The big question is: why am I intending to run the Paris marathon when reading my posts it is clear that I am so unfit and not even running at the moment? Because (a) I love a (ridiculous) challenge, (b) I’m turning 50 in March next year and refuse to be lazy, unfit and 50 – 50 on its own is bad enough, (c) I love Paris and at least it is relatively flat, and (d) why not?

Well, ‘why not’ is easy to say but how it all started is I have, together with one of my best friends, entered the Giants Cup in South Africa which is at the end of May next year. I would like to do something that really challenges me each year (okay, so next year there will be 2 things!) and the Giants Cup falls around my Dad’s birthday so I intend to do it in his memory. It is a 60km trail race in the Drakensberg (30km each day) and while beautiful, will no doubt be gruelling. I can’t wait! Then a month or so ago a friend of mine sent me a message saying “let’s enter the Paris marathon”. After laughing hysterically (not a message I’d ever expect to receive) I replied “are you crazy?”.

However, his reasoning had me stumped. I am in any event going to be in France – I’ve booked a girls’ trip for my 50^th that falls around the marathon – and, as he very wisely pointed out, if I can’t run 42km by early April, I am going to struggle to do 60km trail by end May. I find it annoying when someone has an effective and logical argument. My last hope was that I wouldn’t get an entry but even that worked against me as entering was painless (apart from paying in Euro’s) and quick. Before I knew it, I had my number and my excuses had run out. I probably could have used the fact that I have never run even 10km’s on the road but it simply never came to me at the time. So now I am just hoping that number 61865 is a lucky one.

I know that I need to put some programme in place (more about that next time!) and get cracking – it is after all almost the start of December – but on top of everything else I had an operation 2 weeks ago and am unable to run until mid-December. That means I will have 3 months to train from scratch. 3 months to get ridiculously fit. 3 months to become a runner. Can I do it? I have no choice!