by Rob Young
Maybe I was wrong, and it wasn’t just a bit of running after all. I was about to find out as I soon faced up to the biggest threat to my record-breaking challenge.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Disaster Strikes
29 October–26 November 2014
The weather was still surprisingly warm as November arrived, but there was lots of rainfall and plenty more forecast for the next few months. Nice. I had quite a few official marathons coming up – nine in ten days to be precise – starting with the winter version of the Thames Meander, my local marathon, on a course I’d run a few times already. I had to run a quick time in order to catch a lift and make it for the start of the next race, the Spooky Halloween marathon, 160 miles away in Telford. I did it in 3 hours 20 minutes, pretty darned good for me, especially as my leg was very painful.
Then, and not for the first time, I found myself jammed up in the back seats of a VW Scirocco with my friend Paul, trying to get some rest on the way up to Telford. I was massaging my leg, which now seemed to be permanently sore. It wouldn’t get any better for the rest of the month.
We found the Spooky Halloween marathon that evening, more by luck than by the directions we had been given. That was a different race, for sure. Everyone, except for me, turned up in Halloween fancy dress (Paul, though, was kind enough to say I looked like a zombie and would fit right in). There were ghouls and vampires and witches, with lit pumpkins everywhere. It was really cool, especially as night set in. I took it pretty easy and met some great people along the way, as well as some old friends. It was difficult to turn up to any marathon by now without seeing people I knew. I had become a part of the marathon-running community and I loved all that came with it.
Paul ran with me for a few laps, while we ate barbecued food from the grill they had there. It was a fun event and a nice change for me. People asked me about my limp during this run, which surprised me as I hadn’t realised it was noticeable, but I just had to force my sore leg to keep up with the other one.
By the time we left, it was about 10pm and the weather had turned nasty. We had a couple of hours’ drive ahead of us to get to Marsden Cricket Club in Yorkshire for the White Rose Ultra the next morning. It was like judgment day on the motorway, with wind and rain lashing against the cars. Driving in a gale-force storm was interesting, though Paul’s permanently furrowed brow next to me said he wasn’t enjoying it too much.
We ended up driving around Yorkshire for ages looking for the race HQ, which was not where the sat-nav had led us. In fact, I was asleep for most of it, but was woken up by Paul’s swearing every now and again. With my sense of direction, it was probably best I didn’t make things any worse than they already were. As it was, we seemed to be visiting everywhere in Yorkshire apart from Marsden CC. Eventually, after a McDonald’s dinner of several burgers and a milkshake or two, we found the cricket club and put up Paul’s tent. He went to the car to get something while I crawled into the tent, and was asleep in seconds.
The next morning, we were awoken by the sound of other runners turning up in their cars. I overheard a couple outside my tent talking about ‘Marathon Man UK’. It was strange to hear them discussing me as if I were some kind of celebrity, and I felt a little uncomfortable if I’m honest.
The race was tough, as expected, taking us through the moody Yorkshire countryside. I walked it as much as I ran it, thanks to the pain in my leg. There were some serious ultra-runners there and at times I felt like a bit of an amateur in their company. I listened to their stories with interest and tried to pick up whatever hints I could get on how to run with an injury – they gave me some good advice on how to tape up my leg. It was a beast of a run, with lots of hills, that took me just over six and a half hours, but the people were amazing and I had some great conversations.
Paul, my faithful man-servant, was still on hand by the time I finished. What a star! We headed off soon after to get back to Telford for the November Nightmare series of marathons, run by Denzil Martin, the same guy who had put on the Spooky Halloween marathon a couple of days earlier. He had kindly offered to let me stay at his house for the four days I would be running up there, and he’d explained in detail where he lived as well as where the race HQ was.
However, my mind had become jumbled after a few days on the road. Somehow I had got it into my head that Denzil lived on the disused railway line in Telford. This was in fact where the race HQ was located, while his house was a few miles further up the road. For that reason, we spent a couple of hours late at night knocking on doors along the railway, asking bemused individuals if Denzil lived there. In the end, we went to a pub and contacted him on Facebook to get his address. By the time we knocked on his door, it was about midnight and he was half asleep. Sorry about that, Denzil.
The next few days were pretty horrific, running wise. My leg was now a real problem and though I was getting through these races it was very painful before, during and after. The marathons in Telford were all along a disused railway line, which had been concreted over, but not very well, so the surface was uneven, which didn’t help. It was pretty wet, too.
I managed to complete four marathons in the series, but it wasn’t pretty. The third day was the toughest. I came down with a cold and my eyes were burning throughout the race. My energy levels dropped to zero and I had no strength in my left leg at all. I felt like crying, to be honest, and had to fight the instinct to give up the whole way around. Each of those marathons in Telford took me an average of six hours to complete. They called them the November Nightmare marathons and I could see why.
My cold would pass, but I really had to get some help with my leg or I knew I would be struggling to keep going. I went back to my family on the Friday and visited Dominika for a massage. She saw how swollen my leg was and thought I should see Dr Kipps to get it properly checked out. That sounded like a good idea, but I decided it would have to wait. I had too many runs ahead of me, and I think I was too scared of what he might have said.
Next up was the Druid Challenge. This was a three-day trail event along the 3000-year-old Ridgeway path in the Chilterns, which is apparently the oldest road in Britain. I was running only the second and third days, though.
The highlight of those runs was meeting the legendary adventurer Ranulph Fiennes. He was running a marathon there in preparation for the Marathon des Sables the following year. At the age of 70, he wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down much. We had a good chat, and he wanted to know what I had done so far and what I had planned once it was all over. I told him I wanted to do something nobody had done before, so he suggested an impasse in the North Pole that no one had ever crossed solo, because the weather was just too bad. I told him I’d do it if he lent me some warm clothes.
‘Ah, but you’ll need to get permission to run that one out there,’ he said.
‘Well, maybe you can ask on my behalf,’ I replied. ‘They’ll never refuse you.’
‘Are you serious?’ he asked me.
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘It’s not impossible, is it? It just hasn’t been done yet.’
He told me I sounded a lot like him when he was a young man. High praise indeed! We discussed various things that day. I really liked the guy, though you could tell he was a bit bonkers. And I mean that with the greatest respect. People such as him, who do extraordinary things, are not regular people. They’re a little bit off-centre, and much better for it.
You won’t be surprised to hear that I got lost again on this run. Really lost. A load of other people followed me this time, and it took us about an hour to find our way back onto the course after that. They probably thought let’s follow Marathon Man UK, he knows what he’s doing. How wrong could they be!
It wasn’t ideal preparation as, in just three days’ time, I was due to run marathons 230 to 234 at the Hell of a Hill event on the Lancashire moors. They were supposed to be the toughest five consecutive marathons in the whole world. But seriously, how hard could they be?
I had a few
days at home before going up to Lancashire. I say home, but it was Ali’s house, though we were being made to feel really welcome. I’d like to tell you Joanna and I were hitting it off and that we weren’t arguing about how long I was spending away, or how I needed to sort out a home of our own for our family. But, sadly, that wasn’t the case.
I felt under pressure from Ali, too. He was probably doing no more than usual to try to help build my profile, but I guess my leg was worrying me and pretending everything was fine was a strain. Whatever it was, I was looking forward to getting away from it all. I’m sorry to say that, but that’s how I felt at the time. When I was running, there was peace from all the demands on me, but when I returned it all started anew.
On Tuesday 11 November I caught a train to go to the Hell of a Hill marathon series. The course was eight laps up and down the Rivington Pike, a steep hill on the exposed West Pennine Moors. That meant 6,000 feet of climbing a day, up 2,416 misshapen steps, in the wind and the rain. What could possibly go wrong?
I hadn’t brought my tent with me this time, but fortunately they let me sleep in the race organisers’ main tent, with all the t-shirts and medals. (Truth be told, I snuck in there the first night and after they caught me in the morning they agreed to let me sleep there the rest of the time.) It wasn’t the most weather-proof of places, so I slept under a massage table to keep the rain off me. And it rained almost continuously that week.
There were about 20 entrants taking on all five days of the event, and I would get to know most of them well, while an additional 20 or so runners joined us each day for that day’s marathon. The first one was a rude awakening. The course was unnaturally brutal; the cobbled, broken path was treacherous underfoot. It was incredibly slippery and you had to be careful where you placed each step. Coming down was as dangerous as going up. There was nothing uniform about the route. It twisted this way and that, and had death traps everywhere. Runners were falling all around me – you just couldn’t keep on your feet. And falling on those rocks meant nasty cuts. I was lucky. I fell only a couple of times and after the first two days found a good route up and down.
I was in a lot of pain, but I had a little help with it. My strategy was to take 2 × 400mg tablets of ibuprofen and 2 × 200mg of paracetamol about 30 minutes before the race start. Then I’d take another paracetamol at the halfway point in the race. Whatever the thinking on running with medication is, those pills certainly helped make the whole thing bearable for me.
The second day was so windy I almost got blown off the hill. This was insane, I thought. Really good runners were struggling to get around. It was one of those events where you had to encourage and support each other as much as possible, but somehow I managed to get round in a similar time to the first day, just over five hours.
I met a bunch of good people at this race, including Mickey Dwyer. An Australian comedian living in the UK, Mickey livened up the post-marathon wind-downs in the tent at the end of each day. He was funny, obviously, but also very compassionate, the first to help anyone on or off the course who might need it. We’d sit in that tent chatting and sharing stories until it was late. The other runners didn’t know I slept there, so at the end of the evening I was just waiting for them to leave so I could get some sleep.
Poor old Mickey. He was leading after three days, but he didn’t have much luck after that. On day four, I found him picking himself up off the steps halfway down the Pike. He’d fallen and cut his knee very badly. I joked about it with him and told him to get up and get on, but it was really nasty and he could barely move. I suggested he sealed up the cut with a bit of acid, but really it was too deep for anything like that. He needed stitches.
I decided I needed to get him off the hill and out of the cold as soon as possible, so I lifted him up on my shoulders and piggy-backed him down the most treacherous bit. Then the trail turned right and I managed to find a guy with his bicycle who let me use it to wheel Mickey down the hill. He ended up free-wheeling the last half-mile on his own, while I continued on the marathon route and met him again at the bottom of the hill where we waited for the ambulance together. He was cold and agitated, and I just tried to keep his mind distracted. To be honest, for at least an hour on that hill, I think I was the better comedian of the two of us.
Later we learnt that a helicopter ambulance had been called out onto the hill for him, but he’d missed the ride because I had taken him to the bottom of the hill. He’d never been in a helicopter before, so he later he ribbed me mercilessly for robbing him of that opportunity. (In December, Mickey and his comedian pals would treat me and my friends to a special comedy performance at Ali’s house, as a way of saying thank you for helping him off the hill that day. That was a lot of fun, though really unnecessary. Thanks, Mickey.)
Mickey’s injury was the worst of many that week. Almost everyone was carrying some kind of cut or knock by the end. It was tough to see so many people struggling and in pain. For myself, I had to take plenty of painkillers just to get through it. At a time when I should have been giving my leg a chance to heal, I was giving it more reason to be distressed and angry. Looking back, I’m not sure running those races was a very good idea.
But I got through it. By the final day I’d completed my 234th marathon/ultra and I was a wreck. The combination of five freezing cold nights in that tent and all the running had left me exhausted and in need of a break. I was looking forward to getting home, but the rest of November was equally tough for me. I was taking a lot of painkillers to help me through the running – maybe as many as 15 or 20 ibuprofen every day. It was getting to the point where I was being woken up in the night with the pain. My left leg was swollen from the ankle all the way up to the thigh. Something wasn’t right, but I was carrying on. Everyone could see there was a problem, so eventually I was forced to visit Dr Kipps to be checked out. I felt a bit bullied into it, to be honest.
I remember Dr Kipps’s look of concern when he saw me. He said I looked thin. After a brief examination, he booked me in to have MRI scans that day, on both legs, and rushed it all through. He said it would take a few days for the scans to come back, and I told him I was going to keep running whatever the results showed and that he should know that. I returned to Ali’s that night and I wasn’t feeling good. I fell asleep on his couch and then was woken up from a deep sleep.
‘What is it, Ali?’ I said. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s about midnight,’ he said. ‘Kipps just called. You need to hear this.’
I sat in the dark of the unlit living room. Ali turned on a light. ‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘He’s got the results of the MRI scan, Rob. And it’s not good news. You’ve got four problems in both legs, but it’s the swelling in the bone in your left leg, in your tibia, that’s the real issue. If you carry on running on it, it’ll fracture. You’ll break your leg, Rob.’
‘It’s swollen. I knew that before,’ I said. ‘This doesn’t change anything. It’ll get better, you’ll see. I’m gonna keep running and that’s that.’
I lay back down to go to sleep; I had a marathon to run the next morning.
‘You’ve got to stop, Rob,’ Ali said. ‘He was very clear. If you run any more you’ll break your leg. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
It turned out Dr Kipps had been concerned enough to have the scans rushed through immediately. My first reaction was just to ignore it and carry on; I wasn’t willing to face the prospect of everything ending like this. I’d always said I’d keep running until I could run no more — and I hadn’t reached that point yet. But deep down I knew that was madness. My leg had been getting worse for a while, not better. Slowly I started coming around to the fact that I might have to stop, and who knew for how long.
The next day was 26 November, and I ran my 241st marathon in the morning, as usual, on the Thames Meander marathon course, and it hurt every step of the way. Then I went to see Dr Kipps again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but by the time I saw him I had de
cided I wasn’t going to fight him. I accepted his diagnosis and got on with the idea of resting up for a while before getting back on the road.
It was a dark day. The Daily Telegraph immediately announced my failure to the world. Messages of support came in for me. I would be back, I assured them all. This was a pause and not a stop. We tried to be upbeat, but it was hard. It felt like the whole world had caved in on me. And I had no idea what would happen next.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Getting Game Ready Again
27 November 2014–13 January 2015
After speaking with Dr Kipps and making my decision, my left leg was fitted with an aircast boot. Dr Kipps then told me what the road for recovery looked like. He said I shouldn’t run or walk on it for six weeks to let the bone stress heal. Then it was a case of building up strength in the gym, doing physio, and slowly, over the next couple of months, building up my running till I could run a marathon again. But I didn’t have that kind of time. The world record for consecutive marathons was gone now, but I could still get the record for most marathons run in a year – if I got back to running in the next few weeks, that is.
‘Statistically, that’s simply not possible,’ Dr Kipps said kindly. ‘You need to rest for a good while to let your bone recover, or you’ll just run the risk of injuring yourself.’
But it had to be possible. Everything is.
Dr Kipps tried his best to help me. Pippa Rollitt had me doing exercises to flush out my legs. They found a Game Ready machine for me, which was invaluable. Using that every day really brought the swelling down. A Game Ready is a piece of state-of-the-art medical equipment, featuring NASA spacesuit technology. When attached to the leg, it pumps ice-cold water and air onto the damaged area, keeping it iced and compressed, to aid healing and recovery.