When people hear that I’m running two marathons in the space of six weeks their first response is ‘Wow’ or ‘Rather you than me’. This came about rather by accident than overly confident planning, but now that I’m in the process of training for it I’m less impressed with myself than I was.

Training for a marathon is hard, takes up a lot of your week yadd, yadda, yadda – we all know that. Doing this twice in a year takes up twice as much of your time… you’d think. That is unless you put them six weeks apart. I’m only doing one training cycle – it’s just a bit longer than usual because their are two marathons in it. And as long as my legs recover after Brighton Marathon (which I’m treating more as a long training run than a race) in time for Edinburgh Marathon, I’ll be getting two marathons in for the price of training for two.

What I’m not getting a running bargain on is the financial cost of running two marathons. Race entry, train travel and a night in a B&B is adding up to £245 for Edinburgh alone. Whoever said that running is a cheap sport obviously meant in comparison to Formula One.