If you throw out the odd seconds, the Romanian woman who won gold the other day in Beijing ran exactly twice as fast as I ran the London Marathon in 2001 (2 hours 26 minutes to my 4 hours 52).

I was never an athlete of any sort.  I was the kid who was always picked last for any team (in fact sometimes the team that got me also got a few extra points to make up for how bad I was).  I never once made a hit in softball.  In basketball I broke my glasses (I claimed I was simply keeping my eye on the ball).  I came last in the 50 and 100 yard dash, and I don’t think anyone ever asked me to run further.  Basically I was a chubby, extremely short sighted kid who thought being told to go outside and play was a form of punishment and gym class was serious torture.  In high school I successfully petitioned to have canoeing counted as a team sport (well, there were two of us) so I could graduate.

Nevertheless, though the “physical education” I was forced to endure taught me nothing more than I was weak, uncoordinated, incompetent and unattractive, I eventually learned, all by myself, that exercise works a lot better for me than drugs to control depression, an illness that has troubled me all my life.  Divorce is pretty depressing and it demanded something big.  My marriage counsellor thought my idea of joining a gym might help.

Six months after my husband and I separated, and more than twenty years after we married, I ran those 26.2 miles.  It was neck and neck between me and a guy in a Rhino suit, but I think I just beat him to the finish line at Horse Guards Parade, London.

Because I have done it (sort of) I find it kind of scary that anyone could keep going all those miles exactly twice as fast as I ran, but just this week I’m focussing on a different way of looking at the maths, which tells me I was once half as good as an Olympic gold medallist.  And she is nine years younger than I was when I ran it (she’s 38; I was 47).  And I don’t think she’d had four children.  I’m feeling pretty impressed with myself.  I mean, how many things are there that you would be really glad to do half as well as the best in the world?

If it weren’t in storage in England, I’d post you a picture of my medal.  It’s kind of brownish and says Flora on it, which is a British brand of margarine, that year’s sponsor, but it’s good as gold to me.