My annoyingly persuasive friend Frankie and I are running the Bristol half marathon in May, a date four months earlier than we were led to believe from previous events. As such, the training regimen has begun in earnest, with us sharing a longer training run on a Sunday morning. This week, we finished a while into the harbourside loop, and a stray comment about how he could kill for a bacon sandwich right now led me to suggest continuing our cool down around the harbourside until we reached Brunel’s Buttery, an open air café that does exactly the sandwich you want at that moment. This is not a time for sourdough or sausages that actually contain what might be recognisable as meat. No. This is a time for doorstop sandwich of white bread, with sausages that are comfortingly familiar, as if from your old school canteen, and a low consistency, vinegary ketchup. Slap it on a paper plate, wrap it in a paper bag, and job is very much a good ‘un. This is, you realise, what the running is all for. It’s not for the endorphins, the glory of personal bests, the long-term cardiovascular fitness. No. It’s for moments like these.=