As well as showing you just how gross the human body can make itself look after 26.2 miles of running, how many ways it's possible to hurt and how fast it's possible to consume that post-race meal, marathon training can teach you another valuable lesson.In the first few weeks of marathon training the main panic [...]

It's 5:30am on a Sunday morning. I've got a number scrawled on my hand and a bad feeling in my stomach. It's just like the good old days. Except I'm getting up instead of going to bed and the number on my hand is only three digits long. 282, my number for my first ever [...]

On the Sunday of the London Marathon I cheered from the sidelines for a few hours then went home and watched the recorded coverage. At the men's start some chancer flew off the start line to try and beat all the elite men. I laughed, not knowing that that chancer was someone I knew from [...]

The Road to Manchester Marathon I stared at the clock on the wall above the door to the operating theatre and watched the second hand tick round. "Breath deeply and count backwards from 10.""10, 9, 8, 7...." I was gone. The anaesthetist that had just put me to sleep had earlier answered my questions. Will I [...]

With just days to go until marathon number six, taper madness has fully set in. This week it's manifesting itself in the following behaviour.Filling every available weekend until October with a race or event.Refreshing the weather page of the BBC website.Poking my foot in the hope that will cure it of plantar fasciitis.Not cycling to work [...]

If you've never stood by the side of a marathon and clapped and cheered as runners made their way past, you really should.There's two kinds of reaction that you can have standing up close and personal with marathoners on race day:"Oh my, these people are amazing, I don't know how they do it. I could [...]

26.2 miles is a long way to run. For first-time marathon runners, when you line up at the start the most you'll have ever run before is probably 18 or maybe 20 miles. You'll wonder whether you can find it in you to run those extra miles on the day - after all you felt dreadful at the end [...]

Bikes are great aren't they? You don't need a ticket or to wait for one that's going in your direction to come along, you just jump on one, pedal like mad and, as if by magic, you arrive at your destination. They're blooming marvelous - that is until they go wrong.It was going to happen [...]

Next week, Nike are inviting runners down to Somerset House in London to try out their new Flyknit trainers which they promise will fit your feet perfectly.Nike say: "The unique Nike Flyknit Experience will be housed in the iconic courtyard of Somerset House, where visitors can trial the very latest Nike running shoe, the Flyknit [...]

Balancing training and a social life is something I've never got quite right. I've either cut myself off and become a social recluse while I clock up the last months of marathon training, over indulged on a Friday night and barely recovered by the time the long run beckoned on Sunday morning or multi-tasked by running [...]