Diary – 12 July 2008

Rebecca Newman gives a rundown of her week

Rarely in my life have I enjoyed running. A tubby child and then a sickly teen, I spent games lessons hiding behind a piano with a book. Odd then, that this week I completed (half of) one of the toughest marathons in the world. Stranger still, I enjoyed it. The Lewa Marathon is a unique event, a challenge I was romantic and bloody-minded enough not to turn down. It snakes through the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in north-east Kenya, presenting a testing combination of dry heat, steep inclines and shingle descents. To top it off, Lewa is at 6,000 ft above sea level. But I couldn’t resist the idea of running through the African savannah, with spotter planes circling to keep rhino and cheetah at bay.

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Before the race Bruce Tulloh, the race director, is kind enough to take me on some training runs. It’s not every day you chase a 72-year-old former international athlete to a water hole, under a streaked pink African dawn. We pause to watch a giraffe drink, and I quiz him about what I need to carry on the day. Some teams have come equipped with elaborate supplies of dextrose, pedometers etc. Tulloh is phlegmatic. ‘Some people take a high-tech approach, but it’s really a question of lifting one foot, and putting it down in front of the other,’ he smiles. It is, perhaps, an unsurprising answer from a record-breaking runner who, in 1962, ran from Los Angeles to New York in 65 days — an average of 48 miles a day — keeping his energy up with straw- berry jam sandwiches.

We gather at the start at six, shivering in the cold morning. I can’t face the queue at the long-drop loos, so take my chances with the wildlife and pee in the bush.