100 marathons.

So, knee injury has come back to haunt me again. Sharp pain under the kneecap, depending how I land the foot and usually on a downhill slope. It goes away with rest, but rest I don't want or need. However, it is aggravated by my being so stiff - so I can do some work on flexibility. In other news, a friend of mine has been inducted into the 100 Marathon Club. It is, by any standards, an awesome achievement and one which, for me conjures up several loosely-connected thoughts. Firstly, it's proper 'old-school' running. The members of this club aren't chasing places in London, nor are they great charity fundraisers. They are just as likely - in fact more so - to turn up at a race involving just a couple of dozen people, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but friends and long-suffering family members as support. In that respect they are the latest in a long and honourable British marathon tradition. For example, I used to work with a chap who told us of his exploits in the Liverpool Marathon which had fields of 30-ish and which finished in front of the Kop on a Saturday afternoon. If you dig through archive photos of the times, you may find fading snaps of strange, skinny men running through traffic accompanied by nothing more than kids on bikes. It really was a different world back then.

There is also this obsessive, completist eccentric trait which is classically British. Record collections, label collections, book collections, train numbers, football grounds, real ales, you name it, we've got it. Running 100 marathons fits in well here too. I think you have to take account of all the travelling too. Running 100 marathons means you have to travel to 100 starts and they are all over the country - and other countries, too. I think you need to be determined and organised. Finally, you have to recognise it as a sporting achievement. It's 2620 miles, for goodness' sake! Also what drives a man to recognise that he may not be quick enough to challenge for honours in any single event, but he can change the game completely by being the last man standing. So Well Done Arthur, take a bow. What an awesome achievement.