It was incredibly lucky that they caught it (my cousin was not so lucky and died from a brain tumour a short while ago) but, unsurprisingly, the act of scooping out a chunk of John’s brain had a major effect upon him. Whole chunks of his memory were gone (except strangely for the lyrics of eighties music for which he has a now encyclopaedic memory), he had problems with his short-term memory and his short-circuited brain chemistry gave him severe depression.

I shared a flat with some close friends of John and he came to live with us in Kentish Town. Things seemed to be going well, though at times I would come down the stairs to hear John crying in his room. Shortly afterwards I went off on an expedition to Greenland, and when I returned John had gone. He had taken himself down to Beachy Head and prepared to jump off and kill himself. Luckily the police found him and John was strong enough to tell them that he needed help.

John was taken away and placed in a mental health institute, sharing his ward with people whose mental difficulties at time dwarfed his own. We would get the occasional phone call from John, and it was on one of these that he told us he would shortly be on day release and able to come and see us.

Sitting in our conservatory, John talked about his depression and in some ways it seemed very much linked to not being able to see a future. Acting did not seem to be a viable option anymore and John could not visualise anything else. What was the point in living if you had nothing to live for? Now, Ben and I talk a lot about the importance of goal-setting in life and attempting to do that which you are not sure you can do. I wondered if this might help John, so sitting there I said “John we have six months, next April you are going to run the London marathon”. John pointed out that I was the crazy one, he had never run before and got out of breath walking down the street. At which point I lent him some running trainers and told him we were heading out in ten minutes.

I beasted John on that run, I took him up the steepest longest hills in the area, at times running behind him and pushing him along. So many times John told me that he couldn’t carry on and I would ignore him, and somehow he found it in him to continue. He didn’t stop that day and by the time we reached home again he had run ten miles: ten more than he had ever run before. It wasn’t a traditional way to begin a training campaign and ran a real risk of turning John off running for life, but I wanted to show him that, even then, he was capable of far more than he thought. Just because he couldn’t see it did not mean he couldn’t do it. By the end of that day, he believed that with the right training there was a marathon in him.

The next time we went running, I strapped a heart rate monitor on John and didn’t let him break 160 beats per minute; he spent a fair amount of time walking but this time enjoyed the run. From then on John began to run more and more, mixing up sprints, long slow sessions and medium pace runs. Each day he would gain in confidence and I enjoyed the amazement in his voice when he would talk about the ease with which he took on hills that had nearly broken him on that first day. He moved out of the ward and found his own place, near enough to the park that he could continue his training.

Yesterday, John stood at the startline of the London marathon, wearing a pink polystyrene brain helmet and his runners number. Under the hottest conditions ever recorded for the London marathon, John made the 26.2 miles in four hours and 49 minutes, never stopping or walking once. I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of someone as I was of John yesterday.

John raised £5,000 for the Brain Research Trust and is not stopping there. We’ve begun talking about how we might run across the continental US in the near future and I am also trying to persuade him that an Ironman might be a good training session to put in. After all if he can come from nowhere to run a marathon, what is there out there that he can’t achieve if he puts his mind to it.

Thanks John, yesterday you made my day.

I caught a guy in full kit as he was taking a swig from his water bottle and tucked in behind him. His rapier-thin bike were set up with tri-bars and I asked him if he was training for a particular triathlon. “Nah mate, I am a time-triallist.”

Shit.

He cranked up the pace and we both began to fly around the park occasionally picking up other cyclists and then swiftly dropping them. It was good to know that the endurance base I had built up in Greenland was translating well, but as my heart-rate began to surge up I realised that I would need to put in a few high-intensity sessions before I could say I was really fit.

Thankfully, the time-triallist bugged out after 45 minutes or so and I was able to do a few more laps at a more leisurely pace. I followed the bike with a scenic six-mile run over Hampstead Heath just to say Hello to one of my favourite places again, before heading over to Ben’s to jump into the stack of work that awaits us. We are now truly in the run-up to SOUTH and everything has notched up a gear. Still, we have some very exciting meetings coming up and we are both looking forward to getting cracking. I’ll keep you posted.

Unfortunately Ben manages to persuade the others that a course over every single steep hill in Surrey would be the way forward and Surrey has a lot of the sods. The first big hill is relatively short but feels vertical, I push up out of the saddle and feel my quads start to scream. The top is marked by a bridge and I focus on just getting there and hoping that my legs recover on the downhill. However, it turns out that I was being overly optimistic when I called the bridge the top. In fact, halfway point would have been more accurate. I know this is going to hurt tomorrow.

The hills didn’t stop for another four hours, but I kept a cheerful grin (albeit with gritted teeth) and by the time I pulled up in my driveway I had logged 80 miles in the saddle. Not bad for a days training, though I’m sure I will be able to reflect on it better after an icebath.