Weak bin men need not apply

This time next week, it will all be over. Or at least I hope it is, otherwise I will have been dragging myself around 6 miles of Manchester's city centre for over 5 hours! Seven days from now, along with around 30,000 other runners/nutters, I will be partaking in the Great Manchester 10K Run. My legs quiver at the mere mention of it.

I wonder if it would be allowed to complete the course on piggy-back? I realise that it might be asking too much to ask one person to give me a piggy-back for all of the 10 kilometres, but it might be possible to set up some kind of relay system where I could be passed from person to person, so that any one individual would only need to carry me for a few yards. What do you reckon? Another thought I had was inspired by those outfits that some people run in that make it look as though they are being carried in a dustbin on the back of a bin man. My thought: Why not just get carried in a dustbin on the back of a bin man? Yet another idea was inspired by the godfather of ostrich-based comedy, Bernie Clifton. As you'll remember, Bernie often ran the London Marathon "on the back of" his yellow ostrich with a fake pair of legs hanging either side of the ostrich's neck. You see where I'm going with this? That's right. Simply replace the fake ostrich and the fake legs with a real ostrich and real legs and, bingo... Job's a good 'un, as they say.

In my runner's pack, I'm told I'm due to start at 10am in the Orange Wave with the "elite men" (irony noted, thank you). This means getting into the city centre for around 8am... On a Sunday! Gloria Hunniford and the Heaven & Earth show have never seemed so desirable.

Oh well, at least it's all for a good cause. At the time of writing, we've raised £468 (plus over £100 in gift aid) for BLISS! Thank you if you have donated. To add your donation click go to www.justgiving.com/spiritualjunkie or click the "donate now" button on the right of this page).

Strong bin men or ostrich farmers can just drop me an email...