This is the last week, and every entrant for Brighton must be in a similar state of mind. In the day job, as a medical librarian, I found myself looking at a database subject heading for castration anxiety.
I could not find a heading for marathon anxiety, but I'm sure that's what I am suffering from. During a last speed session on Seaford front this morning, I presented with the following symptoms:
- An unfounded belief that my right knee, shin and ankle will not last the course. I suddenly find I have twinges in parts of my body that I never knew I had
- Shoe anxiety: should I wear the very worn pair, which has seen me through all my long runs, or the faster, newer but less comfortable ones I wear for road training? Buying new ones is, naturally, out of the question at this late stage. Suppose my cats eat my shoelaces the night before the marathon?
- Forebodings about the Shoreham stretch, those long miles round the docks with few spectators and nothing but will-power to keep one going
- Weather neurosis: will it be hot, like last year, with exhausted runners carted off in wheelbarrows? Or wet and windy like last weekend?
- What if aliens invade and take us all off to their galaxy, to farm us as we farm cattle and swine? What if I wake, turned like Joseph K into a giant insect? What if the road collapses and we all fall into a sewer and drown?
Some of these fears can be planned for; for the others, I can do nothing about, so it is not worth worrying. As for castration, it is, I hope, unlikely.
