After a couple of weeks of thinking that I may have to watch Venice Marathon from a gondola on the sidelines because of injury, a few visits to the physio and a deal made with the Marathon Gods saw me heading out for the last long run before taper time with two fully functioning legs and a glimmer of hope that I would go to the ball.

Deciding how long the last long run should be was difficult. The difficult balance to achieve with training is to do enough that it gives you confidence to know you can go the distance on the day, but not do so much that you’ll struggle to recover in time – or in my case make an injury recur. The training plan said 20 miles. The physio said ‘don’t push it’. Reason said (as last week’s run was only 10) maybe 15. Eventually I compromised with myself and set out to run 18 miles.

A lot of marathoners and marathon plans favour a long run of 20 miles before the big day. For me, though, 18 is plenty. Before my first marathon I ran a longest run of 18 miles on the advice of my bible ‘The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer’. Before Edinburgh Marathon where I went sub-4, I did this off the back of a longest run of 18 miles (if we don’t count the marathon I ran 6 weeks earlier). In fact the only time I’ve done a longer run than this was before my disastrous Nottingham Marathon. So 18 miles would do this time too.

The last long run should be used as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the big day. I decided not to treat East Londoners to me in my short shorts and garishly bright compression socks, but I did practice my fueling and throw in a few other obstacles that I’ll face in Venice.

The Venice Marathon website says: “In the final part of the marathon route (last 3 kilometers), runners will face 14 little bridges over Venice’s canals. Wooden ramps are put in place to prevent athletes from running on the steps.” Oh. This doesn’t scream PB potential.

So, in the last couple of miles of my 18-mile run, I headed north on the Lea Valley Canal and ran over four bridges. Sorted.

The website also said a highlight of the course would be a “Pontoon Bridge over Grand Canal, a 170-meters-long floating bridge which is built the night before the marathon and dismantled the night after.” Unfortunately the guys at Total Wipeout refused my requests to practice on their obstacles so this excitement will just have to wait for the big day itself.