by Phil Hewitt
'A charismatic, charming, funny – and, above all, thoughtful – memoir about running, motivation, ambition. Perfect, not just for those who do run – or intend to run – a marathon, but for the hundreds and thousands of us who venture out from time to time to run just a mile or two... A complete delight.'
Kate Mosse, author and broadcaster
'This is a wonderful and frank view of a first-time-marathoner-turned-running-addict. Phil shares the pitfalls and emotions that running a marathon for the first time evoke and how running can grab you and draw you back for more.'
Liz Yelling, double Olympian and Commonwealth bronze medallist
'The pain, perils and utter pleasure of the formidable 26.2 miles by someone who has gone every step of the way… 25 times. Warning: you will seriously want to run a marathon after reading this.'
Rosie Millard, journalist, author and broadcaster
'a beautiful description of one man's passion for the open road, powered by rock 'n' roll'
Jo Pavey, triple Olympian and Commonwealth silver medallist
'Wry, realistic and endlessly enthusiastic. A lovely reminder both of what seductive fun marathon running can be and why I gave it up.'
Stephen Brenkley, cricket correspondent for THE INDEPENDENT
'An intriguing insight into one man's marathon journey… an inspiring read for any marathoner or wannabe
marathoner.'
Andi Jones, international long-distance runner
'Phil Hewitt's highly entertaining Keep on Running reminded me of my own marathon experiences – the inevitable suffering followed by elation at finally crossing the finishing line. It is a must-read for all runners, particularly those contemplating a marathon for the first time.'
Anna Nicholas, author and journalist
KEEP ON RUNNING: THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF A MARATHON ADDICT
Copyright © Phil Hewitt, 2012
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The right of Phil Hewitt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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About the Author
Phil Hewitt was brought up in Gosport, Hampshire, where he attended Bay House School. He later gained a first-class honours degree in modern languages and a doctorate in early twentieth century French theatre from Oxford University. He joined the Chichester Observer in 1990 and became the newspaper's arts editor four years later. He is now also arts editor for all the Observer's sister papers across West Sussex, including the West Sussex Gazette and the West Sussex County Times.
Phil lives in Bishops Waltham, Hampshire, with his wife Fiona and children Adam and Laura. A keen runner, he has completed marathons in London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Dublin, Rome, Mallorca and Amsterdam, among others. Since completing this book, he has added the Brighton Marathon and the Portsmouth Coastline Marathon to his tally. Phil is also the author of Chichester Then and Now, Chichester Remembered and Gosport Then and Now.
Phil writes a blog at www.marathonaddictuk.wordpress.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @marathon_addict.
With love and thanks to:
Fiona, Adam and Laura, for putting up with me
Michael, for being a true running mate
Pamela, for getting me started
The Stones and The Beatles, for keeping me going
Peter Lovesey, for suggesting this book in the first place
Contents
Introduction
The Boat and the Boy
Chapter One: 'Start Me Up'
First Steps towards the London Marathon
Chapter Two: 'Streets of Love'
My Debut Marathon – London 1998
Chapter Three: 'Not Fade Away'
A Country Slog – Chichester 2001, 2002
Chapter Four: 'Street Fighting Man'
Fitting in with Family – London 2002, 2003
Chapter Five: 'Harlem Shuffle'
Biting the Big Apple – New York 2003
Chapter Six: 'In Another Land'
Why the Course Counts – Paris 2004
Chapter Seven: 'Plundered My Soul'
Misjudging a Marathon – Amsterdam 2004
Chapter Eight: 'Out of Time'
Slipping and Sliding – Steyning and the Isle of Wight 2005
Chapter Nine: 'Gimme Shelter'
Running Stupid – Dublin 2005
Chapter Ten: 'Like a Rolling Stone'
Thinking a Good Marathon – Paris 2006
Chapter Eleven: 'Around and Around'
To the Brink and Back – La Rochelle 2006
Chapter Twelve: 'Satisfaction'
As Good as It Gets – London 2007
Chapter Thirteen: 'Paint It Black'
When You Just Shouldn't Run – Berlin 2007
Chapter Fourteen: 'Little by Little'
Country Roads – Clarendon Way 2008, New Forest 2009
Chapter Fifteen: 'Losing My Touch'
When It Just Isn't Your Day – Rome 2010
Chapter Sixteen: 'Don't Stop'
The Love Goes On – Mallorca 2010
Introduction
The Boat and the Boy
The rain was lashing down. The wind was bitingly cold. My head hurt. My eyes stung. I could hardly make out the road ahead. All I could see was my chance of running a good race swirling away from me down the storm-filled gutters. And that's when I saw him. Glancing to my left, just by the 37-km marker, I was suddenly aware of a figure coming up beside me, gliding serenely and hideously mocking me with every step – the man with the boat on his head. Not just any boat, but a model yacht, complete with sails and rigging. Calmly, gracefully, he sailed past me, looking the very picture of control. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. On he raced, oblivious to the fact that he'd crushed me. It was the lowest low point in all my years of marathon running.
I had been convinced that I was going to run into my own record books that day. A PB, that personal best which constitutes the Holy Grail of runners everywhere, seemed within my grasp, and that was my mistake. I'd grown too confident, and so the heavens opened. The energy drained out of me, and then came the final straw: the man with the boat on his head. You might strive for a PB, but any time you think you're bigger than the marathon you're running, the marathon will always have the last laugh.
Perversely, though, in the warm light of the Amsterdam changing room afterwards, I realised that it was for moments like these that I run marathons – a moment so miserable at the time and yet so hilarious in hindsight that it went straight into the annals of my own running folklore. Within an hour, I found myself softening towards the man and his boat.
It was a low point, but looking back now, it was a low point every bit as precious as the high point that had sen
t me smiling over the finish in the London Marathon the year before. Marathons can crush, but so too can they send your spirits soaring with little moments that will equal anything else that life will ever throw at you.
In London, I had been struggling, desperately needing help. I had turned into Parliament Square with just under a mile to go, but I was in a state of near collapse, succumbing to increasing confusion and feeble-minded despair. All that was keeping me going was thrusting my chest towards randomly selected spectators in the hope that they would read the name on my vest, shout it out and urge me on. The noise was intense, but in that moment all I could hear, loud and clear above the roar of the crowd, was the voice of a little boy standing at the corner. 'Come on, Phil! You can still win this!'
It was a sublime moment, so absurd and so true, so crazy and so perfect. Win it? I was heading for a finish nearly an hour and three-quarters after the actual winner had won. But that wasn't the point. The little lad was spot on. If I could summon the bloody-mindedness to get over the line, then I too would be a winner. The final minutes weren't pleasant; but I managed them. The finishing photos show my face a sickly shade of blue, but I was grinning as I crossed the line, new life in my exhausted legs, all thanks to the little boy.
Marathons make you miserable, but they also give you the most unlikely and the most indescribable pleasures. The boat and the little boy, the two extremes that sum up that passionate, nonsensical, punishing world of marathon running. A world that I love – a world that is unlocked when you dress up in Lycra, put protective plasters on your nipples and run 26.2 miles in the company of upwards of 30,000 complete strangers. Even when I hate it, I love it still.
I've been running marathons for 14 years now. I've clocked up 25, ranging from 4 hours 20 minutes down to 3 hours 20. I've run in eight different countries and in five different capitals, and no one believes me when I announce that my next marathon will be my last. They're right. It won't be. Life without a marathon looming on the horizon has become unimaginable.
This book is an attempt to explain why – a look back over the pleasures and the pains my addiction has given me. Marathon runners will recognise them one and all; I hope non-marathon runners will want a bit of it too. If you've already run a marathon, I hope you'll be with me on every page; if you haven't, I hope you'll want to run one by the time we reach the finishing line.
Chapter One: 'Start Me Up'
First Steps towards the London Marathon
If you want to annoy a marathon runner, wait till he or she starts to tell you about their latest marathon and then ask, all innocently, 'So how far was that one then?' A marathon is a marathon is a marathon, and a marathon is always just a touch over 26.2 miles: 26 miles and 385 yards to be exact. Or 42.195 km. However you want to express it, it's a fixed distance the world over, and that is both the point and the pointlessness of it.
History tells us that the first marathon runner – though he didn't know it at the time – was Pheidippides, a Greek messenger who was sent from the battlefield at Marathon to tell everyone in Athens about 26 miles away that the Persians had just been defeated. He'd just fought in the Battle of Marathon himself, poor chap, and a marathon straight afterwards was just too much for him. Pheidippides ran the entire distance (presumably with very little crowd support), shouted 'We have won!', keeled over and died. The world's first marathon runner had also set the standard for the world's worst post-marathon celebration.
But it was Pheidippides who ultimately defined the event which featured in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. In the 1908 London Olympics, the final 385 yards were added to accommodate the Royals and to give them a better view – or, at least, that's the popular understanding. In May 1921, the International Amateur Athletic Federation set the distance in stone: 26 miles and 385 yards – the distance which has been run around the world ever since.
It was a vague distance in those early Olympic Games, hovering around 40 km, but for the past 90 years it has been immovable – and that's a big part of its charm. The distance is predetermined. It is also absurd. You can't beat 26 miles and 385 yards as a clunky, arbitrary and deliciously random distance, and yet it has become the rigid standard by which long-distance runners measure their prowess.
Generally, it takes a marathon runner to know that a marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards – or even the rather more imprecise 26.2 miles which is more often referred to. And we look at the rest of the world aghast when we discover that they don't share that knowledge. My late grandfather, ex-RAF, was convinced that the wingspan of a Spitfire was the most rudimentary piece of general knowledge on the planet. We marathon runners are rather like that about the exact length of a marathon. But for all we tut, the true marathon runner feels a certain smugness when other people ask the question: 'How far is that marathon?' It sounds condescending, and probably it is, but the fact is that other people simply aren't like us. They haven't joined the club – the best club in the world.
Running a marathon doesn't make you clever, and it almost certainly doesn't make you interesting. In fact, probably quite the opposite is true. But anyone who has ever gone the distance will tell you that running a marathon is your admission ticket to something truly special, something that takes you to the next level of human experience and beyond. And therein lies the bond between marathon runners. As soon as you have run one, you belong to a brotherhood.
Fellow members won't ask you how far you ran. Far more pertinently, they will ask you how quickly you ran it. In their mind will be their own time. The point is that no time stands by itself. Every time needs a point of reference, a point of comparison.
Every time, that is, except your first. And that's what makes your first marathon so very special. It's the only time you will run a marathon wondering simply whether you can finish it. For all the rest, you will be wondering whether you can run faster than you've run before. Only in your very first marathon is it enough to run it for running's sake. Your debut is the marathon that gives you the marker by which all your future races will be judged; the marker you hope will recede as you start to set new standards.
My good fortune was that my first marathon was the London Marathon, arguably the best in the world. London offers one of the greatest marathon experiences imaginable. Many marathons are deadly serious, and so too is London, but London's great distinction is that it is also the biggest street party ever staged.
The first year I did it, one of those interminable Saturday supplement colour pieces nailed it when the writer described the London Marathon as 'part race, part garden party'.
A huge part of the charm is the great atmosphere, the hundreds of thousands of supporters, the almost constant roar of the crowd, the generosity of the man quite literally on the street as he urges you on as if it really matters to him. It's an event which brings out the best in us all, a terrific gathering of selfless spectators egging on tens of thousands of selfish runners. For the runners, even as they raise millions for charity, it's all about their own personal goals on the day. For the spectators, it's all about helping the runners get there. And that's what makes marathon running unique.
Nothing else summons people in quite such numbers for such a mass act of collective altruism, all directed at an endless stream of complete strangers toiling past, in amongst whom, somewhere, is the one person they are truly supporting.
Twenty-five marathons – six in London – have convinced me that it's at the London Marathon that this street-level philanthropy receives its greatest expression, every year, year in, year out. You run through sheer benevolence, and you can get quite drunk on it, the runners responding in kind, which is what makes up the garden-party element.
Musicians of all kinds will set up stall along the route to will you on. You'll get everything from roadside discos to rock bands, from gospel choirs to kettledrums, from brass bands to samba. Every musical hue will be there, beating out every rhythm under the sun – and all so that you might find your own rhythm in your run. It's exoti
c, it's spontaneous, it's a blast and it's fun – and the runners rise to the occasion, adding their own colour to the most colourful of days.
In amongst the runners will be Teletubbies, rhinos, Elvises, Supermen, people chained together, people tied together. People will run as tins of baked beans, as watches and as cavemen; they will run dressed as a London bus or even an aircraft. And for reasons known only to them, the butchest and hairiest of men will take to the streets in fluffy pink tutus. Everything and anything goes. Disinhibition runs wild as dark dreams and private fantasies are lived out in public.
You wouldn't want to spend too long running behind the chap in the eye-watering mankini, but you can't help but smile as you leave him behind (and no longer have to look at his behind). Why's he doing it? Isn't it enough to run just over 26.2 miles without having your privates dangling round your neck in a strange kind of sling? Clearly not. Along with all the clowns, Postman Pats and other cartoon characters, he's a runner intent on taking it all one step further for the craziest show on the road.