England has a reputation for being rainy. One that I had always believed to be true, but running has taught me differently. In the past eight weeks of marathon training I’ve had to run four days a week and I always run at the same time, thus making it difficult to avoid bad weather, and yet I’ve only been rained on once and that was last night.

The thing I’ve learnt about rain is that it’s actually quite a good sign in one respect – it means it’s not that cold. And when it’s really cold, at least you can be pretty confident that it won’t rain. The two rarely ever come hand in hand. If it’s that cold it will just snow – which isn’t too much of a problem unless it compacts into ice. And once the ice is frozen solid on the pavements you find yourself looking forward to some rain as that will help it melt.

Running in the winter is just one big meterorolical game of rock, paper, scissors – only with the addition of sunshine which trumps all. Today the sky in london is blue, but I’m not scheduled to run today. Lets hope the weather people have got it wrong and that tomorrow we won’t be having sleet.