One year ago today I found myself in Antibes, on the French Riviera. I was there to run the Nice-Cannes marathon. Instead of the sunny, lovely experience I was expecting, however, the race turned into a harrowing trial when a freak rain storm hit the coast, turning the marathon into a 26.2 mile gruelling gauntlet. In short, the race turned into an allegory of my life.

You see, six months earlier the woman I thought I had partnered with for life came home one day and announced she wanted to separate. The mother of my children had fallen in love with another man and that, apparently, was that. We had been together for eighteen years, and not all of them were good, but to my mind we had made the ultimate commitment to each other – having brought new lives into the world that we were now responsible for together – and I thought it would be us ’til the end.

I was wrong.

And so it was that my life was instantaneously changed from the long slog I was counting on – not always great, perhaps, sometimes a downright struggle, but always enjoyable – to a hellish fight for survival, the downpour threatening to drown me at any moment. This wasn’t the cold, quiet rain lamenting a summer coming to its end, it was torrential torture, a vivid, livid, thrashing cat o’ nine tails trying to wear me down to the bone by sheer force, and I raged against it, hating it for doing this to me, for ruining everything I had envisioned. It was by far the most horrific thing ever to happen to me, a sense of falling only to realise that the floor underneath my feet was gone, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

And yet here I am today, back in Antibes. I’ve gone down here on a whim. I briefly considered enrolling in this year’s edition of the marathon (under way even as I write these words), but I’ve realised you cannot rerun a race. What’s past is past. Instead I enjoy a weekend sampling of what the Riviera has to offer: hiking the sentier littoral, eating astonishingly good sea food at the fishmonger’s, getting lost in Old Antibes’s labyrinthine alleys, going to piano bars, drinking absinthe in vaulted cellars and flirting with yachties – the always young and beautiful crews of the billionaires’ boats that are moored in the harbour.

It’s sunny and warm, the Alps clearly visible in the background, the sky and sea competing for bluest hue, and I thoroughly enjoy my time here. Is it still an allegory of my life? I’d like to think so.

It’s been an interesting year. I’ve launched this web site, gone on well over a dozen trips abroad, and I’ve met and befriended some wonderful people.

I’ve tried surfing and kiteboarding for the first time, I’ve gone rock climbing and diving again for the first time in ages, I’ve run an ultra; at 44 I am probably in better shape than ever before.

So far, so good – at hiding the fact that half the time I cannot be with my children, the two people that mean more to me than life itself. I sit in my house, staring at nothing, doing nothing, waiting for Sunday evening to finally arrive so that I can welcome them through the door and have a sense of purpose once more.

There is nothing I can do to change that. All I can do is run the race as best I can, accept the freak storms of life and hope for sun again further down the path. So as the runners go by the marina, sweating in the heat, I applaud them without envy. All races are different, but all must come to an end.

There’ll be other races.