THE 400m is sometimes said to the toughest distance in athletics.
Just one lap of the track might seem a simple proposition. But to do it well, athletes need the explosive power of the sprinter and the endurance of the middle distance runner.
The all-time greats in the 400m can step up or down to dominate different disciplines.

YOU know you're running up a steep hill when you overtake a bus.
And there's no shortage of steep hills in the North Yorkshire Moors - as I can now reveal from painful experience.
Went out for a run while on a weekend away and stepped into the verge when I heard a bus trundling up behind me.
As it passed I realised it was going slower than me. So I set off again and gave the driver a cheery wave as I steamed (crawled) past.
You can tell what the roads are like round there when I tell you it took him about five minutes to catch me up.

ALTHOUGH 13 is not a number known for its benevolence, I decided it was the week for drastic action.
Regular readers of my blog (yes, both of you) will known I have so far endured a troubled relationship with my bike.
And when I say troubled relationship, I'm talking about the sort of marriage enjoyed by The Twitts.

DEAR sports wear designers, I've got a bone to pick with you.
Why are you continually trying to make me look like a tosser?
I appreciate you have to design elite equipment to allow for new world records and to keep the sportsmen happy.
But why can't you make something that will please us happy amateurs, without exposing our misshapen bodies to the glare of public humiliation?

IT'S AMAZING how the first question many people ask me is whether I've lost weight.
You would think the pounding of the streets, the humiliations in the swimming club and the life-risking escapades cycling around on the Death Machine were merely an attention-grabbing version of the Atkins Plan.
"Look," I respond to the corpulence curiosity "That's really not the point."
Which is obviously an attention-grabbing way of saying: "No, I bloody haven't."

ALAN Sillitoe famously wrote of the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.
But I want to pen you a paean to the glorious solitude of running; to the joyous sensation of being alone in the world, when the only thing that matters is putting one foot in the front of the other over and over and over again until you are almost hypnotised by the rythym.
When the pounding of your feet is matched only by the pounding of your heart; and the only sound you can hear is the thump in your ears as blood courses through your veins, feeding your muscles with delicious oxygen.
When you feel as though you could run and run forever and never stop.

I SUPPOSE it was inevtiable really.
My pesky injured calf has meant a massive over-reliance on upper body work in the last few weeks.
For the majority of my gym-going life, I have avoided the grunting buffoons with their stick-thin legs and over-developed biceps in the weights section.
So it's not entirely suprising that I should pick up a niggle in the early stages.

TRAINING week five has been a voyage of discovery and, much like Long John Silver, it has ended with me limping.
The main thing I have learned is not to run before you can walk. Or, more specifically, to run before your injuries have properly sorted themselves out.

IT'S CONFESSION time folks.
To my eternal shame, I was 21 before I learnt to ride a bike.
It wasn't entirely my fault. My dad's method of teaching had a somewhat demoralising effect. No stabilisers for little Jonathan, oh no.
Instead, he gripped the back of the saddle and pushed me down the street at a run until we had reached roughly take-off velocity before letting me go.

REMEMBER classic 80s action show The Man From Atlantis?
I am now him. Except I never played Bobby Ewing in Dallas. Which is fortunate, because I would then be guilty of appearing in the worst scene in TV history.
Avid followers of my Half-Ironman challenge (thanks mum) will know I have been struggling with an annoying leg injury for the last couple of weeks.
So I been hammering it in the pool this week. At least I would have been hammering it if the Gods of sport were not so determined to scupper me.

SO It's official - I am crocked.
Had my first ever trip to a physio today after breaking down on both my last two runs. And the initial analysis is that my left leg twists awkwardly when it lands, leading to injuries when I put it under too much stress.
I should point out at this juncture that although I have only just started this blog, I began physical preparation work for it in November, so I have actually been building up the mileage for about four months now.
And it seems the injury I have suffered to the point where my Achilles tendon attaches itself to the calf muscle is due to increasing wear and tear.

Still, if I manage to emerge from the year ahead of me with nothing more than a calf strain I'll be pretty damn happy.