Marathon training could not come a moment too soon. Readers of a nervous disposition, and innocent maidens, stop reading now, but the other morning I caught sight of my towel-draped self in the bathroom mirror and realised that my stomach has reached Socratean proportions. That simile may have come to me because I am reading Bettany Hughes’s excellent The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life. That’s where the resemblance ends. I don’t spend my days in the agora, asking random strangers about truth or virtue. If I did, I would probably be put in the cells of Seaford police station with some hemlock.

So this morning I took myself out at about 6.30 for three miles. For the first section my legs were so weak that I wondered if I could complete this first quarter of a mile. I persevered and ran up Blatchington Hill, down to the sea, along the front and back to home. Storms have planed the steep shelves of Seaford beach into a gentle slope. I hope the same thing will happen to my stomach.