March, 2017 - A man is driving home after a day of work, when a group of black-clad men intercept and pull him from the car, wrongfully accusing him of laptop theft. The man is thrown into a cell without food, access to the outside world and a lawyer. After 40 days the innocent man emerges, the sunlight shocking his eyes like a flashbang. The black-clad men’s leader instructs his cronies to tie the man up by his ankles; they obey, before hitting him with machetes, sticks and exhaust pipes to the face, shattering his teeth. Thankfully, the man - ironically named Miracle - was released to tell the story.

My legs are two dilapidated towers made of stale biscuit, crumbling beneath the weight of a snorting and rasping heffalump torso composed of jiggling custard-like flesh and organs. My lungs are two crumpled air sacks gasping out for an extra molecule of oxygen like wheezing banshees. My throat is an arid desert, lifeless and dusty, aching for even the far-flung dream of a liquid to meander like a dribbling river into my stomach – ammonia, blended sewage, water – it doesn’t matter.

Such were my thoughts as I was limping up “The Beast” - a great devilish hill less than halfway through Masaka’s Uganda International Marathon…