So, my book Improve Your Marathon and Half Marathon Running has now been published by Crowood and I expect that even as I write the Amazon online system is about to crash in a J K Rowling kind of way. Rowling aside, the modern world doesn't really need books the way it used to so if you want to make a small fortune as a writer I think the method would be to start out with a large fortune.

 The least I can do here is to publish a snippet that didn't past the Commissioning Editor's cut as it was deemed too risque for a coaching book. It is in a chapter's first paragraph and the punchline is 'The first thing you'll notice at a road race is that a guy wearing a race number suddenly acquires the incontestable right to pee wherever the hell he likes'. I still like it though. Pleased to say that the anecdote about the Spanish country lad who gave up working at an abattoir to become double world marathon champion has been kept in. And no it's not to make a point about red meat intake