Next Sunday will be the 31st London Marathon and I’ll be watching the TV, in the hope that I can spot a few of the many people I know are running it. So in honour of the Virgin London Marathon this week’s blog is about my relationship with the marathon.
As I’ve mentioned, in one of my earlier blogs, my first experience of the marathon was watching the finish of the Sandbach marathon, back in the 80’s. I was seeing a girl in Sandbach at the time, and this gave us something different to do. I don’t remember much about the experience other than seeing a number of runners flash by to the finish. I’ve since found out that Sandbach was regularly used as the English National Championships.
When the London marathon started appearing on the TV I’d watch bits of it and I recall my brother telling me that one day he was going to run it. Of course I was going to make no such predictions, it seemed to me to be a rather tedious thing to do and of course I didn’t even run in those days.
When I moved to London, I was in an ideal place to watch the marathon, though I wasn’t too keen to join the crowds. I went to watch in 1986, only because a friend wanted to go so that she could watch a chap, she fancied, run in it. When we arrived at Westminster tube it took us ages to get onto the street, due to the large number of spectators getting off there. When we got to the street we could hardly see anybody, so I just decided, as it wasn’t me that fancied Tim, I might as well go back home and do something useful.
Once I’d joined Belgrave I started to get to know and understand, a little, runners who were taking part in the marathon. I still didn’t go to watch but started to watch it again on the TV. It was 1993 when I made the effort to head into London to watch again. My new partner had run the marathon previously and was friendly with a group of runners who regularly ran it, they always watched the marathon from various points on the course, then met up in a pub on the Southbank before heading into Covent Garden to eat, drink, get merry and watch the marathon again on video, at the home of Pam and John Davies. It was fun watching the race on TV, with a critical audience of marathon runners, and there was always a cheer when one of the group, who had completed that year’s race, came through the door.
After that I was hooked, every year I would do the same thing, get up early for an 11 mile run in Richmond Park, shower, have a big cooked breakfast (the only time in the year I allowed myself this feast), watch the start on the TV then after about an hour head off into town. My partner and I always watched from just before the 800m to go point, there was usually space to get to the front and you got a great view of the athletes. I have to say, getting up so close to watch international athletes is so much better than watching them on the TV and, actually it’s so very different to racing against or training with them. We’d hang around at this point until the athletes running under 3 hours had passed, it’s amazing how quickly the time goes, between the front runners and the 3 hour runners, when you know so many of them. We’d then drift along to the embankment to give a cheer to the slower runners. After the 4 hour 30 minute runners had gone by we’d drift up to Covent Garden, the meeting place had moved to this side of the river, before converging on Pam and John.
There was one year I got quite embarrassed. We were at our 800m to go point, as usual, giving encouraging shouts to all the runners we knew, when along came Jim Estell. He must have been on for something around the 2 hour 30 minute mark but when we shouted him, he came over to us and started stretching and talking, I couldn’t believe it ‘get going you idiot’, I thought. But he just kept on stretching and telling us he wasn’t having a good race. All the other people around us were looking at us strangely but eventually Jim went on his way. Then a few minutes later along came James Jackson, we gave him a shout and he did exactly the same thing as Jim. What was going on? The people around us were now giving us some very strange looks. James moved on and we stopped shouting at people until we left that spot, which was a bit sooner than we normally would have.
There were some good years, in 1996 Belgrave Harriers won the Men’s Championship with Paul Evans, Gary Staines, Jim Estell (this time not stopping for a chat) and Junior Galley.
In 2000 my fiance, was running. It was quite emotive when she came past me at the 800m point, as I could tell she was going to run sub 3 hours, a time which she coveted and had trained so hard for. She ran 2:56 and her Belgrave team mates, Rachel Weston and Nikki Haines also ran sub 3 hours to bring Belgrave home in 3rd place. It was this experience that made me change my mind about doing the marathon and I decided I would one day, before I became too slow, run one.
In 2003 it was my turn. Work had dried up in the summer of 2002 so I decided to use my time effectively to start my build up to the following year’s London marathon. As it turned out it was probably a little early as I was starting to get a little stale in the final few weeks. I remember going out for my first prep run, 2 hours on a very hot Sunday morning in June. I was used to running for 2 hours as part of my winter training but in the summer I never normally went beyond an hour and a quarter. I got very dehydrated and remember shuffling the final 3 miles from Wimbledon Common to my home in Southfields. In fact there were a few shuffling runs as I gradually increased my runs to beyond 2 hr 40 min. I was training under David Lucas, who was responsible for coaching Jim Estell, Junior Galley, and the girls from 2000, as well as many others. David had quite a large group of aspiring marathon runners, though most of them were girls so I still spent a good deal of my running time on my own. It was, however, a very encouraging group.
Then in January I got a two month contract in Slovakia. It snowed the night I arrived so when it came to my hill session, on the Tuesday, it was still too icy to run fast up and down hills. I had to improvise and ended up running up and down the steps to the Parliament building, 50 times. After a couple of weeks using the hotel treadmill I was able to get back outside. I would run for 8 miles at lunch time. Then in the evening I’d do a further 6 miles. At weekends I’d tend to do about 12 miles on Saturday with my long, 2 hr 40 min run on Sunday. I’d stay in Bratislava two weekends and travel back to the UK on the 3rd weekend. It did mean some challenging running, avoiding open manholes and metal posts sticking up a couple of inches from the concrete. I also recall shuffling off to Tesco to get my week’s food after the 2 hr 40 min run. One of the hardest sessions I’ve ever done was a 15 x 5 min with 1 min recovery session running to the Austrian border and back on a raised concrete platform, with a strong wind coming off the Danube and sleet coming down. The sleet was so intense I was wearing sunglasses to stop it stinging my eyes and I ended the session tired and with a bleeding nose from the intense wind, but I was still able to manage my 2hr 40 min run and Tesco shuffle the next day.
In preparation for London, I’d tried running with the Lucozade drinks, that would be available on the day, but they didn’t react well with my stomach so I accepted that I’d run with just water, afterall my wife had done so. David had taught me how to take on water on the move and I had tried out all my kit to make sure it was comfortable.
My races leading up to London had been good, I’d set a pb 70 min 28 sec at the Wokingham Half Marathon and the week before the marathon I’d run a good leg at the Southern 12 stage, now it was time to ease down and make my final preparations for the race.
On race day I was so pleased it was dry, in fact not only was it dry but the sun was shining and it was actually quite warm as I arrived at Greenwich. It was great to have a place on the championship start as I was well looked after, plenty to eat and drink (though I ate nothing and just sipped water, no point in changing the pre-race preparation plan). It was nice to have our own toilet block, which meant no queues, I paid a visit every 10 minutes as I made sure I started the race with an empty bladder. I had a fear that I might have to keep stopping to pee in the race and this would destroy both my time and my rhythm, and it worked as I ran the whole distance without one stop, actually it took me a further four hours after the race before I could pee again. Having said that I was amazed to see 4 runners peeing up the side of the road within the first 4 mins, clearly they were talented runners to have been ahead of me at that point but what sort of talented runner is so unprepared as to require a pee within 4 minutes of starting a race?
What was also good about being on the championship start was that there were lots of other runners I knew, though I had few conversations as I didn’t want to waste energy talking too much. We had a prime viewing position as the Ladies race set off 45 minutes ahead of us, it was already getting quite hot and I was desperate to start as I didn’t really want it to get much hotter.
Finally it was our time to go, I must’ve been about 12 rows back at the start, an unusual situation for me as I was usually on the front row of a road race start, but I didn’t mind as I wanted to start steady. I’d planned 5 min 40 sec mile pace and everybody told me the first mile would be quicker so I set off very relaxed, maybe too relaxed as I went through the first mile in 5:48. But I didn’t panic and soon got onto target pace. David had advised me to take a drink at each mile point until about mile 20, I thought he was mad as I’d run half marathons without taking water but I gave him the respect he deserved and agreed to take on water every 2nd mile. As it turned out I was almost desperate for water at mile one and changed my plan to take it every mile (nice one David, coach knows best). I’d also decided to avoid the showers that are provided on the course but when I reached them I ran under them with relief as the temperature was still rising.
I reached Tower Bridge and I was starting to feel it but still I was on target to go sub 2:30, I surprisingly passed Mike Simpson on the Bridge, a very good runner, who dropped out soon after. When we got into the Canary Wharf area I was really starting to feel the pain and completely ignored the shouts of encouragement from my friend Alaster Stewart as he kept popping up at different places on the course. I felt like I was crawling now, it was such a mental task to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Actually I should point out that one of the great things about being a London athlete in the London marathon is that you know a lot of watching athletes and this is one race where it doesn’t matter which club you belong to, it’s man against the distance and every runner from whichever club will encourage you, even if they don’t know you to talk to.
I reached 17 miles and I’d had enough, I’d already passed Dave Mitchinson, another very good runner, who was standing on the roadside clearly having had enough himself, but I kept on going. My brain was telling me that there was no point in stopping now as I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I did, I knew there were friends up the road who would be disappointed if I didn’t go past them and if I gave up now it meant I’d have to do it all again. A few miles further up the road I reached the area I worked and trained in, the familiarity of the roads, and the fact that I was starting to catch and pass some of the ladies who set off 45 min before me, gave me a much needed boost and I relaxed back into pace. As I emerged from the Blackfriars underpass I received a big cheer from a group of Belgrave friends and this gave me the urge to push on. There was not much more distance to go now but I knew I was going to be outside 2:30. Still, knowing my friend Paul Coughlan had run 2:35 inspired me to work hard to try to beat his time. I started to pass a few struggling men and this seemed to be picked up by the crowd who urged me on further , it helped having ‘Belgrave’ across my chest as it encouraged them to shout ‘come on Belgrave’ and this gave me a lift.
800m to go and there was the cheer from my wife, she was on the other side of the road to normal and I nearly missed her, but I recognised the voice amongst all the others, no stopping for me to chat to spectators I was going to beat Paul Coughlan. As I approached Buckingham Palace my mind was focusing on one thing only, to keep to the blue line showing the shortest route. Unfortunately that must’ve also been on the mind of the chap I’d jut caught up and we clashed elbows a few times, causing one spectator to shout ‘no need to fight’, before I pulled away to finish in 2:34:10. I’d done it, I’d finished the marathon, and whilst I hadn’t gone sub 2:30 I’d beaten Paul Coughlan’s time.
Did I enjoy it? Not one bit whilst I was running it, but over the next week I kept having flashbacks and in hindsight yes I did.
Will I do it again? Not a chance, I would actually love to but I’ve not had a strong enough desire and, at 46, I can’t see me topping 2:34.
Would I recommend it to anyone? Most definitely, London is a great event and the training is character building.
So to finish off this rather long winded blog I’d like to wish everybody, running on Sunday, the best of luck. Particularly the many athletes I know who will be aiming for good times and especially to the man I’ve been training for his world record attempt in carting a 40lb rucksack along the course, Lee Riley. May you all succeed in your goal and if you don’t may you be satisfied with what you achieve.
If you’re not totally bored and would like to read further about the marathon, a friend of mine, Will Cockerell, has written a book, ‘The 50 Greatest Marathon Races of All Time’ http://www.belgraveharriers.com/general/book_review.htm
Another friend of mine, Gaby Collison is writing a book at the moment, featuring interviews with many top marathon runners, I look forward to seeing that in print. And finally, for a shorter but interesting blog about the marathon visit another friends blog page http://www.thegirlthatruns.com/
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