Are some races cursed? For over 10 years I consider the last race of my ‘season’ to be the Fort William half marathon in November.

Some ‘seasons’ it might be the only race, rather than the last depending on what I’ve been doing (or not doing) that year but, each September, I pay my entry fee and book a bed & breakfast in Fort William for what I know will be a straightforward race.

The Fort William Half Marathon leaves from a football pitch next to the Nevis Centre and bowling alley. You run six miles around the bay, through Corpach, out of town, along the coast until you get to a cone and turn round and come back the exact same way you ran out.

The Fort William Marathon runs along the same route. The only difference is the cone’s six and a half miles further away.

It’s a nice race. A few hundred runners and a flat route that barely rises or falls as you run to Loch Eil and back with Ben Nevis looming behind you and over you as you turn.

It’s a good race. There’s only one problem: I always quit before it starts.

Usually it’s the weather. Fort William is wet, November is wild, and a Sunday race in November in Fort William can see horizontal rain and strong winds batter the coast.

Many a morning has started with me opening the curtains of the bed & breakfast only to think: “not today!”

Some times it’s injuries. By November I could be nursing some knocks and niggling pains that make me think it’s a good idea to take a few weeks off while the weather is bad and there’s no real incentive to be outside. Last year, it was tweak in my back that meant I couldn’t run for six weeks. Before that it’s been an ankle or a knee injury that a few weeks rest has helped heal.

It’s a race I wanted to run again this year – but you can probably guess where this is going.

I’m injured. A slight niggle in my right hip that’s telling me to use this time to recover rather than run in Fort William. Take a few weeks off, don’t do anything and start again in November with some easy sessions – and definitely don’t run a half-marathon.

So, next Sunday will join my other unsuccessful attempts to race in Fort William to make it: Andrew 4 Fort William Half Marathon 8.

The day the clocks go back is the worst day of the year if you work night shift. I worked night shift as a hospital porter in Stornoway. At 1am I would have to walk round the hospital and change all the clocks. By 1:20am it was 12:20am and I still had another seven hours and forty minutes of my shift to go because, while the clocks went back, the time my shift ended stayed the same. A nine hour shift became 10 hours. I wouldn’t have minded if I was paid for the extra hour but the hospital couldn’t distinguish one shift from another so, as far as they were concerned, I’d only worked 11pm to 8am even if I’d had an extra hour in the middle.

(Of course, when the clocks wend forward, a nine hour shift became an eight hour shift but there was no guarantee that you’d be working that shift to make up for the extra hour! It really was unfair!)

I mention this because it’s almost time for the clocks to go back; a time that also reminds me of another time: the time for the lights to go back too. It’s time to attach lights to my bike so that (a) I can see; and (b) more importantly, cars can see me as (a) I don’t want to get run over; and (b) I really, really don’t want to get run over.

Yet, even though not getting run over is definitely one of my top goals when out on my bike, I’m always reluctant to get the lights out. I know they’re safe, they help me see and be seen, but I can’t help thinking how much nicer my bike looks without lights.

(Don’t get me started on mudguards. They’re the bike equivalent of making Eva Green/Ryan Gosling/whoever floats your boat* wear a Donald Trump mask before going out on a date.)

I just don’t like lights. They’re like zits for bikes. You know there’s beauty underneath but why do they always have to be right in your face so you can’t avoid seeing them all day. Car lights are hidden. No one notices car lights. Yet we stick lights on the front of our bikes like we’re attaching a rocket launcher to a tank.

Then there’s the ‘modes’. It’s not enough that every light shines white with a strong unbroken beam. We also need them to pulse, to flicker, to swing left and right and to flash so strong and so fast the man in the moon will have an epileptic fit.

If you’re thinking of opening a nightclub don’t hire an expensive light system just hang a bike from the ceiling. That’s all you need.

So, with the clocks going back, I find myself putting the lights back on my bike too and I realise why we have the extra hour. It’s not for farmers, it’s not for early morning commuters, or school children wanting to avoid walking to school in the dark, it’s to give cyclists an extra hour to complain about how their bike doesn’t look as cool it used to.

*Except Donald Trump (but, if it is Donald Trump, then we hope you mean that he floats your boat in that he’s full of hot air and will quickly blow up your dinghy).