Twenty-Six. Two script with runner on back

The pass was still in shadow when I reached the bottom of the hairpins, and I could hear the bell from the Cwm Duir chapel down in the valley, calling the old fellows and the fools to the start. Your mother would have called me both. I'm writing this at the kitchen table with my feet up on the radiator, so forgive the handwriting. The ink keeps catching on the knuckles I've had since the frost.

You asked why I kept going after the knee went. Here is the honest answer. Up at the summit cairn, somebody had chalked the distances on the flat stones, and the last one read 26.2 in letters a child had done, with the decimal point drawn like a fallen pebble. I stood there with my lungs on fire and thought, that's the bit nobody puts on the medal. The two-tenths. Nobody remembers the extra, only the round number.

So I ran the two-tenths. Down the far side, past the sheep that didn't bother to get up, over the stream where the stones are slick as soap. The last quarter mile I walked, and I didn't mind. A woman at the finish put a foil blanket round my shoulders and said I looked like a bag of sprouts. I laughed so hard I nearly sat down in the puddle.

Come up in the spring. I'll show you the cairn. Bring your old trainers, because I'm not paying for new ones.

Love, Nan