★ The Long Haul

A few days back, my girl­friend men­tioned that friends of ours would be pop­ping over on the Sunday after one of them had com­pleted the Canterbury half marathon.

If my ancest­ors hadn’t selfishly lost the genes that make ears prick up, my lugs would have swiv­elled girlfriendwards.

I pos­ted the fol­low­ing to my Facebook account: “I’m think­ing of just turn­ing up to the Canterbury half mara­thon and doing it. Who’s with me!?”

Nobody replied.

(Not strictly true. The friend who was com­ing round on the Sunday com­men­ted that he was con­cerned about my knee.)

My train­ing strategy, I believe, was unique: abso­lutely no run­ning whatsoever.

My girl­friend told me it would be two hours of pain. She was wrong. It was two hours, thirty-four minutes and forty-six seconds of pain.

(Imagine the sound of a man tamp­ing down the tobacco in his pipe, strik­ing a match, and set­tling back in his chair.)

It occurs to me that run­ning a mara­thon (let’s lose the adject­ive ‘half’; it’s so pess­im­istic) is a lot like writ­ing. You do the same thing over and over again for a long time and, if you use a Mac laptop like me, you get a burn­ing sen­sa­tion in your legs.

Is this bet­ter, Aliya?