The Time I DNF'd At School Sports Day

No race makes me as nervous. No event seems as pressurised. No competition feels like it has the potential to bring the reputation I've built - slowly, block by block - crashing down like a Jenga tower. The dads' race at my children's school sports day fills me with a deep dread.

- DAMIEN HALL

Before the Winter Spine Race or the Tor des G éants, I’m hardly nervous at all. I can’t wait to get out and play in those mountains and bogs. Yet somehow, the idea of racing a handful of rotund, jeans-wearing, fortysomething dads has me desperately searching for excuses to DNS.

I’m not the only runner in our little village. But when I last checked, no others have a Runner's World column - and let’s just say that when my daughter's geography teacher asked the class to name “the thing that runs through the centre of the village”, one bright spark piped up with “Ivy's daddy!”

So, rightly or wrongly, I feel like people know me as The Runner.