I’m hungover. It’s a particularly bad one and I’m a runner.

These two things are related, I promise.

I’ve decided I’m going to start training for my next marathon.

Sorry, this is all coming out in the wrong order. It must be the remnants of rum still coursing through my body getting me all jumbled.

What I mean to say is: Like any amateur runner who is out of action (normally for more honourable reasons like injury or illness), my condition (hangover) today left me longing to be better again so I can lace up, get outside and boast about the miles I complete on social media later.

So, yes, I’m going to run another marathon.

My last one was my least favourite run of all time. At Brighton Marathon 2024, from mile eight, I had an absolutely terrible time. And you probably know this but you don’t want to be having a terrible time from mile eight of a marathon; that leaves you with a lot of miserable miles.

An experience like this in the world of running can have effects way beyond those 26.2 miles.

And it did for me.

I immediately knew I needed a break from training for an event. Prior to my miserable day in April last year, I had completed the best training block of my life; I completed most of my training runs, I took my speed sessions seriously and I took my easy runs seriously. I was convinced I could achieve the time I was looking to tick off (sub 04:10). But things happened within and outside of my control (as they so often do on event day) that meant the Brighton Marathon 2024 just wasn’t my day. I finished minutes slower than my first marathon at Dorney Lake.

But worse than a bruised ego from missing the mark so drastically (by over 35 minutes by the way) last year, I felt pretty resentful towards running for a little while. Or towards training for something, to be more specific.

So I’ve been running mostly for joy over the last year and a bit – running easy a lot of the time and running fast only when I feel like it. The one event I trained for late last year was cancelled and I’ve intentionally avoided adding any other running events into the diary ever since.

But today – remember? – I’m hungover. So I can’t run but I absolutely can dream up all of the productive, meaningful and heroic things I’m going to do once I’m through this.

Phily Bowden’s (pro marathon runner) London Marathon didn’t go to plan this year either. I can’t claim that my running experiences and achievements have all too much in common with Phily’s (as an avid watcher of her YouTube channel where she documents her career, I think she’d agree we’re on first name terms now) but as she digested her London experience in the weeks following across her channels, one of her Instagram posts hit hard.

“Marathons hold such incredible power. The power to make dreams come true and the power to break your heart.” She goes onto write, “It’s that duality that keeps me coming back.”

I can’t run a sub 02:30 marathon like Phily. It’s rare I’ll ever have a double running day and I’ll never clock 100 mile weeks like she does. But whether you run a seven hour marathon, two-something or you’re starting the Couch to 5K programme, there’s something we all have in common. Despite how hard it can be to get out the door each week, despite not getting the runner’s high from every run and despite running through the cold, rain, wind and heatwaves, we all keep doing the same thing.

We keep coming back. It brings us moments of extreme highs and moments of even greater lows and yet we keep coming back.

It’s that duality that keeps me coming back.

The hangover’s lifting. Am I romanticising things? Sure. Did I really need to write nearly 700 words to announce I’m going to begin training for a marathon I haven’t even booked yet? No. But I am going to run 26.2 miles again. And I’m going to this year. I just need to find the right one.

But first: I’m going to eat a pizza.