Keep on Running by Phil Hewitt

been more pleased.
    Â Â All sorts of reasons militate against us running together, not least the fact that Fiona's parents live in Colchester, 140 miles away from our home in Hampshire. Even more significantly, Michael and I run at a very different pace, not surprisingly given that there are 31 years between us. But I welcomed him warmly into the running fold for so many reasons. We'd always got on well, but maybe this was the point at which the usual father-in-law/son-in-law relationship developed into the firm friendship we now enjoy.
    Â Â I'd got together with Fiona in 1986 towards the end of our modern languages degrees at Oxford, the university Michael had also attended, completing his doctorate there just before Fiona was born. His encouragement was central to my decision to return there – with Fiona in 1987 – to embark on my own doctoral research. A university librarian, Michael was well versed in research at that level. He knew what was required, and it was helpful to have someone within the family who had been there before. I completed my PhD – or DPhil, as Oxford prefers to call it – in 1990, confident that an Oxford doctorate would do wonders for my approval ratings as far as Michael was concerned.
    Â Â And now the boot was on the other foot. Just as Michael had blazed the academic trail for me to follow, so now he was dipping into my world of marathons – much to my delight. It was a vindication as much as anything else; proof – to my mind – that running stupidly long distances wasn't necessarily a daft thing to do. Of course, I loved the bizarreness of it anyway, but if two of us within the family were at it, then somehow it was legitimised. It helped that it was no longer just me doing it.
    Â Â Just as importantly, it gave me someone to swap ideas with, someone to share the enthusiasm with. I wasn't a club runner; I was fitting in running whenever I could. Now, in Michael, I suddenly had someone to chew the running cud with. For Michael's first marathon, I enjoyed dispensing my own wisdom and experience, much as Pamela had done for me four years before, and this helped my own confidence grow. But, in reality, it was an instant rapport of running equals, the link not forged by any superior knowledge on my part, but by a meeting of two rather stubborn (OK, very stubborn) people united in a common cause. The pleasure of the relationship was that he now 'understood', just as I 'understood', and the value of that is incalculable.

    London 2002 was my hypochondria marathon. I took co-codamol, paracetamol and a couple of ibuprofen before starting. I also, for no particular reason, took the diarrhoea medicine Arret; ironic really, given that arret-ing was the very last thing I wanted to do. The problem was that my deformities were catching up with me. My knees were a mess; stiff, aching and awkward. As the race approached, I ran into trouble. My big dream was to run the marathon in under four hours, and, in the final few weeks, I could see that dream evaporating. It was gutting. Grumpy became my middle name.
    Â Â For London first time round, my bandy-leggedness had been negated simply by well-chosen running shoes. Alexandra Sports had directed me to the best possible match to compensate against my tendency to roll my foot inwards, and it had been enough.
    Â Â But six weeks before the London Marathon of 2002, I did a three-hour 20-mile run and discovered – perhaps because my imperfection and its consequences had worsened – that 20 miles was now the limit of my shoes/knees without prosthetics, those artificial devices or extensions which replace or correct a missing or malfunctioning body part. I was rolling my foot/leg inwards as I ran, which didn't simply twist my knee; it was also wastefully inefficient. Nature was failing; science needed to step in.
    Â Â I saw a physio who massaged my legs, showed me some exercises and told me which prosthetics to