Let me take you back to October last year. I was on a plane, flying to Frankfurt with Liz, Katie and Jen, together as ‘Team Rainbow’. I hate flying so I tend to distract myself with books, music, films or mindless speculation about marathons.

It was the last weekend in October, which is somewhat of a bumper marathon weekend in the UK. In fact, I had a place for the Dublin marathon that same weekend but we’d flown to Frankfurt instead. Frankfurt marathon was on the Sunday, Dublin was on the Monday, so my companions joked that I could catch an earlier flight from Germany and arrive in Ireland ready to race again 24 hours after my first.

Somewhere between leaving UK airspace and touching down in Germany a plan has been formed: on the same weekend the following year, we’d run two marathons in two different countries. There are many promises I’ve made while being 30,000 ft up in the air (mainly along the lines of “If I survive this flight I promise I’ll be a better person”) but usually they’re in my own head so I have nobody to keep me accountable to them.

It’s one year on and two of that original party have been passed as medically fit to run. So we’re going to run two marathons, in two countries on one big weekend.

On Saturday 25 October we’ll be doing the Snowdonia Marathon. It’s got some amazing views, which is lucky because it’s also supposed to be one of the hardest road marathons in the UK. Then we’ll get a ferry from Wales to Ireland, and on the Monday we’ll run the Dublin Marathon on much flatter roads. That’s the plan anyway.

To revive our depleted enthusiasm for running 26.2 miles for a second time, we’ll be joined in Dublin by some more lovely marathon runners: Cathy; Laura and Josie. I hope Dublin is ready for us – we’re going to need a lot of Guinness.