My head's empty, but my legs are full.

I am now running every day. 3-5 miles one day, 7-10 miles the next until Sunday when I run a bit further. I don't plan the runs anymore now, I just leave the house with enough time to be able to get back and prepare breakfast and lunch. And I LOVE it!

Then I just feel my body, how I'm landing, if my breathing is matching my steps, and I just go. The speeds vary now too, if I know it's going to be short one then I'll quicken as much as I can, longer runs I just pace it out. I don't wear a watch either, I'll match up the time I left with the time I get back, then g pedometer it as I greedily chow down my cereal. And I LOVE it!

But the strangest thing has started happening, I don't think about much anymore, the big things at least. I may have a happy memory pop into my head every now and then, especially if I run past a place of meaning or importance. Usually it's pubs I've fallen out of, or doorways where I've stolen kisses. There's lots of those places around where I live so these little pictures pop into my head, a short, punchy memory of days gone by, but nothing substantial, nothing that follows me through the whole run, and the same goes for bad thoughts, they seem to have fallen away. It seems that the more I run, the less I think.

I must confess that I think about the marathon a lot, and what it represents. I've wanted to run this marathon for such a long time, and now it's 9 weeks away. And the average finish time I posted in London this year adds a delicious tension to Chicago. It's not a question of beating my last time, I could beat that if I spent the morning at a Pizza Hut buffet, drank a couple of pints, had a snooze and set off, I'd still beat that time, it's by how much? how fast can I go? And I know it shouldn't matter, and that the achievement is the real joy but it isn't. It's the beating of something that you know can be beaten.

There a solitariness about running, a sense that it really is you against you, and you for you. The effort you put in, the early mornings and late nights. The weird sleeping patterns and boring diet, all of these things you do to yourself in the hope of bettering yourself. You deny yourself what you want, in order to get what you really want in the future, oh sweet irony!

By all accounts I should be lonely. I don't go out anymore, I'm in bed by 11pm, up at 6am, I don't eat anything that doesn't in some way benefit my running, and I don't drink like I use to. In fact, I may have a glass of wine with a meal but that is it.

And it's shit. I hate it! I hate the lack of fun, I hate not seeing my mates, I hate the constant thought that somewhere the best night ever is happening and I'm not there. I hate seeing the photos and hearing the stories, I hate the tweets and status' I hate not being in the middle of the road at 4am kissing a sweetheart and not caring about the next day.

But I don't hate it at much as I hated a couple of months ago, when I limped over the line four hours and thirteen minutes after I'd started, I hated the looks of pity and disappointment, I hated the realization that nobody else had done this to me except me, I hated that so much more.

And this hatred is driving me forward but I worry that I'm pushing too hard, letting hate and determination cloud my better judgement, and we all know that nothing good ever came from hatred. Which I think is something from Star Wars but I can't be sure.

So I have decided to put love back into my running, and I LOVE it!