The Friend

[RED ITALIC TEXT IS CLIO - BLUE TEXT IS CHARLIE]... and the friend was someone we considered a genius – albeit a mad genius – of the running world, the one and only Charlotte Fairbairn. The frequency with which she has completed Marathons and charity runs over the past couple of years is staggering – at least to me, who towards the end of a simple 10 minute jog at Primrose Hill with my brother five months ago threw multiple tantrums, declared to shocked passbyers that I was “LITERALLY DYING” while stubbornly lying huffing and puffing on the grass trying to attract as much sympathy as possible.

Anyhow. In mid- November, after meeting The Running Oracle at the agreed time at the agreed location, she looked  at me eyes wide open as I told her of this merry jape Charlie and I (flippantly) signed up to. Her first question was: “Right, do you plan on doing this in a good time, or just getting around?” Charlie and I hadn’t thought that far, so I went for the second option. Glory in finishing the damn thing even if we were crawling across the finish line after nightfall when everyone else had gone home is still glory, no? Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief, and encouragingly told me that “Yes, that is possible”. Apparently we are all capable of running 20 miles if we really REALLY had to (like in the hypothetical situation that savage giant sabre-toothed tigers came back from extinction) – with training that should be apparently be a “doddle”, but it is the last 6.2 miles of a Marathon which are the killer miles, and the reason why sticking to training is so important.

Supplied with Runner’s Worlds magazines (waxing lyrical about the benefits of… beetroot shakes!), and heartened by the prospect of wearing snazzy Sweaty Betty headband & gloves which Charlotte kindly gave me as birthday presents (on the road to looking super faux-pro), she scribbled above an interview with Eliza Doolittle our running plan (below). A week later, like a mother duck, Charlotte led Charlie and me, her ducklings, into Runner’s Needs at Holborn where we spent silly amounts of money on proper trainers which would be The Ones that we train in and run in Brighton in. What a thought.