Please don't piss in the showers

The second two days of the Great Barrow Challenge were no quicker than the first two but my legs felt less tired each day and today I managed a more respectable 1hr 46mins half marathon on Hackney Marshes. They've got smart new changing rooms to go with the world's largest assemblage of football pitches (80-odd at the last count) on the Marshes, so it's all very different from the cold showers and spartan changing rooms of days gone by. Sunday league football will never be the same again.

They seem to have skimped on the toilets, though, unless they've hidden them somewhere. The men's toilets to which all the signs pointed had spaces for just two standing and two sitting. I suspect the showers are being used for more than washing.

1,437 miles done; 575 to go.

Kilometre 2012

I've just finished the second of four marathons in four days in the Great Barrow Challenge. This is Barrow in Suffolk, so a kerbstone counts as a climb round here. Not that you'd know it from the way I've laboured up the slightest incline. The legs that carried me up and down mountains last week could barely manage to walk the final few miles of the course yesterday, when I took five and a half hours to finish and was seriously doubting my ability to complete this week's event.

A good night's sleep (lights out before the football had finished) made today's marathon more bearable but an easy five hours on the flat still took more out of me than five hours over Pen-y-Ghent this time last week. I've made a mental note to factor in a lot more recovery time when I've got this 2012 miles in 2012 thing out of the way.

Speaking of which, I've now done 1,371 miles. I passed 2,012 kilometres somewhere around Kendal on day four of the Trans Britain last week. I've a feeling that it was probably in that slurry-filled farmyard where the farmer had parked his trailer so tightly against the stile that the only way to get over the fence was by clambering onto the trailer and jumping off it into the field on the other side. When I landed, the ground was so wet and churned up by cows that I sank halfway up to my knees. That place will forever hold a fond spot in my memory as Kilometre 2012.

Third in the Trans Britain

This year was my second entry to the Trans Britain stage race, and since there were a couple of other competitors returning for a second time, including twice winner Paul Oliver, the organisers must be doing something right. That ‘something’ includes some of the finest off-road running you can find in the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and Clwyd hills, along with great food from Nick the resident chef and always-excellent facilities at the overnight campsites. This year’s special treat was a bathroom, no less, with seemingly limitless hot water, at the day two campsite overlooking Ullswater.

There weren’t the hurricanes blowing in from the Atlantic of the previous two years, although the descent from a cloud-shrouded Pen-y-Ghent got a bit hairy with some of the gusting winds. But there was plenty of rain, swollen rivers and mud (along with the occasional shot of sunshine and a glorious double rainbow) to remind you that this is a long way from a boring urban run. The race covers 156 miles in six days, carrying all your own gear (apart from a tent) and taking in half a dozen substantial peaks along the way.

Favourite moment? Storming down from Rydal fell like a kamikaze mountain goat for a ridiculous sprint finish that saw three of us separated by just 10 seconds after five hours of mountain running.

That leg had special significance for me because I had to cut it short two years ago to lead an injured fellow runner off Helvellyn. With visibility down to a few metres and the temperature having plummeted likewise, it was no time to take chances. I got a time penalty for my pains, which certainly cost me third place overall in that year’s event and probably cost me second. This year, in a much faster field, I held on for third in an overall time of 34 hours 13 minutes 04 seconds. To say I’m chuffed would be one hell of an understatement.

A big 'if'

I’ve been slowly putting myself together again after the toll taken by the Lakeland 100. Almost five weeks after the event I’m still struggling to feel comfortable in my running again at any distance. My regular Serpentine RC 5k race last Friday was my slowest for a year at 23.05 – and almost two minutes slower than the one I did the week before the Lakeland. The BBC 10k race a day previously took me 49.42, about five minutes slower than I’d have expected. And the marathon distance in yesterday’s Enigma ultra on a flat course round the lake at Milton Keynes took me about four and a half hours – more than 45 minutes slower than my time on the hilly marathon around Lake Windermere in May.

The good news, though, is that my left foot seems to be okay(ish) and my neck, for which I have my first physio appointment next week, is only tolerably painful. I’ve clocked up a further 65 miles in the above-mentioned events and the Sandwell Six Towns Marathon (in which I navigated the 1.75 miles of the Netherton canal tunnel without a torch), so I’m now up to 1,145 for the year. I’ve got 336 miles lined up in the 15 days from 8-23 September, including the 156-mile Trans-Britain stage race and the four marathons in four days Great Barrow Challenge. If I complete that little lot without mishap, the 2,012-mile target might just start to look achievable for the first time since I took it on. But that’s a very big ‘if’ . . .

My left foot and Mo

Twenty-two miles into the Herts Stroller, my left foot let it be known in no uncertain manner that it hasn't mended and that if I continued to run on it today I would pay for it later. So I hobbled into the 24-mile checkpoint for a disappointing retirement.

The reward for being sensible, though, was immense: I was home in time for Mo Farah's 5,000 metres victory. Running doesn't get any better than that.

Moving again

I've been meaning to write up a proper report of the Lakeland 100 but what with recovering, catching up on work, going for my medal presentation and being totally taken up with these extraordinary Olympics (when did I develop an interest in rowing, for goodness sake?) I just haven't found the time. I did my first couple of post-100 runs this weekend, though, so I'm back chasing the 2012 in 2012 target and I thought I should mention them here.

The first was a slow, painful parkrun: 5k in a little under 26 minutes. And then, this morning, a 10k in London's Regent's Park, that was a good 20 minutes slower than Mo Farah's gold medal effort last night. I'm moving again, though, and my left foot and neck are holding up, and that's what matters.

Coincidentally I reached the halfway mark on the 2012 miles at the halfway stage (in terms of time) on the Lakeland 100. I've now done 1,055 miles in events this year. Next weekend is something called the Herts Stroller. I'm hoping it lives up to its name.

Medals, Team GB, my grandson and me

For the first 48 hours after I finished the Lakeland 100, it was all I could do to get to the toilet; on the Sunday night I was reduced to wriggling there on my bum because my legs had all but seized up.

Even on the Tuesday, when I first ventured out of the house where I was staying at Ambleside, it took me the best part of an hour to hobble to the shops and back.

Aside from the stiffness, my left foot was getting me back for running on an injury that first made itself felt about 30 miles from the finish. Walking on the flat was just about possible but any slight variation in the surface was a challenge and any incline out of the question.

The human body’s powers of recovery are staggering, though, and by Wednesday morning I’d got enough mobility back to make the 300-mile journey back to London, brave the public transport system to the Olympic Park at Stratford and take up an unmissable invitation to receive a Gold Challenge fundraiser’s medal at a special presentation at Team GB House. I was there for Britain’s first two gold medals of the Games, including Bradley Wiggins’ victory in the cycling, when the whole building seemed to be about to take off. 

There were times when I even felt a bit like a proper athlete myself, swapping tales of what it’s like to run a 100 with Olympians. I wouldn’t have minded some of their physio facilities, though, as much as I appreciated their hospitality.

Mt grandson Stanley (pictured) was impressed.