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 [...]

Around mile seven of last weekend's long run two guys crossed the road in front of me and headed towards Finsbury Park. As they crossed one looked at me and then said to the other: "Where do you go for your runs?"It was a simple enough question, but for the remaining miles of my long [...]

After a Christmas spent either ill or nursing injuries and hangovers, the start to the latest marathon campaign was off to a rocky start and those lofty goals for 2013 looked under treat before I'd even got out the blocks.But some antibiotics, a lot of stretching and something called 'being sensible' seemed to do the [...]

This week I was visited by my former self in the shape of a tweet from an old friend. It all began on Wednesday when I was invited onto a radio show to talk about how I got into running and about the book I wrote.It was a strange experience being on the radio but [...]