At school I was bad at games. REALLY bad at games. Last at everything individual event, last one picked for every team event. I figured I was a "mind" person, not a body person. Mind things I could do. In 2000 I was the World Intelligence Champion, and the Mind Sports Olympiad's first ever Grandmaster in intelligence. So the fact I had never run a single lap of a track without puffing and stopping under halfway didn't matter, right?

In 2013, weighing in at 19 stone something I went for my 40 plus health check at the doctor's fully expecting to be put on a course of statins and told my active life was over. Not that "active" was the right word. I couldn't climb a staircase without stopping half way. To my consternation, all my readings came back normal. It felt like I'd been given a reprieve. I asked the doctor what I could put my body through. Anything, she told me. Really? I checked. Apparently so. 

I made the choice not to let the chance slip, and I set myself the goal of rowing 100 miles on an erg the following year, and doing it for the remarkable work of Apopo. It had suddenly hit me that what I had always done was push myself to breaking point, but I had always assumed the only limits worth exploring were the ones in my head. All of a sudden I realised there was a whole uncharted world at my finger - and toe - tips, and that I was on the verge of reaching the point where it would remain unexplored forever. This was step 1 of seeing how far I could push my body while it still had 10 or 20 good years left. I managed 108 kilometres. I was both pleased and disappointed I hadn't seen it through. 

But that year I had seen a documentary about a race called Badwater, 135 miles on foot through Death Valley at the hottest time of year. And I decided that was the limit I wanted to test. I set an arbitrary limit, 2021-2022, when I was 50. I'd do it then. And so, on October 6th 2014, still unable to run more than a few hundred metres without stopping for breath, I took my first running steps at the Blenheim 10k. 

Under a year later, on July 11-12 2015, and so far just over 3 stone lighter, I completed my first 100k running race, the Race to the Stones. I hadn't only learned how to run, and begun to chart what my body could do, I had learned what I should have known from the start - what you can do with your body, once you've put in the stupid amounts of training, is almost entirely down to what you can train your mind to do.

Next up, on October 25th, is the Snowdonia Marathon, and then whatever 2016 brings. And all of it for the amazing team at Apopo. Please, if any of this has resonated with you, consider helping their amazing work.