Last month I ran round Manchester marathon with Phil. I asked him to write about it. Here’s what he said.

On the road to Manchester marathon I found my running mantra. I had tried repeating a few. “Peace, dignity, and love” did not fit in with my essential beliefs.

“Asics, Adidas and Decathlon” felt a little ‘corporate’ after reciting it through an 18-mile training run. So I settled on: “I hate the track”.

Because I do.

It’s the coach’s fault. This was my third go at the Manchester marathon and she had prescribed a dose of track to get me under 4 hours 30 minutes.

She’d had some input into my previous races, but due to work, pub opening hours and a refusal to be told what to do, I had “adapted” a lot of her advice. This resulted in an approach that mainly consisted of two midweek 10ks on a treadmill and a long run at the weekend.

This year’s plan involved less indoor sweating and more outdoor swearing. My two 10ks were replaced by three 4-milers for the main parts of the plan, with Tuesday circled round on my calendar with ‘Track’ in gothic doom font.

My particular circle of hell was the Paddington running track with the Serpentine running club. I hung out with the slower kids at the back and we dragged each other around the sets as the rest of the class thundered by.

“It’s good to feel uncomfortable but know you can still keep running,” said the coach. It was uncomfortable all right. But as the training weeks ticked by I could feel it making a difference. Hermes, the fleet footed messenger of the gods, did not have to worry for his job, but I got more at ease with the discomfort.

On the day of the race I was hoping for that PB. I had the advantage of knowing the course really well, but also the knowledge of where the wheels, engine and roof rack usually fell off (hello 19 miles!).

The coach had made an eleventh hour decision to run the course too, so I had the pleasure of her company. Suffice to say, dear reader, it went well. Halfway came and under 4.30 was on the cards, I managed to stare down the grim 19 mile marker but felt like I was tying up badly around 21 miles in.

The coach chatted calmly while I had a stern word with both legs and sent an email to my lungs about getting a bit more involved with the team dynamic.

I wasn’t quite sure what time we were on in the last mile, but the coach was getting animated so I put my foot down as hard as I could. “Two minute, two minutes, you’ve got two minutes!” she shouted as the finish line came into view. I lumbered towards it to finish in just under 4.14, knocking more than 16 minutes of my PB.

So, despite my running mantra, in the unlikely event Kirsty Young asks me for my favourite tracks, Paddington would have to get a shout out.