A marathon is one of those things I always wanted to do, and never thought I could. Six years ago my first 'jog', a ten-minute kilometer  stumbling round the local one-way system, left me sore for days. Things slowly got better, but I didn't hit the 'impossible goal' of running for 30 minutes non-stop until the 14th April 2010 - coincidentally three years to the day before the marathon i'm doing. After that I hit a wall; while the 5k times slowly became respectable, a cycling injury in October 2011 halted attempts at building serious distance and by summer last year i'd still managed nothing more than the occasional 10k and an injury-hit attempt on the Great South Run.

The distance wall was finally broken by Children on the Edge and their Chichester half-marathon in October 2012. My training wasn't perfect, but I finished feeling great and the marathon finally seemed plausible. So what better why to tackle it than raise some money for Children on the Edge by running Brighton? 

The winter has seen the miles building up, and February has seen runs of 14 miles, then 16, 17 and finally the first twenty-miler (3 hours 4 minutes, for those who like to keep score). That last six still seems a long way off, but here goes!