2011. So here begins the year. The year in which my dear friend Julie is getting married (it’s ok, we’ve found the dress and it is truly a thing of great beauty, especially with Julie inside it). The year in which I turn 40. The year in which I can no longer say that I’m running the London Marathon next year. Because I’m not running the London Marathon next year any more. I’m running the London Marathon this year.
Not so very long from now, in fact.
I’ve been running fairly consistently for a while now, but my runs have been short and slow. I recently put my timing into the Runner’s World time prediction page and it came back with six hours and something. I’ve got to get faster, because if I am running for six hours and something and am still alive, I will end up lobotomizing myself with a teaspoon. My friend Emma’s mother ran the Marathon a few years ago and carolled cheerfully, ‘Oh, you’ll do it in half the time I did!’ In nervous trepidation, I ventured to enquire as to her time, feeling even as I did so that the answer ‘Twelve hours’ was extremely unlikely. Four and half hours, she said. Four and a half hours. If I ran a marathon in four and a half hours I would be singing it from the rooftops and dancing in the streets with an illuminated placard.
It’s not going to happen. I have got to be realistic even while I am reaching for the stars. If I can finish this thing and raise some money for the Wegener’s Trust, that will be lovely. Fantastic. Wonderful. Four, five, six hours? It’ll take all the time I can give to training and more to make sure I don’t keel over en route. Maybe one day I will be the hare and finish in four and a half hours. But this year, I’m the tortoise.
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