By Jamie Hill I know for some of you more experienced runners, six miles might not seem like a lot. In fact you can probably do it in your sleep (which might be a bit strange if you’re sleep-running six miles and suddenly wake up in a motorway service station in your pyjamas looking a bit confused but rather pleased that you’re standing outside Greggs until you realise that you didn’t sleep-remember your wallet nor your phone and are now effectively stranded). But for me, running six miles is a bit of a milestone. Well, a six milestone anyway. And that’s exactly what I did last night. Before this, the most I had run as part of this marathon training thing I’m doing was 5.25miles. So six miles is good. And it has left me smiling. A lot. I actually enjoyed the run as well which is a bonus although parts of it were a bit boggy after yesterday’s rainfall. Bon Jovi were talking sense when they went on about it being ‘Slippery when wet’ but they weren’t really talking sense when they banged on about a ‘shot to the heart and you’re to blame, honey you give love a bad name’ as you can’t really give something as intangible as ‘love’ - a concept rather than a physical object - a name and if you were able to do what Bon Jovi suggests, is giving it a bad name like calling it ‘Nigel’ or ‘Derek’ what they mean? It was quite hard to stay on my feet at times. Especially on the track that I’ve taken to using which takes me alongside the M4 motorway as nothing freshens up your running lungs like a thousand cars speeding along beside you. Diesel fumes make a lovely running companion. But I did it. I must admit, the final mile was a lesson in not listening. Not listening to my troublesome legs who were carrying out quite a plausible argument with the rest of my body that maybe we could stop for a bit as they didn’t like this running lark that much. The Birmingham Marathon that I’m running isn’t until October 15th, which is five months away. And my six mile run last night only works out as a fifth of the total 26 mile distance but I couldn’t have imagined running this distance a couple of months back so I’m reasonably happy with my progress. In about a month’s time, I’ll be launching my justgiving page so I can actually start raising money for ICP Support. By then my runs might have even reached double figures. On another note, I finally gave up trying to lose weight this week as I was finding it too demotivating watching the scales not move or go in the wrong direction. It’s all about the running now and if an overweight me can still cover the miles so be it. Yours a bit pleased with myself, Fat Jamie