While we're living,

The dreams we had as children fade away....

They do don't they. I'm trying to remember mine -

The things I remember really really wanting to do as a child. (In no particular order)




1. Find the way out the back of my wardrobe. (Couldn't)
2. Sail in a pirate ship. (Nans rocking chair turned upside down made an ace pirate ship)
3. Own a grifter bike (never happened)
4. Play in a Wimbledon final where I had a real opponent. (You're right, that never happened either)
4. Be able to swim (taught myself as no one else seemed interested)
5. Run in an Olympic 1500m final against seb Coe and Steve Ovett. (There are a number of problems with this one)
6. Be really good at skateboarding so that Mrs Laramys grandson would think I was cool. (I think I was about 9 and he was 15 or something. Never gonna happen)
7. Become a doctor who didn't actually have to deal with real people. (Bingo not at all in the way I thought it would happen, I thought I might go to med school and become Quincy)
8. Get my first proper wages and be able to buy my nan something decent (yep, that's a good feeling isn't it )
9. Live beyond 20. (If you are going to have goals it's always an idea to make them achievable. This once seemed like a decent age to aspire to)
10. Run a marathon. (I'm saying nothing here)

There you go, a good round number of things.

I keep doing number 10. Now you either keep doing them because you honestly love the anticipation of slogging your guts out for hours in pain, or because you want to do it properly.

I used to enjoy the former, in that weird masochistic way that runners have. The racking up of another marathon was key, didn't matter if it was ugly, didn't matter how long it took as long as you finished. Job done.

Yesterday whilst running with two of my best running mates I realised so completely and utterly that I am no longer that type of runner it is almost funny. So I am not going to look on it as a DNF, but rather a DWWN and then gracefully conceded. I may have plagarised someone's thoughts a bit here, but you said what I felt so perfectly :)

So I can move on to my last 3 weeks training before Halstead. This week still fairly hard and then 2 weeks taper. I would say I'm looking forward to it but I'm not sure that's true. I am looking forward to giving it everything I have. I want to look at myself in the mirror after and be able to know I don't have to do it again because I left it all out there.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that made sense!

Anyway, loving seeing people so happy with results yesterday, and those not so will come to terms with it, running London is special and one year I am going to run it with no goal at all, just to take in the sights and sounds and I'm going to stop where the supporters are drinking outside the pubs and ask for some :-) and then I will stop at every water stop and cheering point where I know somebody. Just how cool a day would that be?

Onwards.