And runnin' runnin'

Monday 14th - Friday 18th April

This week has been exhausting. I've managed nothing more than a few runs between the office and home.

Saw Jeremy Irons playing Harold Macmillan in Never So Good at the National Theatre. Macmillan was the British prime minister from 1957-63 and the play looks back at his life, revealing a bevvy of interesting facts for those of us who haven't read his biography. I didn't know Macmillan was wounded five times in World War I or that he survived a plane crash in World War II. Jeremy Irons was Very Good, as was the actor who plays Churchill and duckface from Four Weddings and a Funeral. Highly Recommended, especially if you can get the £10 tickets offer from Travelex.

Also watched the Italian film My Brother Is An Only Child, which follows two squabbling brothers navigating the political ideologies of 1960s Italy. The older hot brother is a communist, the younger, gangly one a fascist. They fight, they make up, they fight some more. They are a metaphor for the entire country. One dies, the other comes to terms with himself and his politics. Beautiful. Thought provoking given my current heightened interest in Italian politics. Could have been half an hour shorter.

The London Marathon - Blood, Vaseline and Blisters

Sunday 13th April

The London Marathon


Watching the London Marathon was at once inspirational and frightening. The reality of what your body goes through was striking, as was the obvious difference between the people that were well prepared and those who really, really weren’t…

Our first stop was between Miles Eleven and Twelve, at Bermondsey. Torrential rain notwithstanding most people were looking fairly chipper. There were a few good costumes, a few bad ones and some crazy folk who'd chosen not only to run more than 26 miles but to do so pretty much in the nude.

Freshness left us at our next stop: Mile Twenty-Four. This was marathon running laid bare. Probably one of the most gruesome points you can stand at. Sodden, tired, bloody: the runners were really feeling it. Attendants handed out Vaseline and Lucozade, dignity didn't play a massive role.

Gordon Ramsay sailed by looking fresh as a daisy. He was running the marathon for an impressive ninth-straight time. We also spotted Castaway has-been and Atlantic rower Ben Fogle, a giant Cornish pasty and a group of six Maasai warriors from a village in northern Tanzania, who were running in jangley flip flops.

Kenyan-speedster Martin Lel set a new course record this year, completing the course in a staggering 2 hours, 5 mins and 16 seconds and chalking up a pace that's waaaay under a five minute mile.

My friends completed in times ranging from 3 hours and 42 minutes to 5 hours and 7 minutes. WELL DONE EVERYONE.

Inspired I ran just over four miles in the evening: around Battersea Park and along the river a little bit.

Fact: London's marathon course is the only one in the world to take in both the east and west hemispheres, crossing the Prime Meridian in Greenwich.

The Battersea Loop

Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd April

Motivation, Staying Power and Enthusiasm have all abandoned me these past few days.

Drank too much wine. Worked a lot.

Ran the tried and tested "Battersea Loop" just to keep going. The loop is just 2.9 miles, or 4.7 kilometres long. Realised I would need to run it nine times to make a marathon.

Got depressed. Not good for reviving Motivation, Staying Power or Enthusiasm. Resolved that one day soon I will run the Battersea Loop six times in a row. Felt better.