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one piece of advice for aspiring 100 Club members, though, is simple: ‘Never give up, just keep going; you can do it, you just need willpower. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, thinks or does, it is your own challenge and you can do it if you really want to.’

      So, does he see a time when he will ever give up?

      ‘Not unless I am forced to stop.’

      It’s an obsession, then?

      ‘Yes, I think it is.’

      So, does that mean he considers himself to be, how can I put this politely, a little crazy perhaps – when it comes to running marathons, I mean?

      ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he replies. ‘Other people may think so, but not me. Breaking it down, I enjoy the physical activity, the camaraderie and socialising at races and the travel to new and different places. What’s crazy about that?’

      Well, when it’s put like that, nothing really.

      And what of the butterfly tattoos?

      ‘I like the colours,’ he says, simply. ‘They’re all based on different species of real butterflies and the guy who does them for me checks them for authenticity.’

      And does he really have one done after every race? I mean, are there that many species of butterfly in the world?

      ‘That’s what they say,’ is the only comment he’s prepared to make.

      So, what of the future?

      ‘I will just carry on running until I can’t go on,’ he repeats his earlier assertion. ‘I would have liked to run London again as it’s one of my favourites (isn’t it everyone’s?) but I can’t because you can now only enter online and I don’t own a computer, nor can I get to the library to use one as I’m out at work all day and the nearest library is in Gloucester.’

      Now that just doesn’t seem right: London Marathon organisers take note.

      SUMMER SHORTS

      Running can be whatever you want it to be – a race to be won, a distance to be completed, a time to be beaten, a cause to be helped. You set your own goals, put in your own effort, celebrate your own achievement. Through such endeavour and achievement you will gain confidence and self-esteem. You also gain fitness and health, friendship and camaraderie, while meeting like-minded souls with whom to explore the world, however quiet you might be.

       MILE 5

       FROM ANOREXIC TO UK/WORLD NO. 1

      At school, Naomi Prasad was so skinny she was banned from doing any sport because her teachers feared she would collapse. Today she holds the UK/World Record for being the youngest female ever to have run 100 marathons.

      NAOMI PRASAD

      Born: 1981

      104 marathons:

      • 1st marathon: 2003 – Paris

      • 100th marathon: 2011 – Malta

      Records:

      UK/World Record Holder for Youngest Female to run 100 Marathons.

      At 29 years old, Naomi Prasad’s enthusiasm for marathon running bubbles over like a glass of champagne poured by an inexperienced wine waiter but she hasn’t always been quite so enthusiastic about sport.

      ‘When I was younger, I was anorexic,’ Naomi tells me. ‘At school, I was five feet eight inches tall and weighed six stone five ounces. The teachers wouldn’t let me do any sport because they were afraid I would pass out, so I had to sit with the chemistry teacher in her office drinking tea! She was supposed to talk to me about why I was so skinny, but instead we chatted about decorating (I think she’d just bought a flat or something and was into interior design). I hated sport and exercise and thought it was great!’ So says Naomi, just prior to becoming the youngest woman in the UK/World to run 100 marathons.

      This is what they call irony, I think.

      I ask Naomi if she’s comfortable with talking about that time of her life and whether she minds if I include it in the book.

      ‘No, I don’t mind,’ she says, ‘maybe it will help someone else.’

      So, I ask her to tell me all about it and here is her story:

      ‘The eating disorder began when I was a teenager with the usual teenage angst, parents divorcing, et cetera. I felt I couldn’t control anything, but I could control what went into my mouth. I didn’t have a period for 18 months and I started growing downy hair all over my body. Then I moved to a new school and knew I would have to start to eat lunch if I was to fit in, even though it made me feel sick.

      ‘My mother never spoke to me about it, though she must have known and I’m sure she was concerned – I think she simply didn’t know how to. My father wasn’t around after the divorce. I was the youngest by four years and my older brother and sister were away at university at that time, so I was on my own with it.

      ‘I ate nothing but started drinking lots of wine. I thought I had huge thighs and a big bum, and felt guilty if I ate. I felt I was letting myself down, losing control.

      ‘I would feel hungry a lot of the time but that was perceived by me as a good thing because it meant I was in control.’

      For someone like me, who has never suffered any kind of eating disorder – unless you count a marshmallow fetish that once saw me in the garden at a friend’s eighth birthday party, hands tied behind my back, scoffing all the mallows that dangled tantalisingly on pieces of string attached to a washing line while the other party-goers were distracted (foolishly in my opinion) by the party-giver’s male relatives prancing around in white sheets pretending to be ghosts, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to believe that feeling hungry is anything other than bloody annoying.

      These days, thankfully, Naomi has her eating disorder fully in hand so that when I travelled to Malta to watch her run her 100th marathon, I met a tall, slender, attractive young woman with jet-black hair, enormous expressive dark eyes and a wide smile.

      ‘I eat normally these days,’ she says, ‘although I am very aware of it, but much more relaxed now. Funnily enough last year when I was running so much, I was having real problems eating enough – I couldn’t keep the weight on at all and was worried. It turned the whole thing on its head.’

      So, how did an anorexic, who hated exercise, turn into a marathon mogul?

      ‘It was 2003,’ Naomi begins, ‘I was 20 and at university, and decided to run the Paris Marathon to raise funds for an expedition to Borneo. In those days I was still not eating much and drank lots and was very skinny. I wanted to do the trip to Borneo, but I also thought that if I ran a marathon, everyone would be impressed. And they were, even though it took me 5 hours 10 minutes to finish! They couldn’t believe someone like me could do it. It was great. I really enjoyed it; it was an incredible experience.

      ‘Also, after too much boozing in the first year, I really enjoyed the feeling of being fit. It was good for my weight management, too. I hadn’t put on weight but this enabled me to have a healthier approach as to how much I ate. Having gone through a phase of eating half a baguette for lunch and the rest of it for dinner, I thought it was time I grew up a bit!

      ‘As far as I was concerned, after that first marathon, that was it: I had no plans to do another one and certainly no plans to do 100 of them,’ she says, laughing.

      So, what happened?

      ‘In a word, London,’ she tells me. ‘I wasn’t interested in doing another marathon for the sake of it, but

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