by Phil Hewitt
By October I was running three or four times a week, judging the distance against drives in the car. Within a couple of weeks, I was able to sustain 4 miles in one go, and that's the point at which I started to develop what is known in the business as my 'long run'. For reasons of time and convenience, this will generally be the weekend run – a run which will get longer and longer, an exercise in pure stamina which will take the runner closer and closer to the final marathon distance.
There's a great deal of satisfaction to be had here. Initially, you will consider 3 or 4 miles to be a long run, but week by week, you will stretch it, generally adding around ten per cent to the distance you cover. I can remember the glory of running 4 miles for the first time. Several weeks later, 4 miles was nothing. Every seven days, you are adjusting your expectations upwards. Ten is a major milestone, at which point five is a mere bagatelle, hardly worth getting out of bed for. Train hard and consistently, and the distance racks up sweetly.
People ask how you can possibly run 15 miles, but I've always thought that it is considerably more of an achievement to get from 0 to 5 than it is from 5 to 15. The point is that once you reach five, you are in the swing. You're in the groove and you are up and running. You're past the stage of turning yourself into a runner. You are a runner by now. The task ahead is simply to make yourself a more resilient runner.
Even to a novice, it was clear that progress had to be incremental, staged and sensible – and I found myself enjoying it increasingly as I started to range further, exploring more and more of the country roads and paths around our home in Bishop's Waltham.
At times, I've envied the runners I used to see in Portsmouth, further south on the coast, as they strode out along the promenade, the sea an inspiration beside them. Wherever they went, they had street lights to guide them. But I quickly realised that I had the more complete running package at home in the rural heart of Hampshire. There were no lights once I was outside the town, but I could strike out in any direction, a fact which offered endless possibilities. And even when the nearest roads started to seem just a touch too familiar, it always seemed that a new footpath would open up somewhere along the line. White-rabbit-like, I'd dash down it.
Once I had explored the main roads, there was a vast patchwork of paths and tracks to dip into, criss-crossing the countryside in a way which encouraged me to be ever more adventurous. If you kept the pattern of the main roads surrounding you firmly in your mind, it really didn't matter if you didn't know where your track was heading. At some point, you were bound to hit a main road somewhere. I started to see the countryside as little parcels of land to be opened and enjoyed. Even now, a great running delight is coming across a tumbledown footpath sign I've never noticed before.
But it wasn't all straightforward. Rain presented a mixed blessing and, with it, the trauma of chafed nipples, one of the worst running injuries you can suffer. My wife doesn't believe me when I tell her that it is worse than childbirth. But I should know. After all, I was present at the birth of both our children.
Head out into a downpour with unprotected nipples and you'll run into agony unimaginable to those that have been spared. My foolishness early on was to run in an old rugby top. Sodden and heavy, it proved a flesh-ripper of the first order. But even after I graduated to the lighter, specialised running tops, I realised I was still at risk if I didn't slip out the door with a couple of nipple-sized plasters firmly in place. It's not a lesson that needs hammering home. You tend to learn it quickly. Any plasters will do. Just get them on there.
Needless to say, I regaled Pamela with every last detail in a 'this is all your fault' kind of way. Perversely, I liked to tell her how boring I found the training when quite the contrary was true. Countryside running was offering endless challenges, and, suitably protected in the nipple department, I soon discovered that a decent downpour was actually quite refreshing. There is nothing worse than starting out in rain, but if it rains when you are already out there, then the rain can be wonderfully invigorating – all part of the enhanced sensuality which, slightly kinkily, goes hand in hand with running. The rain trickling down the back of your neck can be lovely; the feel of it, caressing; the smell of it, intoxicating.
But, of course, sometimes the great god Pluvius can go far too far. There was one particular incident which became ever more exaggerated in the telling, particularly when it was Pamela I was telling it to. One training run took me out in a downpour which got worse and worse. I was in the middle of nowhere when an old boy slowed beside me in a car I could barely see through the torrents of rain crashing down around me. He wound down a window and, in an elegant voice from a more refined age, politely inquired: 'Can I give you a lift or are you actually doing this for pleasure?' 'For pleasure,' I replied, smiling through gritted teeth.
It was a low point – born of the kindest of motives on his part, but a low point all the same as far as I was concerned. It brought home to me how fundamentally stupid marathon running is – a fact which I have since come to regard as its greatest attraction.
But at least it was goal-orientated, to use the jargon, and it was this which kept me going during that first winter of training. I had no idea how I was going to do, but at least I knew, more or less, where I stood and what I was attempting. Marathon day sat on the horizon, and everything was about the countdown to it.
As it got closer, I was able to tell myself that one of my least appealing character traits was becoming my best friend. With the passing weeks, I was learning that most fundamental of fundamentals: you simply can't run a marathon without a huge degree of stubbornness running right through you. Cut a marathon runner in half, and I am sure you will see the word 'bloody-minded', stick-of-rock-like, running right through his or her core.
Determined is perhaps a kinder word, but call it what you like, as December moved into January and 'Marathon Year' dawned, it seemed to me that total focus was always going to be the greatest weapon in my marathon armoury.
As I increased my distance from 10 miles into the early teens, it was increasingly clear: you can't get away with being wishy-washy when it comes to a marathon. There are no shades of grey. There's no 'Well, I quite fancy it.' Above all, you've got to want it. There's got to be desire. Passion even. You've got to be the slave-driver, Ben Hur-like in your own chariot, whipping your body onwards even when it hurts like hell.
And so it seemed that the training was working: I was hardening up, and with that hardening, confidence started to come. I pushed myself and I started regularly to achieve that rarest of things – a long run which my body didn't rebel against, a long run that I actually enjoyed. I learned to attack 12 miles and then I stepped up to 13, at which point came the encouragement of being very nearly halfway there. General marathon advice was to be able to run 15 miles by the end of January for an April marathon, and I was pleased to achieve it. It was an important psychological marker.
Everyone tells you not even to attempt a marathon if you can't run 15 miles comfortably, and I could sense the reasoning behind it. Even to a novice, 15 seemed the point at which you established your credentials as a marathon runner in the making, the distance at which you proved you were capable of pushing on. Reach 15 and you've shown that you've almost certainly got what it takes for the long run. Training is about building confidence as well as physical stamina – and 15 miles gives you precisely that.
My hope was that I was timing it right in those early weeks of 1998. It became a question of computing distances and dates, and, by January, I was confident enough to devise my own next stage. I decided that for the four months to April I would alternate the long run between 15 and 18, slipping in a couple of 20s before the big day dawned.
Some people will tell you that's far too much. They will argue that those shorter runs, in which you really push yourself, are absolutely key, but I took the view that I wanted to get my body used to distance. I wanted complete familiarity with the stresses and strains that start to show around 15 miles; and once
or twice before the big day, I wanted a little foretaste of the even greater stresses which kick in at 20 miles. I wanted to creep ever closer to the abyss and peer over the edge.
It's seemed to me in subsequent marathons that all the training runners do is effectively preparation for the final 7 or 8 miles of the race. Put in the hours, and 18 miles is an achievable, human limit, something you can step up to reasonably comfortably. If you want to go past it, that's when you'll need to go into hyperspace. That's when you'll need that extra-special resilience to draw on.
But just how far you go in training remained the great imponderable, or at least it would have done if it hadn't been for Pamela. Her opinion was clear. Her view – and it's certainly the general view – is that it would be foolish to attempt the full distance before the big day, and for several reasons. The big day would be considerably less big if you had already done the distance. Why try to upstage yourself? Just as importantly, there is absolutely no need. As Pamela kept telling me, the crowds will drag you round the last few miles.
Your lonely 21 or 22 in training will be the equivalent of the full 26.2 once you've got the crowd behind you and are buoyed up by the huge lift that comes with the day itself, Pamela insisted. Get to about 20 miles in training and then trust in the crowd on the day, she urged. Her point was that hundreds of thousands of people cheering you on are worth 6 miles. I started to try to picture it. What would it be like? I just couldn't imagine it, but I tried, and with each attempt, anticipation mounted as I contemplated stepping into the unknown.
How can you possibly know what the cheering will do for you? All you can do is assume that it will do you good – and I clung on to that thought during the nervy final three weeks. Nervy because this is the period during which you are supposed to taper. All the advice is that you mustn't maintain your running intensity until the day itself. Instead, you are supposed to throttle back over the final few weeks, confident in the knowledge that you've got hundreds of miles in the bank which will be your stepping stone to marathon glory on the day.
In the meantime, I was battling pressure on another front – the peculiar business of going public. To justify the charity place, I had to raise in the region of £1,500 for Macmillan, which I did by boring the good people of Chichester with my run, writing articles to go alongside the sponsor forms we printed in the paper.
People rallied to the cause wonderfully. Sponsorship money flowed in; and it was obvious very early on that I was going to exceed my target comfortably. Just as encouraging was the fact that the sponsorship money was almost always accompanied by sweet notes explaining just why it was given. In many cases, the money came from people who knew me and wished me well on that basis; but in many more, it came from people who had lost friends and relatives to cancer and were keen that I should know this as I cashed their cheque. It was humbling. I was becoming part of their refusal to give in, part of their wish to remember. It really did feel that I was running on their behalf, and with that realisation came a sense of privilege. I was going to represent them on the streets of London.
The actress Lesley Joseph was patron of the Macmillan appeal which the newspaper had been supporting, and she wrote me a lovely note of commendation, urging everyone to support me. It meant a great deal. She was graciousness and generosity personified – and utterly typical of the support I received.
But this created a challenge of a different kind. Suddenly, I could see the appeal of anonymity. Here I was writing in the paper about something I had no idea whether or not I could do. How on earth could I face the return to work if I didn't finish the course?
With the marathon a month away, I made my final appeal in the paper, alongside a photograph of me earnestly listening to Pamela's top tips and another of me running dutifully beside her. The headline was 'The final countdown for novice marathon runner', under which I'd written a couple of hundred words trying to put it all into perspective.
One thing I didn't mention in that article was that Fiona was pregnant, with a due date at the end of July. 1998 had become a significant year for all sorts of reasons. Three months after the marathon, I was going to become a dad for the second time.
Chapter Two: 'Streets of Love'
My Debut Marathon – London 1998
From the moment my serious training began in November, my fixed point on the horizon was Sunday, 26 April 1998, my own personal point of no return, the culmination of hundreds of miles' training under Pamela's all-knowing guidance. Poor Pamela. We got on well, but I made her feel nervous. Invariably I overdid the tales of woe, with the result that Pamela was probably more apprehensive than I was as the great day dawned. After all, she felt responsible for me doing it in the first place. I was able to run blithely blaming everyone else for the dumb thing I was about to do. It wasn't my fault. No longer mine to reason why. All I had to do was follow the crowd and run 26.2 miles.
Moreover, I was convinced – and I now recognise this to be an important part of the process – that I was never ever, no, never, going to do it again. One marathon was going to be enough. The marathon itch had lurked in my mind for a few years before the chance had arisen, and now I was going to purge myself completely of all mad urges in one insanely long run, after which I would return to normal life. No more getting up stupidly early on a Sunday and running 15 miles. No more nipple plasters. No more sore bits where you really, really don't want to have sore bits. No more stinging eyes as the sweat drips in. No more aches and pains. No, I was going to go back to a life of leisure.
My real world was the one where a Marathon was the much-lamented name for what was now ludicrously called a Snickers; where my only exertion was to reach the bar in the theatre. It was to be a glorious one-off. And that was a big part of my motivation on that slightly overcast April morning. I was going to do it once and I was going to make it count.
We were staying the weekend with my wife's sister and her husband in Tooting – though sadly my sister-in-law Anna wasn't there. She was a couple of hundred yards down the road in the special care baby unit in St George's Hospital, having been admitted horribly early for a baby which threatened to be born fatally premature – a terrible time for her when all she could do was hang on and hope. Days stretched into weeks, and hope started to grow stronger. The happy outcome was that a week after the marathon she gave birth to Callum, a special boy indeed, healthy and to this day a glowing testimony to the wonderful care Anna received; testament too to Anna's remarkable endurance and spirit. But the happy outcome was still in the future as marathon morning broke. Anna's situation was a grim background which helped put everything into perspective. It was only a run, after all. Nothing more than that.
Adding to my motivation was the fact that Linda McCartney had lost her battle against cancer exactly a week earlier. I have been a Beatles obsessive all my life. Given this and the cause I was running for, Linda's death was another spur, another reason to run an unfeasibly long distance – and certainly part of the mental preparation which sees you get your mind in the zone.
Also helping in that respect was the London Marathon registration, another of the areas in which the event is just so damned well organised. Others come close, as I have learned in the years since, but it's London that takes the biscuit, a fact which inspires you with confidence before you even start.
You have to register to run. In other words, you need to pick up your number at the London Marathon exhibition, a great jamboree which I remember most for the inspiring music which plays constantly and for the machine-like competence with which you are processed, packaged and provided with race number and race instructions. After that, you try to find your way through the marathon exhibition, an array of sportswear and shoe firms mixed in with nutritionists and masseurs, all jumbled together with eager representatives from other marathons around the world, keen to nab you to share their own big moment.
Practicalities meant that I registered on the Saturday – the day the marathon exhibition becomes impossibly busy. I p
anicked and scurried away pretty quickly, fearing it was just too tiring and stressful a place to be the day before a marathon – no fault of the exhibition. It was huge, it was inspiring, it gave you an idea of the scale of the task ahead and it suggested just how well supported you were going to be, but after a few minutes I just wanted to be by myself to contemplate what the morning would bring – 26.2 miles snaking through London on a course I'd heard so many conflicting things about.
Inevitably, if you do well, you will like the course; if you don't, you won't, but it is certainly a course designed to impress, essentially the same course every year, kicking off in Greenwich Park from three separate starts which converge after a few miles. The course then takes you out towards Woolwich and then back towards Greenwich where, just after 6 miles, you pass the National Maritime Museum, so elegant and attractive beside the river. At around 6.5 miles, you pass the Cutty Sark before continuing into Deptford, broadly following the river before turning sharp right at 12 miles to cross the Thames at Tower Bridge, a majestic structure widely regarded as one of the great London Marathon highlights.
Just to its left, enticing you across, is the Tower of London, but once on the north side of the river, you veer right before turning south again into the Docklands where you circle and loop, taking in Canary Wharf, before running back towards the Tower of London. From here, just before the 23-mile mark, you again follow the river, heading west and then curving south past the Embankment at about 25 miles, by which time you begin to sense the finish. As you reach Big Ben, you turn right, away from the river, towards Parliament Square, passing the bottom of Whitehall as you move into Birdcage Walk for the final half a mile. With St James's Park on your right, you run towards Buckingham Palace where a couple of turns will direct you down the Mall for your first sight of the finishing line. With Buckingham Palace behind you now, just a minute stands between you and your finisher's medal.