Here am I at the start of the Geneva Marathon, full of apprehension but quietly confident of getting round in my target time of 4 hours 15 minutes. It was raining as we started and continued to do so for most of the race, hence the fetching hat.
I'd trained pretty hard for this race. I'd even taken on a personal trainer to increase my upper body strength which was not difficult since it was almost zero. She even got me to break the habit of a lifetime by running more upright, "keeping the core tight" as her voice kept saying inside my head.
I'd also been much more careful about diet and carb loading in the days before and one of my pockets was stuffed full of jelly babies to keep the sugar levels up. And, believe it or not, I'd hardly touched a drop in three weeks.
They call it the Geneva Marathon but actually only the last six miles or so are run through the city. Around 2,000 of us started in a prosperous, leafy suburb called Chene Bourg and then ran deep into the countryside through little hamlets with quaint spired churches. Everywhere was farmland, with horses running around fields, cows grazing and all against the stunning backdrop of the snow-capped Jura Mountains.
The picture above doesn't do it justice - I took it hastily on my phone while trying not to stop.
We'd been entertained at the start by a Swiss jazz band, and a couple more during the course were augmented by one rock band and a group of four elderly women in national costume singing and yodelling a folk song. Being half-Austrian, yodelling is in my DNA, though they remained impassive when I responded in kind. Can't think why.
The race was brilliantly organised with refreshments - water, quartered oranges and bananas - available every five miles or so. Not many people turned out to watch, given that we were in the countryside in the rain, but those who did were most encouraging. The official bibs all have one's first name on. When I did Paris last year, I got fed up with being called "Bub", so I went with Robert this year. So it was "Allez Robert, Bravo Robert".
I managed a first by running 22 and a half miles without stopping. After that, every 100 yards felt like a mile and I was working on willpower alone. About 24 miles in, one of my shoelaces came undone. When I tried to bend to tie it up, my legs refused to allow me to go low enough and when I stood back up, my muscles seemed to push into running at the same speed I'd been travelling beforehand. It's both a weird and amusing sensation that I'd experienced before in other marathons.
In the last mile, by now mentally with the fairies, I stopped again through exhaustion and a Brit in the crowd, dressed in combats, came out and handed me a mug of water. In the loudest of manners, he exhorted me for one last push and told me that the end was around the next corner. As I responded to his encouragement, he called me a legend. That was another first!
When I got to that "last corner", inevitably there were several more to come, but I made it. I looked at my watch - 4 hours, 14 minutes and 56 seconds. Result! That's only six minutes longer than my first marathon run some 13 years ago. Life in the old dog yet.
What's more, I soon discovered that I'd reached my £1,000 sponsorship target for Afrikids - so another result, and a huge thank you to all who sponsored me.
It was time to collect my medal and do what all good athletes should do and stretch. So none of that. At least, not in that way.
