The first challenge I set myself, because I’d never done it before, was to run a marathon. However, signing up, training, and running, seemed a bit straightforward, and so I decided that I’d make life a bit harder for myself.

I decided that on 18th January 2026, I’d run a marathon on my own, in Cambridge, with no music. And to make it even spicier, I’d try to do it by running the same half marathon route twice. I was intrigued by the impact of boredom (no music, same stretches of road multiple times, including up Castle Hill four times … ), plus the experience of running the final 10km (I’d run 30km multiple times, but never quite gone all the way to 42km).

I managed to get round the route on a relatively bright Sunday morning, securing a trophy as both first place and last place finisher in my first ever marathon (see trophy being presented to me by Conor below).

The run itself was completed in 3:46:50 (evidence below) and I can confirm two findings from the experiment: first, the boredom wasn’t that bad (maybe I don’t have a very active brain); but second, the last 10km were horrible. I ran the marathon at 113kg (not much progress made trimming down!), and the last 10km felt like I was dragging a sled. I was on course for 5minutes per km until 30km, and then hit a giant wall, slowing to about 6minutes over the last 10km. Some lessons to be learned …