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Originally posted by Marcus:
Lee (again??!!) and Rolyshark!

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Walk around if you need to.

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Dancing Bananas

There's an icon available at the Thailand-UK.com community forum that allows members to wordlessly express joy in posts announcing marriages, visa success, births and the like which I've been looking forward to using ever since the training for this marathon started last January. Limping along on my persistently dodgy ankle through long cold training runs, I'd soothe away the pain with the thought of all the dancing bananas I'd post when announcing marathon success and the sponsorship raised for the orphanage.

On Friday, at Naneh's leaving party and Sarah's joint birthday party, Tom asked me when I last did a long run. Fifteen years ago or so, I must have been about twenty-five. I followed that up with years of smoking and drinking. No, no; recently. Oh, recently, well what with this injury...

Dao came into the school on Saturday with a huge bowl of my favourite noodles. My dad cooked up more pasta and veg and cheese than I thought would be possible in a non-industrial kitchen, and I spent all three hours of 'The English Patient' stretched out on the settee massaging the ankle and ignoring the fear.

At twenty to ten Colin phoned from Bangkok to wish me luck and thirty minutes later I was jogging at half my normal pace up the first hill of the course. 'It's not Snowdon', the race commentator had said at the start, 'but it's not nice either!' The ankle was okay. What hurt was the hard skin on my little toe, which I have no idea how to treat. Three times I had to stop to put new plasters over it and each time I saw the minutes speed up to mock me. I was glad of the drink stations for the chance to walk a few steps, but they were over too soon and the regular shots of agony started up again.

I'm now perversely grateful for that toe. The intense localised pain took my mind off the fatigue I was suffering elsewhere, and after the second hour I calculated that I could try for a decent time. I'd brought a Powerbar along and gave myself a mouthful at each mile marker. The maths got more and more difficult the more I ran, but at three hours I'd done just over twenty miles and knew that it was possible.

The marshals were great. Some even called out the remaining time to a sub four. I was getting regularly overtaken after three and a half hours but had only three miles to go. Everything hurt. My toes, my ankle, the balls of my feet, my thighs, my arms and shoulders. Just two miles to go. I focused on the runners ahead and tried to keep up. Just Keep Running. One mile; my last mouthful of Powerbar. I'm groaning out loud, cursing and grunting with every footfall. My parents wave from the crowd on the approach to the finish and I wave, grin, and point to my watch. I'm wobbly and disorientated but they point me in the right direction and I manage the final stretch to the finish line. Three hours, fifty-six minutes and thirty seven seconds.

Sub 4.

I still can't quite believe it's true. I ran a marathon a week after my fortieth birthday in under four hours. Not only that, a huge number of friends, family, work-mates and members of the Thailand-UK.com community backed me in this run and clubbed together through it to raise over six hundred pounds for an orphanage in Thailand. I got home, had a bath, lay down and felt ill for the rest of the day. I had done it. But I hadn't done it alone. So thank you, thank you everyone.

And now imagine a line of joyful dancing bananas...