Well what a week it's been!! Monday morning I wake up to the news that an infamous tyrant, a man who has wrought misery to so many over the last decade met his sudden and unexpected end (I refer of course to the Lavington East parish by-election and...

My friend Stuart and I are sort of unlikely friends. I'm an ex-police officer and he......isn't. People in our small town in Wiltshire are surprised by our friendship, which has survived all manner of ups and downs. But it isn't that much...

I took a few days off running last week. Things have been going pretty well and having increased my weekly mileage to 50 I thought it best not to push my luck. I've always been lucky in that over the years I've picked up only a handful of injuries...

Alan Sillitoe's superb novella The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner tells the story of Smith, a burglarwho has been placed in a young offenders institute. Smith's gift for distance running comes to the attention of the institute's governor...

"Well these running shoes feel absolutely fine but they can't possibly fit because they're a 6.5 and I'm definitely only a 6 and can't you do them in pink?" Fashionista's club run is not so much a "pile on" as...

As it happens I spend much of my time in the US. Not physically, but virtually. In particular I enjoy reading and posting on their political message boards, finding them far livelier than their counterparts here (the Sean Hannity site is a favourite,...

Even at the age of 43 it is difficult to escape the fretting of a worrying mother, especially at Christmas. This year she was worried that I was on my own on Christmas Day. I explained to her, patiently, that on the contrary I had plenty of company: Bertrand...

So not much fun then, the snow and ice. I'll be lucky if I run/skid/trip 20 miles this week. Last night's club run saw five of us turn out (there are usually 30+). Have been forced to fall back on other things to do. Here's what I've...

Due to the weather, have been stranded in a part of the globe with no internet access, sometimes known as "my mother's house". Luckily she is hungover so have escaped for a few minutes to a friend's whence I type this as she makes coffee...

The philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was no runner, being in fact of quite sensitive disposition (he was famously so averse to the cold he took to sitting inside a large oven...not that this was to prevent the pneumonia that killed him). He was...

I managed to dodge a fairly big bullet yesterday, courtesy of this quixotic pastime/mode of life that we on here all share. For some time my son Ben's mother and I have been attempting to put in place some good structures which will allow us to...

I believed in the threat of the Millenium Bug. Part of me thought that the European Single Currency would be a success. When I taught philosophy I was sympathetic to the idea that physical matter did not exist and I took seriously the possibility that...

Just a very quick post to note the extraordinary announcement at yesterday's post-New York Marathon press conference. Geb abandoned yesterday's race at about mile 16 with a knee problem and indicated afterwards that the time was right for him...

[....some of this might -and I'm only saying might - have antecedents in some of my forum posts....but I'm admitting to nothing and you get all this for free anyway.....] The business of running is a sort of irritating intermission in the collection...

You have to be careful with regrets. Once you start unpicking your past and wishing away the things you have but shouldn't have done you sort of end up wishing away the present as well. I'm not happy to be an alcoholic (although the recovery journey...

...as told to Moriarty. Monday Gosh! This is a jolly sight harder than I remember. Just been for a casual jog around St James Park. Just an informal thing, doesn't do to be too ostentatious in this age of austerity. So we kept it low key...

Nothing to boast about but.....I did once do a sub 40 min 10K on the back of a serious night's drinking. These were the splits: (1) three small lagers (well not that small); (2) half a bottle of wine; (3) a half litre of mineral water....I'm...

Like most of us my life is complicated. And running eases the complications. I spent a fair chunk of the last twenty years as a police officer, but prior to that I was a university teacher in philosophy. My two passions are running and philosophy and...