Marathon training, the great voyage of discovery that will acquaint you better with yourself, break down the boundaries of what you thought was possible and show you that if you practice and want it badly enough, you can in fact hold a wee for six hours.

If you’re training for your first marathon, congratulations because you just got a new best friend in the shape of your toilet habits. You will become obsessed with when you last went, how much you’ve drunk, what colour your wee is and whether or not you might need to go again in the next hour.

New parents and marathon runners are the only people on earth, maybe with the exception of Gillian McKeith, who are this interested in numbers one and two. But this is an important matter. Nobody wants to have to stop for a number one on marathon day and they certainly don’t want to stop for a number two. Marathon portaloos pose two obstacles for the marathon runner: they generally have a long queue and they’re pretty grim.

There is, of course, the option to ‘do a Paula’ as it’s known and stop by the roadside. For the record though I’ve only seen Paula do this once in a marathon where as I have done it on no less than three occasions, so maybe this should be named after me instead. Should you decide to stop for a portaloo and you have the ability to block out the scenery, the queue will not only eat into your time but can make your legs forget how to run and you realise how much it hurts.

So as well as a well practiced routine of number ones alfresco, I also employ a technique that I’ve named ‘just bloody hold it’. Now the good thing about marathon running is that many of the skills gained from it cross over into real life situations. For example as I write this post I’m on a ‘third class’ train from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. Six hours of ‘just bloody hold it’ training in action.