It doesn't hurt me. Do you want to know how it feels? Do you want to know that it doesn't hurt me?

Three weeks to go (31 March)

This is the last full training week and I’m determined to get through it in one piece.  The arrival of the Easter break is a huge boost psychologically as I’m running pretty low on energy and enthusiasm.  We’ve got a lot of cool stuff planned – a box at the Royal Albert Hall, a trip to Windsor, the Boat Race – but most of all I'm looking forward to waking up without an alarm for once.

Midweek runs pass without too much drama and I record my fastest mile yet on Wednesday morning, which I put down to the release of anger at losing at football the night before and then watching England vs. Montenegro.  Despite the rain and the return to sub-zero temperatures I arrive at work with a smile on my face and open an email from Diabetes UK thanking me for the cheque in the post they’ve received on my behalf.  Feeling touched by this anonymous generosity I then discover a letter from M&S on my desk: It’s a £20 gift voucher to help with my fundraising.  So that’s lunch sorted.  What a lovely start to the day.

I check how I’m doing with sponsorship and am blown away: To date I’ve raised £1,661.72.  This is unbelievable considering that I haven’t done anything more sophisticated to fundraise than ask for donations.  I had underestimated the generosity of my friends, family and colleagues and I’m genuinely moved by this show of support for people with diabetes.  There are some individual donations that mean a lot, particularly from my brother, and old friends emerge from the woodwork to help me nearer to my target.  It’s a warm glow.

In humble mood I ring my mother and ask her to thank her friends for their generosity, too.  We get to talking about the day of the marathon itself and whether I want her to be there.  I know it’s what people do but I’m a bit baffled by this to tell you the truth, though I suspect I’m in a minority.  When I exercise I sweat a lot, and have earphones in, and spit, and, oh, will be in mental and physical agony: I think there are probably better weekends to have visitors, don’t you?  Aside from the fact that conversation is quite hard when one person keeps running off. 

I hope to be proved wrong on the day of the marathon but I’m quite a loner when it comes to things like this and am already getting self-conscious about the idea of people lining the streets watching.  Nowhere to hide, and too many witnesses if I fail.  My running experience to date hasn’t always been that pretty and I can just picture the scene.  “Look, here he comes!  Come on!  You can do it!  Oh, he’s going into that portaloo.  [Pause] He’ll be out in a minute, I’m sure.  [Pause] Won’t be long now.  [Pause] That’s added a bit of time on, hasn’t it?  [Pause] Probably looking at plus five hours now.  [Pause] Ah well, if he’s out soon he should still be able to finish before they clear the course away.  [Pause] Oh look kids, that runner’s wearing a life-size replica of York Cathedral”.

And so the conversation with my mother ends in predictable fashion.  “Of course I’d like your support”, I reassure her.  “Pay it in online”.

I have a short jog on Saturday morning and my girlfriend comes along for the cycle.  It’s nice to have company and point out all the tiny things that you notice but don’t bother sharing: The new bar opening, the nice house, the random statue.  We don’t go far, round the backstreets near our house, though I end it with a punishing climb up the hill by Wimbledon Park.  My girlfriend comes over all Kate Bush and so I tell her that if I only could, I’d make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places, be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building...  Totally lost on her, there’s only four years between us and yet an entire generation - she's all Take That this and Spice Girls that, and I bet things are even worse in the Bieber era.  Funny to think that our kids will grow up without knowing what music is.

On Sunday I get up and go with a vague plan to get to Buckingham Palace and then take it from there.  I’ve got the last few chapters of an audiobook to finish, The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and in spite of having listened to it for over nine hours it comes to a conclusion without my having even the slightest clue about the plot or the main characters.  Which isn’t to say that it’s not a good book, just that the sound of Jim Broadbent reading is the best anaesthetic known to man.  I’m going to write and ask if he’ll come with me round the marathon, and tell him that if my girlfriend ever goes into labour there is no one but him I want by her bedside.  And maybe ask for a lock of his hair.  Not in a weird way, just to inhale as I sleep.

When the book ends I come to, and find myself dodging tourists along Victoria Embankment.  I decide to briefly follow the marathon route and do the back nine.   Let me do what Nas did and tell you that shit in reverse: I head from the palace 

past the Houses of Parliament

along the river opposite the Southbank

past Tower Bridge and up through the Tower of London

 and then inside to the land that the DLR forgot: Limehouse, Westferry, Poplar.  When you think they’ve got the whole of London to play with the marathon route is surprisingly dull: I assume it is the logistics of road closures that dictates the course, rather than the perceived beauty of endless loops round abandoned East London industrial estates.

With a glimpse of the O2 and Canary Wharf I turn back and retrace my steps, feeling like it’s a reasonably solid performance as I reach the halfway mark.  The sun’s out, I’m enjoying the views, no aches or pains yet. 

And then disaster strikes, predictable, bowel-themed disaster.  You have not known fear until you need the loo in the City of London on Easter Sunday.  Not a single place open and not a soul to be seen, my Plan B of just crouching in a doorway almost moves to Plan A when I realise that there’d be no witnesses and my crime wouldn’t be discovered until the banks reopen in 48 hours.  Instead I clench and cross over to the Southbank, alternately sprinting and crawling, straight into the underrated paradise that is the gents in the Coat & Badge.  Heaven.

For a re-enactment of this section of my run please see the following documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMmMvh1hSN4

I plough through the kilometres after that, averaging ten seconds faster than my usual pace – no mean feat given the mass of tourists on the Southbank – and am reasonably comfortable for the homeward stretch.  Around Battersea Park my iPod fails, irritatingly freezing with 30.6km done, but I estimate that what’s left of the journey home will take me just over the 20-mile mark.  It is hard going, harder than anything else I have done in training so far.  My stomach constricts, I double up in agony, I hold my mouth open for the vomit that never comes.  In view of my house I almost bring myself to a stop, unable to cope with the muscular agony in my stomach, and it takes everything I’ve got to make it to my door.  There I collapse immediately into bed and pass out, whining like cattle being slaughtered and demanding water, food, attention from my girlfriend.  “It’s like dating Gwyneth Paltrow’s OSCAR speech”, she complains, before dutifully passing me the eggs Benedict she has made as a special Easter breakfast.  Obviously I’ve not got her anything because I’m not eating chocolate at the moment, which is how all male minds work.

I get to thinking.  If that’s the kind of melodrama I unleash after a Sunday morning jog, six miles shorter than the marathon distance, you can understand why I don’t want anyone who knows me well to be anywhere near me at the finishing line.  I’m going to be an absolute nightmare.  There’ll likely be vomit, poo, tears, elation and disappointment within a whirlwind few seconds of emotions, and then I’ll awaken an hour later, huddled on the floor wrapped in BacoFoil and smelling of isotonic wee.

It’s a beautiful image, though one not quite as confident as I hoped I’d have after hitting the peak of my training.  I feel a bit let down by two things: Firstly the British weather, which has made it impossible for me to run the marathon dressed as I would have wanted (that and Diabetes UK’s curious reluctance to associate themselves with a novelty cock ring...).  And secondly, I’m a bit disappointed with myself.  Whilst I’ve done every distance in the training plan to the letter, I haven’t particularly pushed myself: My ‘timed sprints’ would be impossible to identify in a line up, my 5k and 10k trial runs actually came in slower than I would normally cover these distances and early on in my training I set my mental ‘race pace’ at an unambitious 11 minute 30 second miles.  Which means that come race day, in spite of 16 solid weeks of training, I’m still going to be reduced to walking the course for a good few miles when I run out of juice.

There’s a lot I’d do differently, even now, before the starter’s gun.  Despite repeated advice from people who’ve gone through it I haven’t done any cross-training, bar the odd bike ride and an occasional spot of yoga.  I’ve not spent enough time thinking about carbohydrates on the day so with no long training runs left I still don’t know if I and when I should be reaching for energy gels, or sweets, or isotonic drinks.  And whilst I’ve been quite virtuous in my abstinence from alcohol – unless I fancy a pint – and have cut out a lot of unhealthy food, I’ve still casually eaten a bag of Mini Eggs and an entire chorizo in the time it’s taken to write this.  That’s a little over 2,400 calories, meaning that I’ve probably got about an apple left of my recommended daily calorie intake.  And I’ve had a massive breakfast, and lunch, and an ice cream, and a bag of crisps, and a muffin, and an energy bar.  And it’s tea time.

Despite not being competitive about this sort of thing I feel like it’s taken me to the very end of my training to understand the point of a marathon, and having gone through the motions I wish I’d taken it more seriously earlier on.  I’d never admit this out loud but a sub-four hour finish should have been within my grasp, as it is I think I’ll come in at 4hr 45mins.  And that’s down to laziness as much as a lack of a competitive spirit, which is a ridiculous thing to realise when your Nike+ tells you that in the last four months you’ve run the distance from John O’Groats to Land’s End, then back to London.

 Ah well, it’s all learning.  Plenty to build on for the next one...