Marathon. My Nemesis.

Day 2, Monday 19th March 2018

It’s just after 6am and this is the first real day of writing my morning thoughts on medium, instead of one of the twenty-one notebooks that have gathered rapidly upon my bookshelf over the last two years. Tiredness might be a theme, but of course I feel tired, I woke just a few minutes ago, haven’t had any coffee and haven’t been able to go for my morning run because of a niggling tendon injury.

That tendon has been the bane of my life. I’ve wanted to run a marathon for over 10 years, since I first applied to London Marathon in 2006 as a fat, rosy faced drunkard living the life of a student at whilst simultaneously building my first business. I had it easy, the business built itself, all I had to do was show up and ensure I wasn’t too hungover. Even if I was too hungover, I could usually handle the work with woozy aplomb or sneak into the back room and curl up on the bubblewrap for half an hour.

The London Marathon became my nemesis. Six successive ballot entries failed, so I was granted a place under the old rules which guaranteed a place after six failed applications. The fact so many of my applications were consistently failing could be interpreted as a sign this should not be, but my vision was too nailed to the horizon to notice, so I carried on regardless.

Training was intense, I purposefully chose training schedules that promised a lot, they involved working to specific paces or heart rates and pushed me to extremems. It didn’t help that I…