Entering the London Marathon

Yes, I know it's stupid of me, but I've signed up to the marathon. Actually, I didn't really sign up. I mouthed my way into it. Andy had just signed up for his second in successive years, and I casually mentioned how much I'd love to do it, how now that I've been running for so long and at such length I'd probably find it rather easy, and how the crying shame was that it was too late and the entries had to be in weeks ago.

Idiot. A few days later I pop over to Andy's. His wife Michelle gleefully waves an envelope at me. Through a friend of a friend she has got hold of a last-minute charity place.

"Isn't that fantastic?" she says. "Just when you said you fancied doing it. Andy will be so happy."

I try to smile, but fail. Nothing comes out, not even a gulp. My face sticks.

"I've not really run much in the last few weeks," I quiver pathetically.

"That's OK. Andy will soon have you up to speed. There's loads of time left."

"I'm carrying an old injury. Muscle tissue thing."

"You've not mentioned that before."

"No, well . . ."

"Great news, isn't it?"

Yes, I say, terrific, leaving her house with the envelope.

"You don't have to do it, of course," Michelle says. "There's no pressure."

No way out now. If I screw up the form, and I normally screw up forms, I could miss deadline day. I warn Andy that I've got a bad record with them.

Within seconds Michelle is round to make sure I do it right.

The bottom of the form is terrifying. It demands your Visa number and practically promises that if you fall short of the £1,500 you have promised to raise, come July 1 they will break into your account and take it for themselves.

The marathon seems a very different beast from what it used to be. I wonder if I could excuse myself on ideological grounds - if everybody has to raise £1,500 how many people does it exclude? I reckon I could just about get there, because the Guardian has lots of staff and I can beg readers for help. But if your boss doesn't employ hundreds or if you've not got a few fabulously rich friends you've no chance.

I try out my ideological objection on Michelle and Andy.

"It's true," Andy says. "It is terribly exclusive."

"You copping out?" Michelle says.

I try to laugh, as if that's the craziest notion ever. No way out.

I've been running consistently if slowly for years. Recently, I've almost enjoyed it. As soon as I sign on the dotted line, though, I feel like I never want to put one foot in front of the other again. Just the other week Andy and I went on a six-miler down and up hill. Now he suggests we do it twice as part of the training. I feel sick. I've developed running phobia. I tell him I don't think I'll ever be able to run with him again until the big day, if I get that far.

So I've been training by myself, largely in the house. I run on the spot on the wooden Ikea floor for an hour or so, listening to music and watching some footy-related activity. I have to run inside because it's so boring outside. Boring and freezing. All I can do is count steps to pass the time, and once you've got past 13,000 you start coming over all Sam Beckett about existence.

Ten days ago, I felt the beginnings of a flu. Probably my immune system collapsing. After my hour's running on the floor, I ran in the woods for one hour 40 minutes. By the time I returned home the incipient flu was in full flow.

Last weekend, flu still in full flow, I repeated the run. I returned home, a ghost, my lungs a heaving bag of scar tissue. Every little wheeze feels like the grim reaper playing fiddle on my chest with a hacksaw. My family are concerned (because they think I'm on my way out) and angry (because they think I'm a plonker for running in the first place).

Are there really 46,000 London marathonees (half of them nonogenarians in gorilla outfits and flippers) going through this with me? The human capacity for pointless endeavour never ceases to amaze me. And to think that only eight of the 600,000 runners who have entered the London marathon in its first 25 years have met their maker along the way. Incredible.

I've got a whole new respect for Jimmy Savile and Nell McAndrew and Paula Radcliffe. Yes, Paula may get paid £265,000 to ease the pain, but to run 26 miles in little more than two hours while impersonating a chicken and doing a number one, very possibly a number two, at the same time is truly wondrous. Paula, you are the supreme multi-tasker, and I raise my inhaler to you.