a vine that can strangle life from a tree...

I’ve never really been particularly sporty. I quite enjoyed playing team sports when I was at school, but there was never any sign of great talent. I wasn’t being picked last for our playground games of football, but I definitely wasn’t being picked first either. Running, however, I loathed. Every week, I think on a Tuesday or Wednesday, we would be sent out on a cross country run. Whatever the weather, we would run three or four miles across muddy fields and along the footpaths out around the school. I say run, but really, as long as I was fairly sure that there was no one looking, I would walk. I absolutely hated slogging my way through the mud and wanted no part of it. It would have been over more quickly if I’d run, but it all just seemed too difficult and too painful. Far better to trudge along miserably in the rain. If I thought I could have got away with hiding in a bush just out of sight, I probably would have done it. The idea that anyone might do this sort of thing for fun just seemed utterly ridiculous. 

Fast forward thirty years, and now it’s the idea that I might have to stop running that really scares me. I sort of fell into running when I stopped playing organised sport and started drinking beer. Popping out once a week for a rather laboured jog was a purely defensive measure designed to stave off an incipient beer belly. 

I didn’t actually start running more seriously until I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009. My journey towards that diagnosis began one morning in July 2005, when I woke up with a numb hand. Over the course of the next few weeks, that numbness spread through my body and down through my legs and feet. Running when you can’t really feel your feet is an unnerving experience: you feel with every stride that you might miss your step and break a leg. I thought then that I might have to give up running, but it’s amazing how adaptable the brain is and how quickly you can get used to something that seemed insurmountable. 

As well as a loss of sensation, one of the most common symptoms of MS is fatigue. It sounds counterintuitive, but I discovered that going for a run was incredibly helpful at helping to shake off this fatigue. When you’ve been running, at least you know why you’re tired. Running made me feel better about myself. MS is a chronic illness with no cure and with uncertain outcomes, but running gave me a sense of control. Visiting an MS clinic at the hospital is a sobering experience; to be surrounded by people in wheelchairs, struggling to speak or to swallow is to be confronted by a possible future. I can’t predict or control how my MS might affect me, but I found that to be a powerful motivation to work my body whilst I can. I joined a running group and began to run with other people. I still wasn’t particularly quick, but it’s funny how running with other people makes you run faster than you thought might be possible. 

MS affects everyone differently. In my case, as well as the numbness and pins & needles, I have a loss of strength on my left-hand-side and a loss of dorsiflexion in my left ankle. This didn’t stop me from running, but as I quickly learned as I began to run more often, this changed my gait and made me more susceptible to injury as my body tried to compensate for the loss of strength and power. The further I run, the more I drop my left side and the more susceptible I am to falling over. A sports specialist consultant surgeon told me that I would probably struggle to run much more than 10km and that, although it might not be my MS that stopped me from running, the compromises my body was making probably would. Naturally, I ignored him and kept running. 

In 2015, I ran my first marathon. 

To be honest, the 26.2 miles itself wasn’t my biggest concern: I was worried how my body would hold up to the 500 miles of training and the load of running 5 or 6 times a week. I didn’t set the world on fire, but running side-by-side with my wife, we made it round and raised a pile of cash for the MS Trust (we’ve raised around £40,000 in total, an amount that mainly humbles me because of the support and generosity of our friends). 

Since that day, I’ve run another 5 marathons. At Chester in 2018, I even dipped below the magical 4 hour mark (a 22 minute PB!). I’ve joined an athletics club, picked up my coaching qualifications and taken enormous pride in the achievements of the athletes I coach as they have worked their way from a couch to 5km programme to running competitive cross-country races and half marathons. 

Meanwhile, slowly and remorselessly, my MS has got worse. My legs and left ankle have slowly stiffened; I take a muscle relaxant at night to help me to sleep and I now fall over so often that I run wearing knee pads and wrist guards; my pace has slowed and my shuffling, uneven gait is causing me problems elsewhere in my body (as that specialist predicted). Stopping, you might think, may be the obvious thing to do. 

I’m not going to stop. 

Running is part of who I am. My friends are runners. Running is something that I do together with my wife. It’s vital for my mental wellbeing every bit as much as my physical wellbeing. I’m not just going to stop. 

Sure, I wish I was faster. What runner doesn’t? 

I wish I didn’t fall over so much, but really, what choice do I have? 

Do I want to stop and feel sorry for myself and the things that I’ve lost, or do I want to keep on going as best as I’m able? Is that really even a question? Precisely because it’s become harder for me, I am more aware now than I have ever been of exactly how much running means to me and I cherish every single time I get out. It’s not the falling over that’s the most important thing to consider, it’s the getting back up again. 

I have a tattoo on my weaker left ankle by the Japanese novelist and marathon runner, Haruki Murakami: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. 

The full quote, from “What I think about when I think about running” is: 

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.” 

This runner can stand the pain and isn’t done quite yet.

don't stop moving...

As they're obviously trying to keep (potentially vulnerable) people away from the clinic at QMC at the moment, I had my annual consultation with my neurologist over the phone today. Actually, it was a surprisingly effective way of doing it and was probably as helpful as any of the sessions I've had at clinic since I first started getting symptoms. 

The long and the short of it is that my disability has been slowly increasing over the last few months/years and today they've shifted my diagnosis from 'relapsing-remitting' MS to 'secondary progressive' MS. 

I think this sounds more significant than it is. Ultimately, it's just a label to describe the way my disease is progressing. Most people with MS have a series of relapses, each relapse bringing new symptoms and new problems which get a bit easier with time (without ever completely disappearing), before the next relapse arrives and starts the cycle again. Almost all the treaments for MS are designed try and slow down the frequency with which you have relapses, thus slowing the progress of the disease and increasing disability. There isn't a cure. 

I've never really had relapses and have just seen a slow, but steady increase in the severity of my existing symptoms. I haven't been on a disease modifying therapy for a couple of years now, so shifting my diagnosis is really only an acknowledgement of the way my MS seems to be progressing: I'm not expecting relapses, but I am expecting my legs to get stiffer (amongst other things). The shift closes the door to lots of treatment options, but may open the door to others. 

It's only a label... but at the same time, it can't help but feel like a significant moment. It sounds significant. 

Still, I have much to be thankful for: we're off on an 11 mile run tomorrow morning and I've run a little over 1,100 miles so far this year. Very little of that has been as fast as I would like, but I know that I'm still capable of running quickly when I really want to, and I was only a few seconds off my mile PB a few weeks ago. Whilst I now don't trust my legs to the extent that I won't go out without knee pads and wrist guards, running remains at least as important to me now as it ever has done and I cherish what I can still do. 

Every run, no matter how long or how fast, still feels like sticking two fingers up at this diease. Long may it continue.

something changed...

I was made redundant a little over a year ago. 

Even with all the various ins-and-outs of my career, outsourcing, insourcing and all the rest of it, it still felt like a pretty significant moment. After all, I first walked through the doors on 15 September 1997 as a graduate trainee and finally left on 7 June 2019. 

That's nearly 22 years. 

An awful lot happened in that 22 years that had nothing at all to do with work. Apart from anything else, in that time, I lost something like 40kg in weight and most of my hair and I gained a house, cat and wife (not in that order or in that order of importance). I was 23 years old when I arrived and 45 years old when I left. 

Given that I spent nearly half my life to that point working there, it was amazing how quickly I put it all behind me. If they hadn't made me redundant, I'd probably still be there now and still taking their salary.... but almost immediately, it became clear that they had done me a massive favour. Even if my departure hadn't been sweetened by a pretty hefty payment, this would still definitely have been the case.

I wasn't sure when I left what I wanted to do. The money meant that I didn't have to rush into anything, and I spent a good few weeks just decompressing from a job that, by the end, was sucking up a good 11 or 12 hours of my life every weekday and also involved out of hours and weekend cover. 

No one made me work those hours, but it's amazing how, when you stop working them, you realise how absurd it all is. Every single day of the working week, I was cycling to work, showering and getting to my desk by 07:15, often  not leaving to cycle home until after 18:00.

That's ridiculous.

My last job was probably the one in which I made the biggest contribution to the business and where I got the most satisfaction.... but as soon as I stopped doing it, it all disappeared in my rearview mirror and I didn't give it a backwards glance. I'm sure they didn't miss me either.

I'm now back in work. This wasn't a given, but I ultimately decided I wanted to do something and the right thing came along. I work three days a week over four days, and I now can't imagine working full time. In an ideal world, I'd be doing more volunteering, but the pandemic has put almost all of that on hold. When a more normal life returns, I'll have the space to resume that stuff. It's all good.

I'm healthier and happier. Even during a lockdown, I feel like my life is much more balanced than it was before.

So what have I learned in the last year since that redundancy? Something that I should have known all along: that life is short and time is precious. Do things that make you happy. No matter how important you think that job is, I bet there are thousands of better things you could be doing with your time that create more good in the world. 

Go and do them.

uptight, out of sight...

Like most kids who grew up in the 1970s and early 80s, I have vivid memories of a gentleman by the name of Joey Deacon. Joey suffered from cerebral palsy, and in 1981, the International Year of the Disabled, he was the focus of a feature on the children’s TV programme, Blue Peter as an example of someone who had achieved a lot with his life in spite of his disabilities. Of course, kids being kids, the term “Joey” and the phrase “Spaz” immediately became shorthand for someone who was stupid… so much so that the Spastic Society changed their name to “Scope” (which obviously led to kids adopting “Scope” as their new insult for a stupid person).

I’ve had cause to think about spasticity quite a lot recently. Although I’ve been pretty lucky with my multiple sclerosis, one of my most persistent symptoms has been stiffness and cramping in the muscles of my legs. I’ve actually had a physio film my calf muscles as he couldn’t quite believe how much the muscles seemed to pulse and ripple of their own accord. The rippling itself seems fairly benign, but I also get night cramps in my legs, quite often waking up on agony. Mostly, this is confined to my lower leg, but the stiffness and the occasional twitch has spread up into my thighs, much to the irritation of the cat when she’s trying to get comfortable. I’ve been diagnosed some baclofen to help combat these cramps and twitches and the muscle stiffness, but as a runner, I’m a little bit wary about taking any sort of muscle relaxant: it might help me sleep, but what about the impact on my muscles when I don’t want them to be relaxed? Perhaps the acid test for me at the moment is that I’d rather put up with the cramps and the stiffness than risk anything which might have a knock-on affect on my running.

My MS is technically classified as relapsing-remitting, but I couldn’t honestly tell you of a single defined relapse. Instead, I seem to have a set of symptoms that seem to be fairly steady but slightly on a downward trajectory. By running two full marathons in a thirty day period, as well as the hundreds of miles of training, I know that I’ve asked my body to do a lot this year. It probably wouldn’t be all that surprising if the increased spasticity in my legs that has me staggering around like an old man whenever I get up from my desk at work is related to that. That’s quite a lot for anyone, never mind someone who suffers from multiple sclerosis and I need to be mindful that my body needs to rest, no matter how much I want to be out there flogging it. If my body wants to let me know the consequences of what I’ve done, then that’s probably fair enough. That said, I’m actually considering entering another marathon in October, so now is very much the time when I have a window of opportunity to rest up a bit before my training starts up again in earnest…. I’m hoping that the muscle stiffness is going to ease off, but let’s be honest: I’m not going to let it stop me one way or another until I can’t even manage a shuffle.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep reminding myself how lucky I am when I feel like cursing my stupid, failing body.

roll with the punches...

I seem to have lost my ability to jump.

How did I discover this?  Because it was jumps night up at the track.

I now spend my Tuesday evenings helping coach the kids up at the track with my running club.  Mostly, it's crowd management and trying to use the hour we have to wear them out before we hand them back to their parents.... but we also try and introduce them to the rudiments of the various athletic disciplines.  Yesterday was jumps. 

As well as introducing the kids to the delights of the long jump pit, we did some standing jumping.  As pictured above, that's putting both feet together, jump up onto the top of the mat, jump down... repeat with bigger and bigger mats.  Sounds easy, right?

Well, the kids certainly made it look easy.  Some of them could jump up to almost their own height.  Pretty impressive.

Me?  Well, I discovered that my ability to jump up more than about 6 inches has essentially just disappeared.  Maybe this is due to the fact that my body is still a bit battered and sore from running two marathons in the last few weeks (which it most definitely is - it's taking my knees about two miles into a run to warm up at the moment!). Unfortunately, I think it's also probably something to do with my general loss of muscle and flexibility thanks to my MS.

Is standing jumping something that I'm likely to miss?  Not really.  After all, I only noticed I couldn't do it when I was trying something that I probably haven't done at all in the last 35 years.... but even so, it still seems like a tangible marker of something that I used to be able to do that I now can't do. 

As I can run a marathon, perhaps I have no right to grumble, but still...  I like to pretend I haven't been affected by MS much at all, or at least try to ignore it most of the time.

Sometimes though, it just makes its presence felt.

hot, hot, hot...

I'm suddenly feeling a bit emotional at the thought of running a marathon on Sunday.

I've run this marathon twice before, so I'm not intimidated by the distance and I know I've put the hard work into my training. I've run the hard yards through a pretty brutal and relentless winter and know that I've earned my place at the start of what looks like it might be the hottest London Marathon on record (typical, right? You train through the Beast from the East and end up running in a heatwave).

I'm feeling emotional because I've been humbled again by the generosity of the people donating money on our fundraising page. Our friends, family and lots of total strangers have been dipping their hands into their pockets and have nudged us towards a fantastic total -- currently over £7,000 before gift aid. The MS Trust is a fairly small charity, but the impact that they have on the lives of people with multiple sclerosis and their families is massive. I was attending an MS clinic the other day, and the nurse that I saw was trained by the MS Trust (many others are also partly funded by the Trust), and the leaflets I was given to help me with some important decisions were funded and produced by the MS Trust. The money that we raise here will make a genuine difference.

As usual, I've deployed my tired old sob story in an attempt to emotionally blackmail people into donations. In 2016 I was an official London Marathon blogger, but this time around, my story was picked up by the Daily Mirror and run both online and in the printed edition. This has been more than a little surreal, not least because the bottom 25% of the page I'm featured on tells the story of someone running the marathon without functioning kidneys.

As well as helping me give people another nudge towards our donation link, this sort of exposure is so important for the charity in helping them to increase their reach. It was a little weird to see myself in a mass circulation tabloid, mind. They describe me as "fun loving Tim", possibly because I'm wearing a tutu.

I'm obviously not shy about deploying my story like this, but it's strange to see people talking about how remarkable I am, how my PB is "Brilliant" (well, I'm hoping to beat it this year, for starters...weather permitting). I don't feel particularly inspiring or amazing.

I mostly just feel lucky.

My race number for Sunday is 24120. Look out for the tall, skinny chap in a blue tutu.

You can sponsor us here: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/TCK

let's hope the next beats the last...

2018 is a marathon year, with the London Marathon already looming large in the diary.... less than 110 days to go already....so apparently we’re now the kind of people who prioritise a good night’s sleep and a double parkrun in the morning over celebrating the arrival of the New Year.... which is exactly what we did on New Year's Eve, shooing our dinner guests out of the door before 11pm and making sure that I was all tucked up underneath my duvet less than fifteen minutes later.

A lot of people in my office are mystified as to why anyone would want to be up early doors to run one parkrun at 9am on New Year's Day, never mind two... but genuinely it was an enormous amount of fun with lots of our friends and a lovely, fun run atmosphere.  It's probably not for everyone, but apparently it is for us. I loved it.  My younger self is horrified that I prioritised my running over my drinking, but that's his problem.

Anyway.

Here are 9 pictures of things that made me happy in 2017.  Thanks for being a part of it.  Running features quite heavily, just as I imagine it will in 2018, with lots of races already booked and the marathon programme underway.  My legs have been getting stiffer just recently, and I've just been prescribed a muscle relaxant to try to ease them off as I sleep. Rather than encouraging me to think about stopping running, actually this encourages me to keep going.  I might not be as fast as I would like, but I rather think that it might be very difficult to start going again if ever do stop.... it might come to that, but we're not there yet and there's a few more miles left in me yet.

Thanks for all your love and support this year.  2017 was a pretty rubbish year, all things considered and I'm not sure that any of this would be possible without the support of our friends... whether they be near or far, online or in person.

May each day of 2018 be better than the last for you and for yours.

Let's try to keep on keepin’ on for another twelve months, eh?  Why not?

Happy New Year.

relax....

I was at the hospital twice this week, and both visits have given me plenty to think about.

The first trip was on Wednesday, when I went in for some surgery.  I was in early doors and out by lunchtime on the same day, but the procedure was serious enough to require a general anaesthetic and has seen me both signed off work for at least the next two weeks and banned from any form of strenuous exercise for the next month.

Four whole weeks!

To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect.  I know that general anaesthetic is pretty unpleasant, but I didn't quite know why the consultant thought I was going to need as much as three weeks off work.  What did he know that I didn't? Was I going to be in pretty significant pain or was it going to be mild discomfort and a relatively slow pace of healing? As it turns out, once I got the anaesthetic out of my system (as well as the general, they pumped the area they operated on full of a local too, so it took a while to wear off), although I was pretty sore and swollen, I basically felt okay.  
In fact, almost immediately, I was bored.

On Thursday, I watched a couple of episodes of Frasier, the Keanu film "Constantine", played a bit of Cricket Manager 2017, fed (and tickled) a neighbour's cat, read a book and listened to loads of music... but I could really feel the long days off work stretching out in front of me.  How on earth am I going to fill all of that time when I'm not working and I can't run? What am I going to do to keep myself from going completely mad?

I settled down a bit by Friday.

The test match at Headingley started, which helped to fill the day, but a coffee and a catch-up with a friend gave me a bit of perspective.  What was this if not an opportunity to step off the treadmill and to breathe in the air and smell the coffee for a couple of weeks?  I've run the best part of 700 miles so far this year, with marathon training yet to start, and since my job changed in April, I've also been spending a lot more time at work and on out-of-hours cover overnight and through the weekends.  Isn't this a great opportunity to just relax; to read books; to watch some box-sets and to just generally try to unwind and let my brain and muscles rest properly for the first time in months?

I was back at hospital on Friday for a regular appointment with the neurologist.  This is always good for a dose of perspective.  Although my MS has been very stable since my diagnosis, I've struggled with the feeling in my legs a bit this year; I've fallen over a couple of times when out running and my legs have generally felt stiff and unresponsive.  Then again, when you look around an MS clinic waiting room and see people in their wheelchairs or struggling to walk with sticks, have I really got much all that much to grumble about in the grand scheme of things? So my legs feel a bit weird at the end of a half marathon?  Can you hear how ridiculous that must sound to a senior consultant who is dealing with people who can't walk at all?  I'm certainly not unaffected by MS and my most recent MRI scans show that a few more scars have developed in my brain.... but as long as I tolerate my weekly injections and the side-effects okay, and I can still get myself up and out for a run, then I'm really doing pretty well.

I'm sure I'm going to be frustrated and bored over the coming days, not to mention a bit sore from the surgery for a few more days yet..... but why not see the glass as half full for once and take the unexpected break from work and from running as an opportunity to try and appreciate what I do have?

Yeah... you're probably right.  Ask me how I'm doing next week and we'll see if I'm quite so phlegmatic about things.

you're slip slidin' away...

At around 1am on Saturday morning, I found myself running around a wooded, hilly trail course in the Derbyshire countryside.  It was pouring with rain and had been for the best part of 12 hours, so the course was a treacherous swamp, with mud burying the many tree roots and stumps that lined the path.  This was my third lap of the 10km course, and I'd had maybe about half an hour of sleep since the night before.  As I ran, I realised that my world had completely collapsed into the narrow beam my head torch was casting around my feet; everything else but what I could see in that little cone of light disappeared.  I was cold, wet and very tired. My balance isn't great, so I was also a little terrified that I was going to take a tumble at almost any moment.

And then it hit me.  I had the dawning realisation that I was actually really enjoying myself.  The conditions might have been awful and the very idea of trying to run under those sort of circumstances might seem utterly ridiculous.... but I felt utterly exhilarated.  Tell me: when do you normally get to experience something like this?

That was Thunder Run 2017.

Since my diagnosis with MS, I've run further and faster than I ever would have thought possible.  I've found a wonderful running community, run loads of races and even completed a couple of marathons, with a couple more on the horizon.  Nothing is quite like a 24 hour relay race.  Thunder Run is pretty simple really: in teams from 1-8 people, you simply have to get as many laps of the 10km course done as you can in the 24 hours between midday on Saturday and midday on Sunday.

Last year, I managed 4 laps (and a parkrun) in sunny, dry conditions in a team of seven.  It was tough, but it was huge fun camping with my running buddies and to do something so completely new to me.  This year, I was in a smaller team of 5 people and the weather quickly meant that every lap was maybe 10 of the longest kilometres I have ever run.  I thought before we started that I was likely to have to do 5 laps, and prepared accordingly by not pushing myself out to parkrun before we started.  As it turned out, although I had the time to get 5 laps done, my body just said no and I decided that discretion was the wiser course.  Oddly, I actually felt stronger on my fourth lap this year than I did last year, with my legs in much better shape, but the overall fatigue - a combination of the conditions and the lack of sleep - meant that I was much more tired overall and decided there would be nothing gained by flogging myself around again.

It's an amazing experience; not just the running but to spend that time in camp, laughing with your friends and sharing in the most extraordinary camaraderie between runners on the course (in particular, the awe and respect reserved for the crazy fools who attempt to complete 24 hours on the course solo).

It was bloody hard work this year in the relentless rain and sucking quagmire conditions... but just look at that smile on my wife's face in photos taken on her first lap and on her last lap (her fourth).  Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know?

My MS has affected me in lots of ways physically, but it has also unlocked a determination that I didn't know that I had and - in some ways - has enriched my life immeasurably by pushing me out of the door to discover a world I barely knew existed.

Here's to 2018.

How did you spend your weekend?

vapour trails...

In news that will come as no surprise to anyone, I seem to have accidentally signed up for a trail marathon in October.

Bear with me.

The plan has always been to build towards a third London marathon in April.  I'm currently half marathon fit, and I was planning on holding that to the end of the year (with a couple of halves and with the Thunder Run 24 hour relay along the way), building up to around 16 miles on my long run by the end of the year and then marathon training proper from January.

I've been feeling okay: I did eight miles with C. on a rainy Monday morning and then backed it up with another four-or-so miles that afternoon.  Neither run was very fast, but speed isn't really the objective here as I was thinking about the 4 or 5 10km laps that I'm likely to have to do across 24 hours at Thunder Run towards the end of July.

So what happened?

Well, it was World MS Day on Wednesday and I was chatting with some friends about how MS is such an uncertain condition that affects sufferers in different ways.  It took me four years to get a diagnosis, and I had no way of knowing that I would then use that diagnosis as a spur to start running marathons.

"Well how about a trail marathon, then?  To really stick two fingers up at MS?"
Super Kev is a machine and an inspiration: he's a fantastic runner who is quick over pretty much any distance from 1 mile to 100 miles. He's also an incredibly generous man who is happy to give up his time to help other runners.  I've been going out running the trails with him every Thursday night over the last few weeks, and he's been kind enough to run at my pace. It turns out that he's always wanted to have a go at the Spires & Steeples challenge: a trail marathon from Lincoln to Sleaford on 15th October.
Abigail, another wonderfully generous, community-spirited runner was quick to get involved.  "That sounds brilliant.  I'm in.  Tim?"

...and so I heard myself agreeing to get involved too.

I haven't formally entered yet, but I'm actually warming to the idea.  Trail marathons are apparently a completely different kettle of fish to a road race, with a gentler pace and cake. Throw some good friends into the mix, and I guess that means marathon training is going to start a little earlier than planned.

Hey ho.  Take that, MS.

all bound for Mu Mu Land...

So, we ran the Milton Keynes Half Marathon on Monday.

I actually grew up around here, so it was sort of like a home fixture and we were able to stay at my mum and dad's house the night before rather than have to drive all the way down from Nottingham in one go (they weren't actually there, so we did rather use their house as somewhere to sleep, but a 10 mile journey in the morning rather than 65 miles was most welcome).  Although I do a fair bit of running, I don't actually get much of a thrill entering formal events and collecting medals, but this was a sort of start to training for the 2018 London Marathon and so I put on the MS Trust vest and blue tutu and committed to running the whole thing with my wife.

It was nice.  When you think of Milton Keynes, I'm sure you think about roundabouts... and the first five or six miles was on the wide boulevards of the city centre, taking in a few roundabouts before dipping off into one of the older parts of the city and taking us past some lovely cottages and onto paths through parkland.  It was really pretty nice.  We kept to the right as the marathon and half marathon courses diverged, but the route of the full goes out past Willen Lake and into some nice looking parks before heading back into the city to the stadium finish.  13.1 miles was plenty for me, but if you're looking for a nice spring marathon, I reckon you could do worse.  It was well-organised, reasonably well supported and, because of the stadium start, you could stay indoors and warm until just before you started running... at lots of races, even in summer, you end up doing quite a lot of standing around in the early morning getting cold.

If we're going to run London together again, we're clearly going to have to get used to each other's little foibles again: I don't like to stop/start or to change my pace very much, and my wife likes to stop to eat/drink and then slows down uphill and speed up downhill.  Running together, like many other aspects of a marriage, is about compromise and understanding.

Yeah.  We've got some work to do.  Check out this video of our finish... I was slightly head as we entered the stadium and slowed down, looking over my shoulder to wait for my wife to catch up so we could finish together.  As you can see, she sprinted past me.... so she says to catch that woman running next to her.  Fairly rude, I would say.  As it happens, our chip times are exactly the same.  This is because the wise man has learned to cross the starting line a step behind his wife for pretty much exactly this reason.

There was a pretty nice medal and t-shirt in the finisher's pack too.  The cow represents Milton Keynes' famous concrete cows, of course... but those sunglasses?  They're from a mural inside Milton Keynes Central Library that pastiches Seurat.  You see, local knowledge.

I've got a couple more half marathons in my diary for the rest of the year, together with the 24 hour relay race at Thunder Run in July.  My plan for training for the marathon next year is to try and keep my mileage up to about the 15 mile mark to the end of the year, and then to not change my training programme too much in 2018, apart from to ramp up that long run every Sunday.  Body depending, obviously.  I've run a marathon on my own now, and time really isn't the most important thing to me now.  I've been approached by the PR team of the Royal Parks half marathon, and they're going to feature me in a press release for their event, so watch this space for more exciting running and sponsorship news.

Well, only eleven-and-a-half months to go now!

our work is never over...

Today marks the start of MS Awareness Week.



The MS Trust has an ambition to make sure that everyone with multiple sclerosis in the UK has access to an MS nurse.  As they explain on their website:

"MS specialist nurses are vital for people living with MS. They can help them adjust to diagnosis, consider complicated treatment options, manage a wide range of symptoms and learn to live well with an unpredictable, often debilitating, lifelong condition.

"Without MS nurses, people with MS may have to manage difficult symptoms alone. They may also have to rely on expensive emergency care when their symptoms get worse.

"MS Trust research into nursing levels across the UK has found around two-thirds of the 108,000 people with MS in the UK live in areas where there aren’t enough MS nurses."

I'm lucky enough to have access to MS nurses in Nottingham. In fact, these nurses have provided me with more care and attention than the neurologists that I see. It was an MS nurse who taught me how to inject; it was an MS nurse who provided me with access to physiotherapy and orthotics to help me keep running; it was an MS nurse who provided me with the letter that enabled me to convince a doctor in Australia to pass me fit to dive in a dive medical in Cairns (he wasn't sure, but Maxine telling him that everything would be fine made all the difference.  I sent her a postcard from the Great Barrier Reef that she still mentions from time to time).  Above all, it's the MS nurses who are my first phonecall if anything happens and who provide my access to the NHS.  They're wonderful, and I was shocked when I heard that my younger brother didn't have access to an MS nurse where he used to live in Northamptonshire and was instead forced to deal directly with drugs company funded nurses.

That's not cool.

The MS Trust is a brilliant charity, and providing everyone with MS in the UK access to an MS nurse is a fantastic ambition... more than that, it's an ambition that I'm keen to support.

So....

Exactly 365 days ago, C. and I ran the London Marathon for the second time to raise money for the MS Trust. Between the marathon in 2015 and the one last year, we raised something in excess of £20,000. That's not too shabby and helps a very worthwhile charity make a real difference to the lives of people with MS.

We've had a year off fundraising and off marathons this year, and I've had a few problems with my legs that have affected my running and the way I feel about my running.  But you know what? I want a target and I want to make a difference... so we're going to run the London marathon again in 2018 (if the MS Trust will have us, obviously.  Even if we get in on the ballot, we'll still be fundraising).

I ran 2015 side-by-side with my wife, but crossed the finish line knowing that I wanted to run it on my own.  I ran 40 minutes faster in 2016, but I've got very little desire to push my body that hard this time around.  Things have changed physically for me, and I want to take on this challenge to prove to myself one more time that I've got the mental strength to complete another marathon.... running again with my wife, if she'll put up with me.  I only have to look around the waiting room at an MS clinic to know how lucky I am. My legs might be a bit weird at the moment, but I'm running a half marathon this coming weekend and I know I still have a lot to be thankful for.  I want to use some of that to try and raise some money that will really make a difference to the lives of people diagnosed with this horrible bloody condition.

I think this one might be emotional.

#strongerthanMS #364daystogo

you can find me in the club...

Yesterday, I made my debut for an actual athletics club; I wore my club colours and I took part in the first summer league race of the season… a 5.2 mile race down back roads, paths and fields around a lovely stately home at Hexgreave Hall. That sounds much more hardcore than it actually was: although the person who won crossed the line in something under twenty-five minutes and you needed to be a member of a running club to take part, the person who finished last probably took something in excess of sixty minutes. The guys and girls in my club are generally all whippets who leave me in their dust, so I was initially a bit reluctant to put myself in a position where I might be exposed as a laggard.. but then it was pointed out to me that a blind lady from our parkrun would be taking part representing a club called the Woodthorpe Huffers and Puffers, so I felt a little bit like I’d run out of excuses and put my name down.

I completed the course in a time of a little over 41 minutes. It’s quite mixed terrain, with some quite bumpy bits on grass that compelled me to slow down a bit rather than risk falling over (which I nearly did a couple of times), but on the whole I was quite pleased. In position 280, I was comfortably the last male member of my team to finish, but was probably barely halfway down the whole field. More importantly, the whole atmosphere was lovely and supportive and my team made me feel welcome and valued. And of course, because they almost all finished before me, they all clapped and cheered me in, which was nice.

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been making excuses about my running because I feel like I should explain why I’m not going faster. I resisted the urge yesterday and I even cautiously allowed myself to be slightly pleased. I ran the Notts 5 mile race over the last two years. This is a flat, fast course on the roads by the river Trent, not the slightly longer, mixed terrain route with a few hills at Hexgreave yesterday. In 2016, I ran a fairly comfortable 43 minutes and in 2015, I ran a much harder feeling 38 minutes that is likely my PB for the distance. I crossed the line yesterday feeling that I had a little more to give with a time of around 41 minutes and a pace of about 8:04 minutes per mile. I’ve not been that fast for a while, and I don’t think that’s a million miles away from what I would consider to be my fastest. Frankly, anything approaching an average pace of less than 8 minutes/mile is as fast as I’ve ever been over any distance.

Maybe the time has come to stop being so hard on myself and to just enjoy myself a bit more. I’m not doing so bad, really.

I keep on fallin'...

MS is a sneaky condition.

Yesterday, I was running a half marathon and generally feeling on top of the world; today I set out to run a quick 5km with my running club to loosen up my surprisingly-stiff muscles and I took a bit of a tumble.

It was the Reading half marathon yesterday and I ran round in support of my friend Karen.  We've been blog buddies for a while now, so it was a pleasure to run round the course with her.  I ran this as a warm-up race for London marathon in 2015, and C. and I managed 2:06.... it was my slowest half marathon ever, but it was also the one that I have enjoyed the most.  Yesterday, we managed around 2:45 and I think I enjoyed it even more (I had a beer at the drinks station outside the pub at about 8.5 miles, for starters...).  Clearly, I am capable of running much faster than that, but I was happy to do everything I could to support my friend around the course as she raised good money for the MS Trust.  Karen found it tough going after around eight miles, but she showed some real guts in getting the job done without a word of complaint and I'm full of admiration.

It was a good day; much more tiring than I was expecting, but it was a really good day.

And then I fell over.

I'd been tired and stiff most of the day, but I was determined to get out for a run tonight, even if it was only for a slow 5km.  Normally, when I fall (and it happens to me more than I'd like), it's because I drop the foot on my weaker left side and start to scuff and trip. This time, I had no warning at all and just went straight down on my left side like I'd been shot. Tired muscles from yesterday, I suppose.

There's no real harm done beyond a scuff on my knee, some bruises on my wrists and knuckles (I like to think my cat-like reflexes ensure I do a mean ninja roll as I hit the ground, which would perhaps explain the red, angry looking marks on my left shoulder)... but I really hate being reminded that I'm not bulletproof and that this condition is slowly taking a toll on my body and on my running.

I'm not stopping running, obviously... I ran a half marathon yesterday, did I mention? I probably just need to be a bit more careful and take things a bit easier (stop laughing at the back!)  I've also got a pair of insoles and an ankle cuff that are designed to try and stop me dropping my left side as I run, but I left them both at home today.  I suppose using them when I run would be a reasonably good starting point, eh?

As I stood in the shower and noticed the marks on my left shoulder, it dawned on me how hard I must have hit the ground and actually how lucky I was to have got away so lightly.  Ask me how I feel tomorrow morning, but given that one of my running friends fell over last year during a race and broke his elbow and another fell over the other week and lost one of her front teeth as she face-planted onto the road, I've been pretty lucky.

Thanks goodness for sapphire crystal Garmin screens too, eh?

I'm also very grateful to all the wonderful members of Rebel Runners who showed me so much concern this evening and offered me (and my bike) lifts home and things. It's a lovely running community and it was joining them in 2011/12 that completely changed my running life, so I already owe them loads.  Thanks guys.  It's very much appreciated.

Honestly.  Good job it's nearly summer...those leggings are ruined!

don't stop 'til you get enough...

The mind is a powerful thing.  In the summer of 2005, a numb right hand was the first symptom of what was ultimately diagnosed as multiple sclerosis.  That was worrying enough, but that sensation of numbness quickly began to spread across my body, creeping down through my legs all the way to the soles of my feet (it turned out to all be caused by a lesion on the spinal cord in my neck, hence the widespread impact throughout my body).

I didn't run then anywhere near as much as I run now, but I still did the odd half marathon and liked to go out a few times a week.  Think for a moment what it's like trying to run on legs where the muscles suddenly feel numb and when you can't feel the ground beneath the soles of your feet.  It was so weird that I actually thought for a while that I might have to stop running altogether.  What would happen if I mis-stepped and fell over? The loss of sensations in your muscles that you would normally take entirely for granted made me suddenly feel very unsure of myself.

I was afraid.

But I kept running.  It ultimately took me four years to reach a diagnosis of MS, but through that time I just kept running, slowly at first but then faster and faster. It's amazing how quickly your brain begins to adjust to a new normal, and before long, I was running further and faster than ever before.  In fact, I think the diagnosis actually made me more determined than ever not to give up: I seriously doubt that the pre-diagnosis me would ever have even considered joining a running club and taking part in a marathon.

I know this.  I also know that I'm a fairly determined, stubborn old bastard, and I like to think that, should my symptoms worsen and I am unable to continue with my running, I will find something else to keep myself active.

But I still find myself worrying about the way my legs currently feel like they belong to someone else, possibly to someone who has been dead for several months? There's a new stiffness in my legs now that sees me staggering around like an old man first thing in the morning and after I've been sat down for a while.  I can feel it when I'm running, and I can feel myself becoming more cautious and slowing myself down.  Are these new symptoms? Is this temporary, or will I feel like this forever now? Perhaps this is the beginning of the end? Perhaps I should start to be more careful?

My rational brain tells me that I should keep going: my brain will adjust to a new normal soon enough, just as it did before.  It might take a while, and perhaps I'll have to slow down for a bit and maybe I won't ever manage to be as fast as I'd like to be.... but I can surely keep running.  I know all this.... but I'm still afraid; I'm afraid of the symptoms I feel and of what they might mean.

But you know what? Whilst all this has been going on in my head, I also went and joined that Athletics Club where I've been doing track interval training on Thursday nights.  They're a really friendly bunch and have made me feel very welcome over the last few weeks... I doubt myself every week, and I spend most Thursdays in a state of mild dread about the evening training session ahead because I can't quite shake off the feeling that I don't belong and that I'm nowhere near a good enough runner to be even thinking about training on the same track as these thoroughbreds.  I know rationally that no one cares about how fast I run and that they're simply delighted to have me on board and want me to be as good a runner as I can be... and I enjoy the sessions (once we're finished, anyway - it hurts!) All the same, the demons in my head keep whispering these negative thoughts, doubling down with the way my legs feel and trying to convince me to take the easy way out and to give up.

I felt that fear and I decided to join anyway. I feel the fear before every track session, but I go anyway.  Not only am I going to keep running, but I'm going to keep trying to push myself to be as good a runner as my body and - perhaps more importantly - my mind will let me be.

[partially inspired by this article on running demons]

ignoreland...

Stiff, heavy muscles are nothing new for any runner, but I'm now starting to be increasingly bothered by spasms and spasticity in my legs. Most mornings I stagger around on stiff legs until the muscles seem to wake up properly and let me move more freely.

As you can imagine, this is somewhat tiresome.

After a relatively good run over the last few years that saw me complete two full marathons with barely an issues at all, I've had a few niggly little problems recently that have affected my running: muscle problems in my leg on the weaker left side of my body held me back a little over the second half of last year; there was the never-ending chest infection that lasted six weeks around Christmas; and now there's a cracked rib and a broken toe...  My wife sometimes remarks that I've had a good innings and it might be time to put me out of my misery by taking me on one final journey to the vet.

I won't lie to you: it's annoying.  Lots of my friends have been getting fitter and fitter and are really pushing their limits and seem to be lowering their PBs every week.  I've never really been all that interested in PBs (or in competitive running), but I'm very happy for them and have been inspired by their progress.  What I find frustrating isn't that I'm not running super-fast and smashing all my PBs, but rather that I'm not running as fast as I would like.  To some extent, that's true of every runner who ever laced up their trainers... but equally, I'm keeping a weather eye out for any sign of permanent physical deterioration, and I don't like what I'm seeing.

Yes... it's true that by almost any benchmark, I'm doing pretty well.  I'm 42 years old and I suffer from multiple sclerosis.... and yet I ran the London marathon in 2015 and 2016; I ran 45km in 24 hours at Thunder Run in July last year and will do at least the same again this year; I covered well over 1000 miles last year and I would expect to do something not too far off that again this year.  Whilst I might not be running as quickly as I would like, I'm not actually running too slowly at all.  Marathon training seemed to take some of the speed out of my legs over the last couple of years, so now that I'm not doing the really big training runs, I'm probably trending faster year-on-year.

But I want to do better.  My body might be starting to give me some warning signs, but this is making me more determined than ever to flog as much out of my body as I can while I still can.  That's why I'm going to join a running club and why I'm going to continue to drive myself as best I can at their track sessions on a Thursday night.  I don't want to slip gracefully into a gradual decline... I want to fight it all the way, kicking and screaming.

I have a friend with MS who relies heavily on sticks to walk and, of course, there are plenty of other people with MS who find themselves confined to a wheelchair.  Their physical condition has got nothing to do with their personal determination, but everything to do with their particular disease progression.  My disease progression may well be different.  Who can say?  I would be lying if I didn't say that I am a bit worried about what my future might hold and what this new stiffness in my legs might mean... but I'm damned if I'm going to let that stop me from running before I have no other choice.  I did a 4.5 mile run in the pouring rain this evening.  My legs felt terrible for the first couple of miles and then suddenly seemed to loosen up as I went along.  I can't exactly tell you that I enjoyed the run, but I'm certainly glad that I did it [sidebar: read this... "I hate running"]

Another friend asked me today how I could even think about running with a cracked rib and a broken toe (never mind the rest of it).  I told her that it doesn't seem to make them any worse, and it's only pain*.

Her: "I think I need you in my antenatal class tonight [she's a doula] when we talk about labour."
Me: "Well, I wouldn't have the brass neck or stupidity to lecture those ladies on pain management!"
Her: "No but you can tell a good story about the difference between pain and suffering."

Funnily enough, I have a tattoo about that.

That's on my weaker left side (you can see some of the scars my ankle cuff has left me with).  Coincidentally that's the same side as the broken toe, although I'm not so much blaming the MS for that as a stray suitcase left between the end of the bed and the wardrobe that I encountered at 3am the other morning....

* I also take painkillers. I'm not an idiot and will-power can only get you so far.

faster..

I'm a runner and I do quite a bit of running: more than 1000 miles a year.  That's quite a lot by most people's standards... but just because I run a lot doesn't make me a particularly good  or an especially fast runner.

In fact, I'm not particularly quick at all.

Of course, all of this is relative: for all that I think that my half marathon PB is at least 5-10 minutes slower than it should be and I haven't been near my parkrun PB in nearly two years, there are plenty of people who would love to run as slowly as I think I do.

Truth be told, I don't actually have all that much desire to run much faster and I've never really been one to hunt for PBs.  Apart from anything else, it really hurts to push yourself that much.

So I've started going to a local athletic's club on a Thursday night to do some track sessions.

They're a really friendly club, but I'm a pretty long way from being the fastest person there.  In fact, even though there are loads and loads of kids, I think it's fair to say that I'm closer to the back of the pack than I am to the front... and it's really hard bloody work.  The first time I went, we did intervals on the muddy banks around the edge of the track: 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes... with a minute's rest between each.  Last night, we did 4x800m and 4/200m parlaufs.

I'm never going to be the quickest and I have very little desire to run competitively, so why on earth am I putting myself through this?  Well, I might not want to get much faster, but I definitely don't want to get any slower either; I want to push myself, to shake myself out of my comfort zone.  I've not had a very good year from a health point of view - in fact, the last twelve months have probably been my worst ever.  This culminated in the chest infection that stopped me running properly for around 5 weeks and for all of December.  I'm not training for a marathon this year, but I'm suddenly feeling vulnerable and all the little niggles caused by my MS and by other things are starting to take their toll.  I've dropped my mileage, happy to be doing any running at all instead of worrying about not doing enough.  I'm running 5km where before I might have run 4 or 5 miles; and I'm dropping my pace too.  Nobody would blame me for any of this.  I've not been very well, I'm 42 years old and I've got multiple sclerosis, for goodness sake.  No one is keeping a scoresheet and laughing at how my physical performance is seemingly falling away. Well, no one outside of my head, anyway.

Maybe this is how it happens: there isn't going to be a big, dramatic relapse that suddenly takes away my ability to run.  Instead, there's going to be a gradual accumulation of issues that eats away at my desire to run as much as it eats away at my ability.

Well, I'm not having it.

I'm still not really targeting any dramatic improvements and I'm not about to go PB hunting... but I am determined to try and shake off my lethargy and to make this damn body do a bit of honest work.  I will not go gently into that good night, dangnabbit.  I will rage, rage against the dying of the light.  If that means wobbling my way around a running track on a frigid January night being overtaken by precocious eight year olds, then so be it.

....Besides, the coach eyed me up when I arrived, called me a "veteran athlete" (well, I'll take being called an athlete of any sort at this stage of the game) and said I looked like a triathlete. Who wouldn't be happy with that to keep them warm as they huff and puff their way around at the back of the pack of endurance athletes training on the track?

It sounds a bit hardcore to join an athletics club, I know, but I really think I might do it.

Perhaps this is what a midlife crisis looks like?

we drink, we sing on the state we're in...

One of my Christmas presents this year was a ticket to go and watch Wolves (my team) playing Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on Bank Holiday Monday, 2nd January.  In spite of the lingering suspicion that really this was just a ploy by my Sheffield Wednesday supporting friend to have someone to accompany him to the game on a grim January day, I decided to embrace the opportunity to spend some quality time with someone I don't see anything like enough of during the year.

The plan was to leave early enough to have the time to have a nice lunch in my friend's favourite cafe by the ground.  Get your timings wrong, and you won't be able to get a seat, so a prompt departure was essential.  We left Nottingham a little after 11am, but somewhere on the M1, at the point where the road splits for Meadowhall, traffic suddenly ground to a halt.  For the next 30 minutes or so, we made very little progress at all and tried not to get annoyed at some of the idiot drivers who let their impatience get the better of them and spend their time trying to push their way through the traffic.  We had plenty of time, but the cafe was starting to look optimistic.

I have a general philosophy when I'm stuck in traffic that, no matter how inconvenient it might seem for me, there's probably someone up ahead who is having a much worse day than me.  And so it proved.

After a little while, we could see the lights of the emergency vehicles ahead, and as we filtered into a single lane of traffic, we saw that there were a couple of fire engines and police cars, but apparently no ambulances on site.  There had been a collision between a car and a reasonably large camper van and, as we drew closer, we could see that the front seats of the car contained two bodies, partially covered by plastic sheeting that had slipped down a bit and was sitting on their chests.  Presumably, they were corpses and the ambulances attending the scene had taken away anyone who still needed medical attention.

It was a sobering sight, to say the least.  As we headed on north towards the ground, it was impossible not to think that those two people had got up this morning, chatted about when they needed to set off in order to reach their destination and then headed up the motorway later on that morning.... exactly the same as us and exactly the same as every other car on the road.  They were never going to reach their destination and, for the people close to them, 2017 has got off to the worst possible start.

We didn't get a seat in the cafe, and were forced to have an (excellent) tray of Sheffield fish cake, chips, gravy and scraps before enduring a fairly uneventful 0-0 draw on a cold afternoon in early January.  But you know what?  We'd both been given a fairly hefty dose of perspective that morning.

Here's to better things ahead for everyone in 2017.

Life is short, my friends.  Hold the people you hold dear close.

We drink, we sing on the state we're in if it leads to another year.

And we just keep on keeping on...

Given my MS and how much I run, I've been astonishingly lucky with injuries.  I had a run of problems with my ITB, hip and plantar fascia on my weaker left side a few years back, but since then I've basically had a mostly trouble-free run.  When I entered the London Marathon in 2015, I was a little worried about how my body would hold up to the strain of the training, but actually we managed okay.... better than okay.  Well enough that I ran the damn thing again - 40 minutes faster - in 2016.  I definitely crossed the finish line this year with a very clear understanding of how physically hard a marathon is... but that's famously true for pretty much everyone, isn't it?

After running 45km at Thunder Run a couple of weeks ago, I developed a problem in my left calf (it's no coincidence that the problems I have tend to manifest themselves on my weaker side).  I was fine over the weekend itself, but work commitments meant I wasn't able to run again until the Wednesday, and as I was doing some intervals in a warm-up to a mile time trial, my calf got stiffer and stiffer until it reached the point where I thought it might actually go pop, so I stopped.  Much to my annoyance, it didn't seem to ease up much with rest, and when I tried to run again on Saturday, it lasted about a mile before the same thing happened again.

As you've probably worked out, runners aren't very good at not running.

I went to the physio.  Doctors are all well and good, but when it comes to a hands-on understanding of the mechanics of the human body, you really need to see a physiotherapist.  After a careful assessment of the way my body moved and an assessment of the muscles on both sides of my body, the physio quickly worked out that I hadn't torn or pulled anything (which was good news), but that my calf was simply extremely tight. At a second session, a week later, she did some further investigation and worked out that the tightness in my calf was just the end of the line of a series of apparently very tender muscles further up the chain on my left side.  To cut a long story short, my body has been working like mad to compensate for the weakness on that side, and my muscles were simply pushed so far that they began complaining louder than usual.  It also doesn't help that, for some reason, my calf muscles are heavily bulked on the inside of my leg (rather than the more usual outside), and that this muscle bulk is pushing the fascia in that leg up against the tibia.

As physios do, she gave me a lot of exercises to do that I need to try and remember to keep doing when my leg stops hurting.  They're mostly all about balance, because that seems to be the root of all my problems (I'm a lot less stable on my weaker side).

The good news is that my leg is feeling a lot better and I've started to run again with little pain.  The bad news is that these cumulative problems are only likely to get worse over time and that running as I do is going to expose these problems.

Well.  Here's the thing.  I'm not going to stop running.  Running makes me feel good about myself and, as long as I can run, I feel as though my MS isn't dictating how I live my life (in fact, I've run more since my diagnosis than I ever ran before).  I may have to slow down and adjust my targets, but I'm damned if I'm going to give up.

Ten days not running has reminded me how much I love to run.  It's good to be back on the road again now, but it's good to remember that every moment running is a moment to be cherished.

save it for the break of day...

I spent much of last weekend at the Thunder Run, a 24 hour running event in Catton Park in Derbyshire. It’s fairly simple in format: there’s an undulating, off-road 10km course that runs through woodland and some beautiful countryside; the race starts at 12 noon on Saturday and runs until 12 noon on Sunday. The idea is to run as many laps as you can in that time, whether you are running solo, or as part of a team of up to 8 people. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I nervously packed up my tent and head-torch and set off after work on Friday to meet up with my team of 7.

For some people, this event is all about the times you run, but for lots of the thousands of people taking part, it’s more about the times you have. There’s a bar in a red double-decker bus by the finish, for goodness sake! My team was quite mixed in ability, and although we had a loose target of getting 24 laps completed, it really didn’t matter and the most important thing was that we enjoyed ourselves as much as possible. I was mentally prepared beforehand to run 3 or 4 laps on little sleep, but I wasn’t really prepared for how much I enjoyed the whole weekend. Although my team was relatively small, there were about 80 of us from my wider running community in total, and Friday night was very much about having a few drinks and enjoying spending a bit of time with old friends and making some new ones. Many people had brought both kids and dogs, so there was a great atmosphere around the campsite. Of course, with the prospect of all that running looming over us, it wasn’t a particularly late night….

Saturday started with a parkrun. I know that sounds mad when you’re about to start a 24 hour race, but parkrun is very firmly established part of my life now, and popping a couple of miles up the road to Rosliston seemed like the perfect way to get things started. Besides, a winding course through a beautiful forest with over 400 other mentalists (we doubled Rosliston’s previous attendance record and broke all their course records! See if you can spot me in the sea of apricot) was just lovely.

Then the race.

I did four laps: around 2pm when it was sappingly hot; between 2030 and 2130, starting in the light and finishing in the dark as the sun went down; between 4am and 5am, starting in the dark and running into the dawn; and finally our last lap of the event, starting at around 11:15. I managed a bit of sleep between laps (and even a shower), but I experienced things that will stay with me forever.

Here are a few of them:

- Encouraging other runners on the trail as I passed them, and being encouraged by quicker runners who passed me (pretty much everyone made a real fuss of the solo runners, who were easy to spot. The solo runner from my running club, five foot nothing of pure Irish determination managed 9 laps in all, and I passed her three times when I was out running. When I passed her on my fourth lap, she was just past the 5km mark of what would be both our last laps, and she was shuffling along painfully, powered mostly by an iron will not to stop… I had to stop and give her a big hug because she is such an amazing, inspirational person)

- Turning off the flat first km of the course and beginning to climb up a really steep hill through a dark, deciduous wood

- Passing the 5km marker after running up a gentle but apparently unending hill, and knowing that the second half of the course was a little easier

- Telling the Rosliston parkrun volunteers marshalling at the 8km mark how beautiful their parkrun was, every single time I passed them

- Running the last km of my first lap through the campsite and being ambushed by the rest of my team and their kids with water pistols. Bliss

- Dodging the tree roots and stumps in the woods as I ran in the dark by the light of my head-torch

- Returning back to camp after 9pm to find that our camp cook (one of the team’s wives) had saved me some burgers and also made me some fresh campsite crepes. Delicious

- Listening to an owl screeching in those same woods in the pre-dawn light at around 0415

- Cresting a hill out of another dark wood and finding myself bursting out into the open just as the dawn was breaking all around me. Magical. That run will stay with me forever

- Mustering a sprint finish for the last half km, leaving the rest of my team, who had kindly joined me for the end of our last lap and the end of the race, trailing in my wake. Maybe a little rude, but I didn’t want to leave anything in the tank…

I loved it. Including the parkrun, I ran 45km over the weekend (a marathon is 42.195km), but this felt different to running a marathon all in one go. I found it physically much harder to run a marathon in one go, with deeper muscle and joint pain… but running in 10km instalments like this with little sleep is differently challenging and requires a similar kind of mental strength. I think running on tired legs, starting your third lap when you know you still have another to go before you are done, takes a special kind of determination and I really kind of enjoyed that. I think they key is to remember to look outside yourself and to think about something other than how much your legs hurt and how tired you are. I tried to remember that it was truly a privilege to run such a beautiful course at such beautiful times of the day.

Given that running is usually such an individual sport, I also loved the teamwork; working out when you needed to be in the transition area to do the handover and to take your stint; I loved the camaraderie around the course and within the campsite. Over the years, I’ve learned that runners are generally pretty nice people, and whereas at a normal event, you run and then you go home, this time around we were all in it together. The fastest teams were running more than three laps for every two that my team did, but there is no way of knowing out on the course who has done what and everyone was very much equal. We managed 23 laps in total – we slowed down during the night – and the winning teams in our category (mixed teams of 6-8) were completing 36 laps. The winning solo runner managed 19 laps! Nineteen laps! He ran for 24 hours, averaging just over an hour a lap, without stopping. That’s incredible.

I can’t wait for next year and I hope I’m lucky enough to be invited to join a team again (I like to think I'm a pretty reliable team member).

I’m at the neurologist on Friday for my annual check-up on the progress of my MS. I will enter a waiting room filled with people in wheelchairs and using various mobility aids. I’ve had my issues this year, but I look around that room and I know that I’ve been fit and well enough to run the London Marathon in April and to run 45km over a weekend as part of a 24 hour relay race…. I’m not doing so bad, really.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I really believe that.

In your face, MS.