Stop running

Running is not a part of my repertoire – nobody with a bosom of even a sliver above the average size would dream of subjecting it to such horrendously jolting treatment – and I am disposed to be suspicious of anyone over the age of 12 who considers it a good way of getting around except in a case of dire emergency. I am therefore a touch dubious about Martin Creed’s new work at Tate Britain, which involves runners sprinting through the Duveen Galleries – where such an activity is usually and thankfully prohibited – at 30-second intervals. All the same, it does sound slightly more sane than the activities planned in North Norfolk next weekend. More people than seems reasonable are embarking on a hideous pile-up of sporting endurance. Starting with a crack-of-dawn one-mile swim in a choppy, freezing, jellyfish-laden North Sea, competitors then clamber into kayaks and paddle like fury against the tide, disembark and go for a 38-mile bike ride (yes, I did say 38 miles, presumably such a preposterously long distance just to get the competitors out of the way while everyone else goes back to bed or settles down to a good breakfast), before topping off the whole ludicrously agonizing enterprise with a 7-mile run.