Keep on Running

by Phil Hewitt

  How strange that the Bois de Vincennes had been such a pleasure, such an inspiration, whereas now the Bois de Boulogne was draining the life out of me. The 40-km mark came and then, eventually, painfully slowly, 41 km, and yet still we were in the Bois. The finish had never seemed so near and yet so far. The reality is that I should have studied the map more closely – an unforgivable omission for a runner who was fairly seasoned by now. If I had studied it, I would have seen that you don't leave the Bois until the very end of the race itself.

  But then there was a minor miracle on the route to the Arc de Triomphe. Marc's family suddenly materialised, there on my left shouting out for me. I hadn't for a moment thought I'd see them again before the end, but, map in hand, they'd cut across Paris quickly, and there they were. I veered over and touched an outstretched hand. It did the trick. It refocused me. They later said that I wasn't looking very 'with it' at that point, which was probably putting it mildly, but their presence did me a huge favour. Never mind that I had met them for the first time the day before. They were there for me, and it made an enormous difference.

  I was suddenly much more aware of what I was doing, who I was and why I was doing it. And so I plodded on. I kept thinking about walking and knew I wouldn't. I don't think I had the energy to make the decision to stop running. Besides, the atmosphere was starting to mount.

  Marc's family had been standing just where the crowds were beginning to build again. I knew it had to be a good sign. Several people in the crowd had been shouting out 'Allez! Allez! Allez! Les derniers 400 metres!' and I accepted it as if they really knew. I was annoyed a hundred or so metres later when someone else shouted out 'Allez! Les derniers 400 metres!' And just after that someone shouted out 'Allez! Les derniers 500 metres!'

  But then, the great miracle happened. We left the Bois. All of a sudden there was the first sight of the Arc de Triomphe as we turned the corner onto Avenue Foch. In front of the Arc was the straight stretch up to the finish, with the 42-km marker hovering just a couple of hundred metres in front of the finishing line.

  And so I made it to the end. People were finishing thickly at this point. I was in much more of a crowd than I had been in New York. As I approached the line, I could see the clock turning 3:30 and so I knew – given the time it had taken me to get over the start – that I was home and dry, well within my target.

  I started hyperventilating within moments of finishing. In London you are conscious of marshals looking out for you, but there was no such luxury in Paris. I just kept walking and my horribly noisy breathing soon subsided as I walked towards the medals. The marshals didn't triumphantly place your medal around your neck as they did in New York. They just gave it to you in a cellophane packet. And then you were handed a big blue plastic disposable raincoat, almost impossible to put on when you are exhausted. I had my head coming out of an armhole for a moment.

  No, there was no great feeling of being looked after, but I found myself recovering and very soon – surprisingly soon – feeling good. They were dishing out water and fruit, and I grabbed a bottle. I contemplated eating, but briefly I felt my stomach tighten and so decided against. Instead I contemplated the run I had just completed.

  Those minutes in hand had done the business. I came in at 3:27:34. I had run a good race, and just as importantly, I had thought a good race. I had two and a half minutes remaining on my time in hand, and that was what took me under the all-important 3:30. Just as importantly, I'd knocked just over eight minutes off my New York time.

  The satisfaction was double. I was able to tell myself that this was the race where I had come of age, in the sense that this was the race where I had used my head, drawing on past times and past experiences to see me through.

  The second part of the satisfaction was that it been so wonderful a course. Support from spectators had averaged out as moderate, finishing strongly but in places sparse to non-existent. But that didn't matter. This had been Paris on a beautiful day, on a fast, flat course which offered everything from the Arc de Triomphe and back again, taking in the Place de la Concorde, the Rue de Rivoli, the Hôtel de Ville, the Place de la Bastille, the Château and the Bois de Vincennes, a gorgeous stretch of the Seine and glimpses of Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. The Bois de Boulogne had been dull at the end, but really I couldn't have asked for more on a course purpose-built for the kind of stimulation a marathon runner thrives on.

  New York had been perhaps the better overall experience, but possibly, just possibly – I really can't decide – the course in Paris just shades the course in New York. Or maybe not. Best simply to say that both are outstanding examples of what a big-city marathon really ought to offer. New York could so easily have been followed by grim anticlimax. In the event, it was capped and crowned by Paris.

  The day was now beautifully sunny and I followed the crowds towards the runners' exit, where the organisation returned to the level which had characterised the start of the race. There were huge barriers across the road and a great press of runners, some a bit unsteady, trying to get through the narrowest of escapes into the tightly packed crowd of well-wishers on the other side.

  It was stupid to be subjected to this, particularly as the crowds outside, so eager to greet their own runner, weren't giving an inch. In defence of the organisers, it would have worked if everyone had been sensible, but the point is that crowds aren't sensible, and the organisers had completely failed to factor that in. It was a complete farce.

  Eventually I made it out and was walking towards the Arc de Triomphe – a magnificent sight at the end of a magnificent day. Feeling pleased with myself, and knowing that the feeling wouldn't last long, I wandered back to the flat. Just outside, I found Marc. He'd finished ten minutes ahead of me and already he wasn't happy with his time. He was doing his second marathon, having done 3:36 in London the year before. His Paris 3:17 was a time I have never achieved, but he was annoyed, convinced he should have done 3:15.

  When you're running well, you're never going to be truly satisfied, and slowly, my own dissatisfaction started to grow. I'm not blaming Marc in the least for this. It was the most natural of reactions. Everything had been so much in my favour. Surely I should have done better than 3:27, I thought. But common sense reasserted itself, and I told myself to enjoy the moment.

  Those early-morning stretches as the rain hammered down outside seemed an eternity ago now as we returned to our starting point. Marc's family were there, and I told them again and again how they had saved my day in the Bois de Boulogne. Of course, I would have finished without them, but I couldn't help wondering just how much more of my time in hand I would have eaten up if it hadn't been for their presence at that crucial moment. After all those hundreds of miles in training, strangely, such is running, I could quite believe that in the end it all came down to that moment in the Bois.

  After a very welcome meal with Marc and his family in the flat, I returned to the finish to find Michael, who finished, soon after I got there, with a time of 5:34 – an hour quicker than his debut London two years before. Fortunately the crush had eased by then, and he emerged looking great, delighted to be hailed by name over the finishing line by the guy on the PA – a suitable tribute to a run born of a stamina which I honestly don't think I could ever aspire to.

  Running round in three and a half hours is one thing, but being out there for five and a half is an achievement of quite a different order – one I genuinely marvel at. Michael certainly wouldn't see it that way, but for me his achievement is in the amount of time he sustains the effort, simply keeping going in a race in which most people are pulling away from him. His marathons are a study in concentration which leaves me lost in admiration. He will say he's horribly slow; for me, that's missing the point. Don't weigh up the speed. Simply admire the endurance.

  Three of us had set out on the Eurostar from Waterloo the day before. Each of us had achieved something, and we each enjoyed each other's success as much as we did our own. I couldn't run a marathon in 3
:17, as Marc had done; and I certainly couldn't keep running for 5 hours 34 minutes, as Michael had done. And yet, for me, it was 'job done' too, my first day as a sub-3:30 marathon runner. La vie was definitely belle.

  Chapter Seven: 'Plundered My Soul'

  Misjudging a Marathon – Amsterdam 2004

  One of the most genuinely bizarre aspects of running a marathon is that you celebrate it by stopping. Not just stopping on the finishing line, but you actually stop running for a few weeks. To an extent, it becomes a habit. You step off the conveyor belt – a necessary response, if only to underline the fact that the marathon was an end point in itself. You build up to it, you count the number of runs left until you are running for real and then suddenly you cast aside your trainers as a mark of respect. Mission accomplished, you pause before the next one.

  Partly, and more obviously, it's also a question of recharging depleted batteries. By then you are ready for a rest, but subliminally it has always seemed to me that something slightly darker is happening.

  You are waiting for withdrawal symptoms to set in. You've been so focused on the big day for weeks that it's good to remind yourself of the emptiness which comes when you just don't run. To start with, it's great. You enjoy those extra hours in bed at the weekend; during the week, you look out into the darkness and rain and you think, 'Huh, I'm glad I'm not going out in that.' But beneath the superficial laziness, just waiting to break through, something much more primal is gathering momentum, something you are allowing yourself to discover anew: the fact that you actually want to run. Rest, and you will refresh your hunger, sharpen it and refocus it.

  For the weeks before the marathon, you run because you have to run, because you've mapped out a training schedule, however idiosyncratic, and you are trying to keep to it – if only because keeping to it will be a big part of your confidence on the day. All of which obscures the fact that running is actually something you want to do. Moreover, it's something which your body is expecting you to do. Desist for a while, and it won't be long before your mind starts to long for it and your body starts to crave it.

  You sense the pressure building up, and you let it build up a bit more, knowing that the moment of release will be all the sweeter. I usually manage to hold off for a couple of weeks, which probably sounds a ludicrously short break, but by then the cracks in what I like to consider my usual sunny demeanour have started to show. Mr Grumpy moves in and takes up residence. Fiona is convinced she can tell whether or not I have had a run, and she can certainly tell when I need one.

  It's not quite cold turkey, more what the Aussie cricketers used to like to call mental disintegration before they started succumbing to it themselves. You start to feel fat, and no matter how much the feeling flies in the face of all evidence, it's a feeling which grows as you feel increasingly de-energised, lardy and slothful. When the children were small, my yardstick was that I needed a run when I started hearing myself say too frequently, 'Adam, will you fetch this?'; 'Adam, will you fetch that?' If I've had a run, I simply get up and fetch it myself. Time and again, it seems the only way to replenish energy is to expend it. As the French say, l'appétit vient en mangeant. So it is with running.

  And so it is with missing a run. Even when I've really, really not wanted to go for a run, I've forced myself, knowing the satisfaction of having gone will be worth its weight in gold compared to the self-flagellating grumpiness of not having gone. Once running has got hold of you, all you can do is obey; once marathons have got hold of you, all you can do is decide which one next.

  On the back of Paris, I thought I would turn my attention to Amsterdam. After London and New York, I had already felt I was getting the hang of these big cities. And I wanted more. Amsterdam was an obvious one to try, another database marathon which is easy to get into. Just as with Paris, you pick your moment, you whip out your credit card and within seconds you've got an email confirmation: you're in. I was now in the habit of running a spring and an autumn marathon, occasionally throwing in an extra one. Amsterdam on Sunday, 17 October was to be my autumn treat for 2004, another notch on my growing list of countries conquered.

  It would be a hectic weekend, flying out on the Saturday morning and heading back on the Sunday after the race. With the children at school, there was no way we could turn it into a family break, and I wasn't keen to use up holiday allowance without them. We decided that I would go off alone, not something I particularly relished, but the marathon bug was strong, and I felt I was getting stronger. I had eaten into my finishing time over successive marathons, and I wanted to eat some more.

  A huge part of the attraction was also that Amsterdam in the autumn would be the perfect complement to Paris in the springtime: another legendarily beautiful city at an attractive time of year. The Venice of the North, with its characteristic architecture reflecting in those endlessly alluring canals, strongly appealed to me. Throw in the gorgeous colours of the season, and I was hoping to come close to my New York experience of a year before.

  Cost, too, was a factor. It was barely an hour's flight from Southampton Airport, just a few miles up the road from home. In fact, it was so close that, in one of those appealing quirks of European timekeeping, you actually arrive home – regaining the hour – at pretty much the time you took off.

  In short, it was a marathon which ticked all the boxes: close enough, but still exotic; no great disruption to family life, but still a chance to go on a plane (always a big plus in my book) to a beautiful city which was relatively cheap to get to.

  And when I studied the course, I soon saw another reason to lap it up. The marathon starts and ends in the city's Olympic Stadium. How inspiring was that going to be? What a prospect. First New York and then Paris had underlined the importance of picking an inspiring course. The thought of running on an Olympic track had me drooling. And then, in between, when tiredness set in, just how inspiring were those canals going to be? As marathons go, it looked ideal.

  I was psyched up and confident as I flew off on that Saturday morning in October 2004. Soon after arrival, I discovered to my delight that registration was just a few minutes from the Olympic Stadium. Disappointingly, the stadium turned out to be a fairly ugly building from the outside, but the glimpse of the track I got through the main entrance looked enticing. A historic running track was bound to put a spring in our step, I told myself.

  But then things started to go wrong. I've always prided myself on having an excellent sense of direction, but after registering, I struggled for a couple of hours to locate my hotel. I found a street plan but I couldn't see the road anywhere. I wandered into a hotel and asked. The guy replied, 'That's almost in Belgium' – which wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. Eventually I found it, but a preparation which involved a flight and getting lost wasn't good. Nor was a poor night's sleep – even though I kept telling myself that the night before a marathon wasn't the night that mattered.

  I was finally asleep when the alarm went off at 6.20 a.m., which was far too early. I can't imagine why I set it for that time, save to say it's possibly some kind of Pavlovian conditioning. If you're doing a marathon, you get up stupidly early – really stupidly in this case, given that the marathon started at 11 a.m., which was far too late – an hour and a quarter after London and two and a quarter hours after Paris. I lay on the bed for a couple of hours, had a light breakfast and idly waited for the time to pass. Instead of mounting excitement, I felt a deepening gloom for no reason I could fathom.

  Finally, I left the hotel at about ten to nine and joined a train, which was already full of marathon runners. It took a quarter of an hour to get to the marathon stop and then five minutes to walk to the sports hall which served as marathon HQ.

  In keeping with Paris, this was a marathon which ended where it started. I dumped my bag in a big hall divided into sections according to your running number – all very straightforward. I queued for the loo several times, largely to waste time and then, to my annoyance, I started to get worried about be
ing hungry. I bought a biscuit and a coffee. 11 a.m. was a bad time to start. You really don't want to be running right through a time of day when your body might reasonably be expecting to get fed, but there was no way round it. For a 9 a.m. start, you want to be having a light breakfast soon after six. For an 11 a.m. start, it was all much more difficult to compute, and I suspect I got it wrong.

  The other problem was that the later start gave us all far too much time to think about it, and the more I thought about it, the less appealing the whole prospect became. I glanced outside the sports hall at the dark grey skies. The temperature had dropped significantly from the day before. The morning was overcast and threatening to deteriorate. The air was chilled. It had been raining heavily when I woke up, and it looked as if the rain would return any second.

  The sensible thing, partly to get in the mood, would have been to wait around outside, and plenty of people did, but I didn't fancy it, hanging back instead in the relative warmth of the sports hall – a decision which probably nibbled away at my confidence even more.

  Finally I emerged at about 10.40 to join the crowds wandering towards the start, a few minutes' walk away. Some people were jogging gently, which seemed daft. Surely the first kilometre or so is going to be warm-up enough, I thought miserably. But, of course, they were doing the right thing. I was shivering and hunching up; they were loosening and starting to focus. I was beginning to dread; they were starting to synch body and mind.