The Hastings Half (lung)

My lungs don't work.

My GP told me this morning that I should be pushing the flimsy little plastic tab in the peak flow meter up past the 600 mark. I can barely scrape past 200.

This performance, six weeks away from the London Marathon, is as the euphemism has it, challenging.

So tomorrow, at considerable expense, I'm off to Harley Street to see a specialist, who will, for the money, not only reflate my lungs with mountain fresh air, but will also excise my midriff (less of a muffin top and more of a pain de campagne), and straighten my teeth. Oh, and throw in a cleansing colonic, I'm sure.

I make light of this, of course, but I'm not happy. This marathon has provided a spine for my flabby thinking over the past few months, guiding me through the dark days of winter and surprising me with unimagined achievements. So for it to come to this... Grr.

Still, I've got my first medal; or rather horse brass, courtesy of the Hastings Lions for completing their 25th Anniversary Half-Marathon on Sunday. The sun shone, the people of Hastings banged pots and blew bagpipes, and more than one church seized the opportunity of 5000 captive punters and sang folk/rock/gospel music to us from the side of the road. (I declare an interest as a former guitarist of St Gertrude's Folk Choir - we rocked.)

They have a road that leads out of St Leonards; on the maps it's called Queensway. I call it another name; an ugly, angry, name. You know, the really bad one. Because it's a six mile hill. Which we had to run up. It just goes on and on, curving into the distance, for so long you think (no, you just wouldn't be running up it) I thought it was just taking the Michael, playing with us, goading us. "Nearly over, nearly over - awwwh, sorry about that, IT'S NOT OVER - AT ALL. HA!"

Not easy for any chubby man in his mid-forties; Calvary for a chubby man in his mid-forties with no lung capacity. But, dear reader, it got done, baby-wheezy step by baby-wheezy step, and we emerged onto the ridge and level ground and the choirs and bands and banging pots and all was well as we barrelled back down into town.

Free Lucozade Sport, medals, a slightly heady sense of satisfaction at crossing the line - we got quite a lot done before lunch on Sunday. Now all we have to do is run that distance, twice.

But we never have to run up that hill ever ever again.

White Man Wheezing

They like to tell you about the nipple rash and losing your toenails, but marathon veterans never tell you about the boredom, the vertebrae-crunching tedium of slogging your (no, you're not stupid enough) my sorry white ass around the conveniently-placed green spaces of South West London.

I'm six and half weeks away from the Big Day, and want to regale you with stories of Personal Bests and fartlek sessions, but all I can think about, talk about, is my gut. My fat, fat gut. God, I'm fat. I know I'm fat because I caught myself in the reflection of a shop window towards the end of a desperate seven-miler yesterday morning and saw a pathetic, chunky wheeze-monkey, not so much running as perpetually falling forward like some Breughel peasant being prodded in the back by a bored minor demon in an unglamorous cul de sac in the suburbs of Hell.

I wear a Buff, a multi-purpose bandana-type affair, which keeps my bald head warm at the beginning of the run and sucks up the sweat at the end. I also wear sunglasses with yellow lenses, which make my world a lot brighter in the dull mornings, and a yellow cycling jacket which, with the aforementioned bandana, make me look like an clapped out Ali G impersonator. Eric Liddell, I ain't.

And it all started so well. I got a training programme back in November from a mate who does really crazy stuff (ultra marathons, dragging sleds across the Arctic tundra ect) and stuck to it. Thirty minute jogs became forty; Sunday long runs crept up to hour. I began to take a certain fetishitic pleasure in queuing up the iPhone with my motivational playlist (Don't Stop Believin'/Journey, Back to my Roots/Richie Havens) and setting the stopwatch on my Christmas prezzie running watch before heading out into the frosty January mornings.

I ran ten miles without stopping, which felt like an anointing into the Knights Templar of Physical Endeavour. I joined two mates and ran the Putney towpath, like, well, runners do.

Then it all turned to shit. An ankle niggle troubled me enough to see a Sports physio, who took me apart and cautioned against doing any more. Instability in my personal life (not now, but maybe another time) kept me under the duvet and February was all too soon pissed up a wall.
My entries on iMapMyRun.com dwindled; my averages plummeted; I got fat.

A hastily booked week's skiing in Italy (see Instability in Personal Life, above) didn't help, allowing me to justify the three course breakfasts and triple cake teas by the lactic burn in my thighs. Michael Phelps didn't need the calories I was sinking, but hey, I'm on holiday.

By my front door there now rests four bags of quinoa, a bag of lentils and a bag of sunflower seeds. Between them, they weigh twelve pounds. I have six weeks to get twelve pounds off my blobby gut and the twelve-pound Whole Foods display back into the cupboard. Just looking at them wires my jaw.

Tomorrow, I head out for a leisurely six-miler before the Hastings Half-Marathon on Sunday. All I hope is that my lungs open up enough so I can run most of it, rather than walk the first two miles with my shoulders up by my ears wheezing like an old git. Who's stupid, stupid idea was this?