During marathon training, my coach encourages his coachees to choose a reward that they’re going to give themselves when (not if, that’s important) they complete their race.

Mine arrived today.

For Rome, my optimistic early choice was a new pair of fancy designer shoes. Of course, if there’s one thing marathon training does its to take away much of the pleasure of wearing killer heels. If you have to do a full calf work-up before slipping on those Manolos, and half an hour of stretching when you take them off to avoid knackering your poor overworked Achilles it does rather takes the fun out of things.

This time I made a simple choice, and I’m really pleased with it. I came across a website called Spreadshirt (on a Facebook ad I think so it may have been linked to how often I click through the Howies website looking for funky T’s). On it, I found this little beauty.

This top is going to stay right here on the back of the spare room door until I have completed the New York Marathon. I will have gone the distance twice at that point, and will legitimately be able to say ‘I run marathons’ and not ‘I ran that marathon that one time, quite slowly’.

The big day is a still long way off, the best part of three months. Last time, about this far into training I picked up a repetitive strain injury in my calf and had to ease right back on my pace (and hence also the issue with heels). I am determined to be sensible but ambitious this time, and do my best to get through this thing strong, in one piece, and happy with my work on the day.

So that’s what this very cool top represents. My reward will be that I get to go out there, on my 35th birthday, and achieve something that gives me enough pride in myself that I will really want to shout about it.

Some of us run for the bling. Some of us run for the PB’s. Some of us run to move forward, and some of us run to find peace or to outrun the demons that are chasing us down.

But no matter what your story or your pace, something running brings us all is pride in ourselves and what we can do.

We all run for pride. And so we should.

If you’re into witty running related clobber I would recommend Spreadshirt – you can choose different T shirt styles and colours for each of the designs, it wasn’t at all pricey and it arrived within a week. Quality looks decent as well. Howies are an amazing clothing brand who also have a lot of very awesome T shirts, although they are on more of a cycling theme. You do find the odd runner-relevant T however and they are worth a look for excellent quality hoodies and jumpers which last forever. They also make a limited range of running kit which I’ve never tried but which gets good reviews. Hugely highly recommended.