It all just comes down to the day now doesn’t it?That day

It all just comes down to the day now, doesn’t it?”That day has dawned finally for the woman who has managed to fit in her marathon-training mileage while holding down a full-time job as a sports development officer with Liverpool City Council – and who has beaten the clock before, of course. The indoor 5,000m time she recorded in Birmingham 14 years ago, 16min 11.61sec, still stands as the fastest ever by a British junior. The second fastest, 16:11.10, still stands to Paula Radcliffe.. Imagine deliberately setting out to catch a fish that will end up costing a fortune in physiotherapy bills.

This weekend’s dumb idea is to drive more than 400 miles to Oban in Argyll and head out in a boat for hours of pain

It hasn’t been easy to fill the boat. All those who have done it before have cried off with a variety of unlikely excuses. “I’ve just pulled a muscle in my leg,” or “I’ve just found out that I’ve got to go to Spain with work,” and “It’s my next-door neighbour’s 50th birthday party, and he’s asked me to make a speech” are three of the more likely ones. I was even expecting someone to say: “I’ve got to wash my hair that weekend.”
Still, I can’t blame them They know what’s afoot.

The four “virgins” who will join me aboard Adrian Lauder’s boat Gannet are smiling now. They may not look quite so happy come Sunday night.Our quarry is the common skate. Imagine a triangular dining-room table for 20, stick on a few fins and a long tail, and you’ve got a skate.Their flat shape tells you that they live on the bottom, where they hoover up crabs and smaller fish In their case, home is 500 feet down. When you hook a skate in a fast-flowing tide, it’s as if you’ve snagged a giant rock Only the fact that the rock moves tells you it’s a fish. And that’s when the fun starts.Skate might not have too many GCSEs, but they know that if they point their huge bodies downwards at the right angle, they are almost immovable. Adrian told me a story of a boatload of anglers who hooked a very big one, and took turns trying to haul it up.Nearly 10 hours later, the party leader, fearing he was going to be on the boat all night, broke the line.How big do they grow? Well, a small one is 100lb. The British record is 227lb, but Adrian reckons they grow to more than 500lb.