I hadn’t been training with any regularity for the last three months and I was definitely not ready for a full marathon.
The route offered a perfect way to abbreviate the run at the halfway mark just by going left instead of right at the right junction, so, resigned to a pre-meditated DNF I was about to leave my hostel when I got her text. Have a good run and so on, all very friendly and encouraging, with just the merest hint of a suggestion of a soupçon of “Don’t give me any of that that weak crap, Marko, and get your arse in gear!”
Such challenges do not go unanswered.