

The new Brooks Adrenaline new trainers did me proud, only one tiny blister

Great to see Maxine Sheppard of V Travelled at about mile 20 cheering on the runners

On the way back to London, I got a text message from the race organisers telling me I finished in 3hours 51 and came 1319 from 12,000 entries… gutted they counted that wrong… I even started my timer about 100m past the start line so Im not sure how they worked it out.

I am now aching to buggery. Hope tomorrow feels better!

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 26.28
Target: 633
Miles to date: 847.37

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here