marathon

So the London Marathon has come and gone for another year. Suddenly the village is full of huffing & puffing folk inspired into starting to train for next year. Not me. I'm all for walking, but running is definitely outside my area of expertise. Even in my extreme youth when I was fit and played sports at school I struggled with running. Wrong ankles, wrong lungs, wrong attitude. So the London Marathon is safe from me - like climbing Everest, it will remain forever outside the scope of my ambition.

Besides, I'd surely get horribly claustrophobic in such a crush of people. Give me solitude in the wide open spaces over that any day.

The big story from the Marathon this year was the Maasai warriors running to raise money for a well for their village. Doesn't that just kill you? I think it's amazing, and I'm not even sure why it affected me so deeply. So many of the thousands of people who do the Marathon raise money for charity, and that's a wonderful and generous reason to run. But there is something poignant and special about tribal elders doing the same thing not for a distant, impersonal charity but to improve the lives of their own people in an immediate and direct way.

And have you seen the diary of the Chief printed in the Guardian? It's interesting and entertaining & you can read here.

Distance - 2 miles
Time - 45 mins
Dog(s) - all
Weather - sunny
Could I do another 5? - Probably