It’s been a few weeks since my last jubilant post-half-marathon posting. After the customery resting period I went out for a couple of tentative jogs to get my legs working again after a good few days of walking like John Wayne. But something was missing, running didn’t feel right.

I ran at the weekend round my usual haunts and I ran at lunchtime along the Thames (more on that later), but neither felt comfortable. My legs were fine, nothing hurt and I wasn’t getting tired – it just didn’t feel right, like sleeping with a lover once you know it’s over.

But I didn’t want my love affair with running to be over – I was going to fight for this relationship. So yesterday, with a calender alert set on my work computer for 10am, I boldly risked the dissappointment of not getting into the London Marathon repeating itself and logged onto the Brighton Marathon website.

Now, the people at Brighton marathon had been quite clever. The first ever Brighton Marathon is being held in April, a week before London, and when they put their places on sale back in the summer they offered those who had entered London the chance to apply to Brighton with the guarantee of a refund if they were successful in getting into London. So although the Brighton event sold out, the places that were refunded to London runners went back on sale yesterday morning. Are you still with me?

I’m not great at maths but I estimated that there wouldn’t have been a huge amount of places going back on sale. So yesterday, debit card in hand I furriously logged on and hit the refresh button until… success! I have a place in the Brighton Marathon.

So today I headed out at lunchtime, in the rain for a run with a purpose. I’m training for a marathon after all. And as several other runners overtook me on my 3.5 mile route, I told myself it didn’t matter that I wasn’t going as fast as them, because I’ve got a long way to run… but I will get to the end.