Keep on Running

by Phil Hewitt

  The Steyning Stinger is organised by the Steyning Athletic Club, and in 2005 the race took place on 6 March, after the soggiest of weeks which mixed snow with deluge and then served it all up with heavy frost on the day. The day itself was moderately bright, but by then the elements had done their bit to make tough terrain as tough as it possibly could be.

  The route takes you from Steyning to Chanctonbury Ring Road and Washington, then on to Cissbury Ring and then a circuit around Steep Down. The return is via Chanctonbury and Wiston and then back to Steyning – all places I can barely picture now. If I think of the race, all that comes to mind is snow, ice and mud.

  I am sure there was an impressive amount of outstanding natural beauty en route, but the beauty isn't the memory. Yes, of course, this was picturesque West Sussex at its absolute best; unspoilt fields stretching down towards the coastal towns with the sea beyond; patchwork greens of all hues in the foreground suggesting all the luxuriance which follows a damp winter; all promising the rapid growth to come. Snow was still thick on the high ground; lower down were the shoots of new life. Small wonder Sussex has attracted poets, painters, musicians and novelists down the centuries. Few counties have proven themselves more fertile when it comes to sparking the imagination of our artists and writers. Anyone who has ever set foot in the county could wax lyrical for ages about its splendours and its glories; a great tradition of art and literature has striven for years to do them justice.

  But on 6 March, all the beauty was wasted on a day which was simply about keeping your footing while all around were losing theirs – if Rudyard Kipling will forgive the paraphrase. Belloc and Co. had wandered across Sussex collecting its folklore and lauding its idiosyncrasies. We were about to skid across it collecting bumps and bruises.

  The race began from a field opposite Steyning Leisure Centre, launching you off into the unknown in the most relaxed and friendly of ways. After all the pressure of the big-city marathons, all the formalities, all the jostling, it was lovely to get back to something chilled (in every sense) and informal. The organisation was excellent, with no need to be oppressively so. This was small scale and inviting.

  It was an early start to the day, being an hour and a half's drive away, but I got there in good time and was just settling down for the usual lengthy pre-marathon wait when word was passed around that you could go whenever you were ready – an astonishingly laid back approach to marathon running. I kept wondering how they would do the timing, but that wasn't my problem. And nor was it theirs. They managed it efficiently. What it did mean, however, was the chance to get up, off and out well before the designated start, one of a trickle of runners setting out on the most monumental of treks.

  I ran it in a T-shirt and running jacket and never once felt warm. There was ice on the ground, and it wasn't long before there were glimpses of snow through the trees, lying in the shade in woodland that the pale sun couldn't reach. Right from the start, I was on my own, and I was immediately rediscovering something rather lovely – just why I wanted to run. Or perhaps it was more negative than that: I was seeing just what I had lost in Amsterdam. There was a newfound freedom. I was off the leash, a feeling which translated into a comfortable start. The thought of all the miles stacked up ahead didn't hang heavy along those opening country tracks. It hovered as a potential delight about to unfurl.

  The staggered start meant that we were well spaced out, a fact which somehow added to the camaraderie. There was no way you were going to pass someone – or be passed by them – without a smile, a hello or maybe even the quickest of chats. There was a feeling that this was one for the serious runners. You had to be pretty serious even to contemplate it, and each new greeting with each fellow runner seemed to reflect that. We were the big boys, and we were doing our thing. The field was very, very male, much more so than usual for a marathon, or so it seemed. But, unlike Amsterdam, I felt I had every right to be there. Again, it's all in the mind; but I didn't feel out of place, and that was crucial. Somehow in Amsterdam I had become detached from the marathon; here I was once again in the thick – or perhaps more accurately – the thin of it.

  Consequently the whole thing had kicked off with a general, smug sense of well-being – and maybe that's why I have so few impressions of the route from those early miles, beyond track stretching ahead through the trees – and then track slowly starting to rise, which was when the underfoot conditions really did start to become a major factor.

  On the flat, there had been some squelching and a degree of hopping to avoid the worst of the puddles, but then as the terrain started to get steeper, so the ground underfoot started to get treacherous. The higher I got, the worse it got – to the point where on narrow paths I had to pull myself up on the branches either side.

  There were times when I just stood there and thought, Well, how the hell am I going to get past that? It was either ice or deep, thick, cloying mud and pretty much nothing in between. If I attempted to run up the mud, I would be flat on my face in an instant and sliding ignominiously back down, the same fate which awaited anyone foolish enough to take a run at the ice or simply unlucky enough not to have noticed it.

  It was no better going down the other side. Gravity working with me was no better than gravity working against me. Once I reached the mini-pinnacles of the frequent ups, I had little choice as to how to tackle the downs. Running wasn't an option. It was more a case of clinging to the branches and trying to slide in as controlled a way as possible. Not so much flying as falling with style, as Buzz and Woody would have said if the Toy Story superstars had joined us that day.

  Just occasionally at these points, things got as congested as the day was ever going to get: two runners together. I don't remember much conversation by this stage. A certain grim chumminess had taken over. The chat had evaporated. What could you possibly say in the circumstances? 'Lovely day for a 26.2-mile squelch, don't you think?'

  We all just had to keep on going. Occasionally it would flatten out and the path would become firmer, but the psychological damage had been done. This was a race in which it was easy to lose your nerve – a race which became less of a race the longer it lasted. It became simply a question of shuffling on. Often where the ground looked safe enough for something a bit more firm-footed, I would quickly discover that it wasn't. The sane runners were running gingerly by now. A few slips, and your confidence would be gone; and even if you didn't slip, just the sight of the path ahead was enough to loosen your assurance.

  Inevitably, it wasn't long before tiredness started to become a factor. I was feeling it strongly after perhaps a dozen miles. Running in a cramped, unnatural style is hopelessly enervating. Running is supposed to be all about freedom, about letting rip and letting go, just as it had been for those very early miles. But by now, it was all about caution, not letting slip and keeping upright. That great surge of sovereignty at the start had become as cramping as that damned Amsterdam wristband. For hundreds of yards at a stretch, there was no chance of a sweeping stride. Instead, I had to pull my foot free with each step I took. Hey, Mother Earth, can I have my shoe back? And when she released it, it was caked in mud, heavy, uneven and awkward.

  Sod this, I started to think. But then I started to smile.

  The strangest thing was starting to happen. The more stupid the whole thing started to seem – and, believe me, it really was stupid – the more the enjoyment started to creep back in. It was a different kind of enjoyment to the off-the-leash burst we'd had at the start. This was now pleasure of a darker kind, much more the perverse thrill of something so utterly pointless that it defied all logic. An early start, a long drive… and all for the purpose of mud-coasting and ice skating. In the end, the only reason to be doing it was because it was so difficult to do – and for me, that was suddenly enough. I can't say I surged onward with renewed vigour. But I certainly stopped feeling sorry for myself. I started to chill out. I started to have fun.

  The sun never gained much strength as the day wore on. To
an extent I could read from the shadows whether it was mud or ice which awaited me, but it wasn't exactly a knowledge I could do much with. I just had to keep on keeping on. I can't even remember whether there were mile markers and I have no recollection at all of the water stations, though there must have been some. It was all about trying to find – and eventually finding – the fun in a race which would have been tough enough on hard ground, but which was now starting to seem like the oddest of lotteries.

  Inevitably, the thickest snow was on the highest ground – a point, I seem to remember, where we ran a big loop around a wide-open patch, three-quarters of the way into the race. I hadn't a clue where I was, but here, I hate to say it, I dropped to a walk for about ten minutes. Someone said we were about 20 miles to the good, but the temperature had dropped. Briefly, I lost it, conscious that my walk was probably about the same speed as my run anyway. I let the walk take over for ten minutes, thinking that nothing much – probably not even face – was being lost. But then bloody-mindedness reasserted itself. I cursed myself, told myself I was an idiot, useless, hopeless and worse and forced myself back into a trot, which inevitably was the point at which things started to seem easier again – not for the fact of having had a breather, but more because this was simply the motion my aching body had congealed into before my walk.

  Presumably the last few miles were downhill. They must have been. By now I was seriously plodding, but with the plod was growing a kind of smugness. It was tough, really tough, but I was going to get back. There wasn't any point looking at a watch. This was a run way outside anything I had ever done before. Time didn't enter into it. All that mattered was finishing, especially as I was starting to feel uncomfortably cold – which is a rare and worrying thing on a long-distance run. The minimum is always the best thing to run in. You might take along more, but you'll soon discard it or wish you had once you're off. But that didn't seem to be the case on the day of the Steyning Stinger. The route home seemed to be much more in the shadow, the temperature seemed to be dropping all the time, and that alone was the best possible reason for shuffling onwards, finally reaching the flat which would take me back to the start for the lowest of low-key finishes. No crowds, no banners, no cheers. Just someone with a clipboard. But that was more than enough. It was all I wanted.

  They were serving teas and coffees in the leisure-centre canteen when I finally reached it. A couple of dozen runners were there already, readmitting themselves to the human race, defrosting their frozen bodies and mulling it all over. I've no idea how many runners completed the course, but it can't have been many. I grabbed a drink, sat down and started chatting with the others.

  I couldn't take my eyes off the hands of the chap sitting opposite me. They looked like dead flesh. They weren't just colourless; they were lifeless. He couldn't help but see me staring, and he started to explain the circulation problem which he suffered from in low-temperature conditions. I went to get him another cup of coffee. It was steaming in a thin plastic cup which he wrapped his hands round without the slightest wince of discomfort. It was obvious that he had almost no feeling in his hands whatsoever. He kept saying that the sensation would come back, but they looked utterly beyond revival and it was difficult to see that burning them was going to help.

  'Have you had a good morning?' I asked him. 'Yes,' he grinned. 'Great. Really great.' And the worrying thing was that he meant it – worrying until I realised that I too, despite the mud, the ice, the snow and the hills – or perhaps because of them – had had a great time too.

  I haven't kept a record of my time on the Steyning Stinger, but I am reasonably sure it was around the 4:20 mark – nine minutes or so slower than I had achieved seven years earlier on my marathon debut in the wonderfully supportive atmosphere of London.

  But 4 hours 20 minutes in such terrain felt good. By now I was generally marathoning at around 3 hours 30 minutes on the flat in the big cities, something I was clearly never going to do in Steyning. But my Steyning time suggested a significant improvement in stamina, which was gratification enough. And I was home for a late lunch, knackered but deliciously invigorated. You're supposed to believe eight impossible things before breakfast. OK, so it was only one. But I hadn't just believed it. I had actually done it.

  A month later, I was back for the big one, the London Marathon of 2005. It was a strange affair, run in a time not my own with a knee not my own.

  As anticipated, I ran it with Jane, who was making her London Marathon debut. We completed it together in 4:20, a time which didn't stretch me, I am pleased to say – a measure of my progress since my own London Marathon debut. But I am not sure that I could have run it much faster anyway, because I had a bursar. At least, that was what I heard when the doctor first told me. Fleetingly I had wondered what a public school money-man had to do with the price of eggs, but then the doctor explained: not a bursar, but a bursa – the ignominy of housemaid's knee. Chafed nipples had been bad enough, but this really did seem the ultimate indignity. My knee was a squidgy mass of wobbly fluid, a condition more usually caused by too much time down on your knees vigorously polishing and scrubbing. I pleaded most definitely 'not guilty' to that kind of activity, but my knee argued otherwise.

  I was lean and fit in every other department, but it dragged me down that I seemed to have borrowed one of my knees from the Michelin Man. It was raw, red, puffy and horribly big. Two or three times in the week before, I had had it drained at our doctors' surgery, trying not to look as vast syringes gorged themselves on the yucky yellow-red fluid my knee was apparently floating in. But still the fluid came back. I started to write the run off, but to my astonishment and delight, the doctor didn't advise against running. I simply ran with my knee tightly strapped, and surprisingly it did the trick – albeit in a marathon in which I didn't have to extend myself fully. If I was ever going to get housemaid's knee – oh the shame! – before a marathon, at least it was this one, one which wasn't about finishing times as far as I was concerned. All that mattered was getting Jane round safe and sound at a pace she was happy with.

  I felt in control at every point, which perhaps underlines the extent to which marathons are run in the mind. I was so focused on helping Jane round, sorting out her drinks and her gels, that I didn't think about any tiredness I ought to be feeling myself. Consequently I didn't feel any. Retrospectively, I probably ran it as a 4 hours 20 minutes pacer might have done. Finally I saw how pacers managed it. They ran at a pace well within their natural time. That's why pacers float by, chatting, at ease with the world, untroubled, unflustered, unbothered. That's why they had left me so woefully far behind in Amsterdam. They were coasting; I was clinging on.

  And at the end of it, I felt as a pacer probably does. They've run unselfishly in a race which was never about them. Consequently my personal craving wasn't sated. I needed more of that marathon drug. Steyning had been a blast (an icy one); London had come and gone almost unnoticed; and Dublin was still six months away. There was nothing for it but to head overseas. Well, across the Solent. The Isle of Wight is just a short ferry ride away, and the Isle of Wight Marathon beckoned.

  The Isle of Wight Marathon is broadly in the Chichester up-and-down cross-country category. Right from the start, I suspected it was going to be a good one. From the outset, you couldn't fail to be impressed by the organisation; nothing fussy, nothing more than necessary, but efficient and on the ball – the perfect cushion for the feat of endurance ahead of us that Sunday morning in May 2005.

  The course starts and ends in Ryde; in between times, you run a big circle, starting to the south-west before heading back home from the south-east. The route takes you from Ryde to Newport, through Blackwater, Rookley and Sandford, across to Shanklin, north to Sandown and Brading and then back to Ryde, a description which betrays nothing of the fact that this is a marathon which is relentlessly up and down, a real and persistent drag on your determination.

  The hills, many long and steady, begin fairly soon after the start. Af
ter a while, you cease to enjoy the downhills that follow, for the simple reason that you know that before long you will be going uphill again.

  You also cease to enjoy them for the fact that they actually start to hurt. You tire yourself as you go up, but force of gravity means that inevitably you pound your legs even harder on the way down. Eventually it takes its toll. It's an established fact (unless I've just made it up) that in running you are much more prone to injury on a downhill. The Isle of Wight Marathon is for many the proof of the pudding. Downhill, your stride is that little bit longer; gravity means you crunch your knees and your ankles with greater impact; and the chances are that your joints will protest somewhere along the line. Mine certainly did – and quite vehemently.

  But it was a good course, one for the serious-minded marathon runner – good in the sense that it was bound to test your body and also your resolve to the limit. We hadn't even left Ryde and already we were climbing, a foretaste of hills to come. Thereafter we were constantly heading up and down. The roads were good for 6 or 7 miles, all the way to Newport, but after that we were much more on country – rather than main – roads, and the hills seemed to get bigger all the time – a reflection, most likely, of their frequency rather than their actual size.