"'Marathon man' or 'The loneliness of the long distance runner', are a couple of things that pop into the heads of a lot of people if you mention you're running the London Marathon.

The first, a film starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier contains scenes of immense pain and torture (quite close to the marathon) and the second, a book by Alan Sillitoe, couldn't be less accurate.

Upon mentioning that you're training for the marathon you are usually greeted by one of two responses. Response (a) goes something like this. Oh I know someone who ran the marathon a while back and managed it in 3 hours without doing any training and they went out on the booze the night before.

Response (b) follows a similar path to this. A friend of mine ran the marathon a while back. Super fit he was, but dropped down dead after 3 miles. How are you feeling?

So the pain and torture are accurate but it seems everyone knows someone who, at some point in time, has run the marathon. I'm feeling less lonely and special by the minute.

I have to let you into a secret though. I do know what I'm letting myself in for. I have run a marathon before as well as a couple of half-marathons and a few 10k's.

However I've never really put the effort in to the training and found the actual day to be quite a worry as to whether I will be able to finish.

The goal this time round is to complete a training programme and get to the marathon in good shape so I can enjoy the day.

This means 4 months of training and commitment. It sounds a long way off, but the big day comes round quickly. I don't want to be heading into April un-prepared, so knowing that there are people out there who are reading this, and people who are counting on me to raise money for them, is really going to help.

Training started in the New Year and I've already managed to do more training runs than when I last ran the marathon. I've also entered the half-marathon in Milton Keynes in March, which fits in nicely with my training plan.

There's not much to say about training at the moment as I've not been going seriously for that long but if you happen to see a chap dressed from head to toe in black lycra running round Ceinws and Corris it's not the Milk Tray man it's me.

Article writtrn by David Oswald.