About six weeks ago I ran the London Marathon and have just got around to writing about it. I almost burst into tears typing the title.

You might have to bear with me for a bit on this…

Back to the start

The London Marathon is actually part of the reason I stopped running.

I ran to lose weight and I ran to get fitter for football but didn’t really consider myself a runner and didn’t particularly enjoy it.

This was back in the days when not everyone was a run-fluencer and you trusted the guy in JJB to sell you trainers. The most technical items I owned were double layer socks and even they were from Millets.

But when you move to London and get the opportunity to run in the London Marathon through a work charity place, where work will double any money raised, it moves quickly to a bucket list item.

I’d run one half marathon two years before that but with a free four-hour training plan from Runners World in my hand, I skipped along the banks of the Thames between Canary Wharf and Pimlico.

I was basically running the route from the get-go, and I was damn good. With a chunky Sony Ericsson strapped to my arm, I was listening to inspirational music and believing my own hype.

This was at the same time as working full time in the City and training and consuming more Peroni the night before than a large Italian village.

Maybe I could go faster? Maybe I could be a professional runner? Maybe I should aim for three hours?

So I printed off a new plan from Runners World and set off ready to take on the Paula Radcliffe. She was the only marathon runner I’d ever heard of.

And that’s where the wheels fell off. Along with half of my right knee by the way it felt. I went from three runs a week up to five and then down to zero with weekly trips to the physio.

I went from planning to challenge to planning to quit.

I didn’t though. And after five hours and 12 minutes of slow, tragic “running”, I burst into tears on the Mall, hobbled around looking for a pub, and then decided never run again.

15 years later and with similar levels of training, I was back in Blackheath to take it on again.

Starting to comeback

At exactly 12pm on the 10^th February, I received a message from a friend saying that a local charity hadn’t filled their London Marathon spot.

At 23:34 that night I replied: “I don’t know if I can but I know I will.” Bit cheesy in hindsight but it sounded good at the time.

And that was that. I was in. Until my next chemotherapy appointment the next day did it’s usual thing and sparked me out.

Nearly 500 words in and I haven’t mentioned cancer. That’s got to be a recent record.

The charity I mentioned before was the Durrell Conservation Trust, one of the most amazing places here in Jersey, and through the work they do around the world.

I’ve been a huge fan of their work since I moved over and have been lucky enough to get to know some of the team personally. To underly their generosity, they agreed to split my fundraising with Friends of Jersey Oncology (FOJO), who had been a huge part of my cancer care.

In the 10 weeks I had to train, I had two more rounds of chemotherapy, two half marathons (Jersey and Southampton), a wedding in Yorkshire, and the spreading of my grandparents’ ashes in Yorkshire. Different weekends.

But that’s another story. The only highlights that really matter are a) I finished my chemo a round early; and b) I ran both half marathons in 3 hour 6 minutes and 2 hours 7 minutes a fortnight apart.

With that kind of improvement, maybe I would be challenging the leaders after all…