I Can’t Get Better if I Don’t Get Started: Just Because it’s Hard at First Doesn’t Mean it Always Will Be

The filthy black sky loomed large on that ice-cold Autumn morning.

Yanked violently from my slumber by a shrieking alarm, I paced around the house to the beat of my own optimism.

The world outside seemed dead, lifeless, but I felt more alive than I had in a long while.

Earlier that week, I’d sent off all the paperwork and officially accepted the challenge to run the Virgin London Marathon.

That was the easy bit, but now there was work to be done.

Even though I’d applied to run the marathon way back at the start of the year and thought about it often since, my mind still gorged on doubt.

It wasn’t that I didn’t think I’d be up to the challenge once it presented itself, more that it would never present itself in the first place.

I’d heard that marathon places were not always the easiest thing to acquire, and had serious doubts that they’d let an out-of-shape slob such as myself enter.

Alas, they did, and I was woefully ill-prepared.

Now that I’ve been running regularly for several years, I know that marathons are the sort of thing you do after you’ve been at it for a…