I was sitting on the sofa watching the 2005 London Marathon with my 12-year-old daughter. The trees were just coming into pale green leaf in St James' Park, and the athletes were gliding effortlessly across the screen. My daughter prodded me in the stomach and said: "You're podgy".
Like most people, through my 20s and well into my 30s I could eat and drink anything without changing shape, but by my 40s some kind of metabolic change occurred. I weighed about 14 stone or 90kg, which didn't seem excessive as I'm over 6ft - but my Body Mass Index rating came to a shade over 25; which the NHS website tells me is overweight.
Well, you can't convince your soon-to-be-teenage daughter that you're cool, but you can do something about your flab. And with a family history of heart disease, taking action seemed like a good idea. So when the 2006 deadline came around, I got an application form, sent it in and waited. In December I heard I'd got a place in the ballot, which was really lucky because five times as many runners apply as they have places.
I've actually always liked running, so deciding to do the marathon wasn't really difficult or traumatic. In the past, I'd start running for a few days and then stop for weeks or months on end. But when the ballot place came through it was different - this was serious, no backing out now. A looming date gives you focus - you can't just decide to roll over in bed and put off your training till another day.
So, I looked at the training regimes suggested in literature sent by the London Marathon organisers, and went to a specialist running shop to get a new pair of trainers. Running in the wrong trainers is miserable. Your feet hurt, you get pains in muscles you didn't know you had and you just want to give up.
I went to a specialist, tried out some shoes and got some quizzical looks from the shop assistant as I ran up and down the street outside. "You have a very strange gait", I was told. I thought I should get some general fitness too so I joined a gym. I went twice. I hated the machines, the music, the claustrophobia of being indoors.
The best option was clearly to be the great outdoors. I live near the huge Hampstead Heath park, which makes running a lot nicer than it might be. I mapped out a three mile route and some four, five and ten mile routes, and started running six days a week. I must be hooked, because I'm doing the marathon again this year.
The best advice I can give is to start conservatively and build up over the three months left between New Year and the marathon in mid April. I start as soon as I get my daughter up for school in the morning. Amazingly for London, I can run for five miles and see no more than 10 others runners or dog walkers. As the spring comes, I can hear great spotted woodpeckers, and I also see a green woodpecker that uses the same tree every year. I smell wild garlic growing by the stream that flows down from Totteridge towards Golders Green..
As the day itself draws near, experts say that smartest thing to do is a weekly run of increasing length. At first these long runs were a real struggle. Both this year and last I've had to walk the last couple of miles of at least one long run - then found I could add two miles on the next week's run with no problems.
I think these long runs are the single most important piece of targeted training you can do, otherwise your body just doesn't learn to tolerate long distances. Last year I ran over 20 miles twice; still nearly four miles short of a marathon distance, and I found the last few miles really tough. So this year I've done a run of over 25 miles.
The good thing about being an older runner is that you can still run a long way even if you're slow. A word of warning though: my brother-in-law started running over 15 miles in January, then got muscle and tendon injuries from training too much too soon and had to take a month off. In fact in the last three weeks it's best to ease off - the latest advice is not to do a long run within three weeks of the marathon. This should help ensure that your body is physically prepared but still relaxed and revived.
Another lesson I've learned from last year is warming down. We all know about warming up, but several minutes of stretching are vital after a run. I didn't do that after the marathon last year, because there's so much excitement it's easy to forget. I'm sure that's one of the reasons I had various niggling injuries for months afterwards; calf and Achilles problems mainly, and even something called bursitis.
The day itself was brilliant. There were 30,000 runners and huge crowds cheering us on; it's a national event and you feel like you're a celebrity for the day. Everyone is so enthusiastic and kind, it's the sort of day when the world seems a good place and you see the best side of humanity. I'm really looking forward to this years.
And, best of all, I don't get called podgy anymore.
Neil is running to raise money for Get Kids Going. If you would like to sponsor him, please click here.
The London Marathon is on the 22nd April.
