Keep on Running

by Phil Hewitt

  As I swerved, I voiced my infuriation with the entire day. Uncharacteristically, but with the excuse of marathon-induced stress, I shouted: 'Get out of the ******* way, you ******* stupid cow!' As I spoke, I half-turned. And as I turned, I discovered to my horror that she wasn't just any little old lady, but a nun, resplendent in full nun regalia. I could almost see her halo.

  I was appalled; all I could plead was that the day had thrown me so deeply into my discomfort zone that I had completely lost touch with the kind of person I like to think I am. Her behaviour was foolish in the extreme, but my rudeness was unconscionable.

  Or at least that's the way it seemed at first. I hate to say it, but my horror didn't last long. Within a couple of hours, the incident was becoming the one thing that let me look back on my day with anything approaching a smile – and a deliciously wicked one at that. For a moment, it had been the day's low point. But very quickly, it became the day's high point, perfectly summing up precisely what I thought about the shambolic organisation which marred the entire event.

  My shame has long since gone now. Instead I am secretly delighted (don't tell anyone) that I let rip and gave Rome both barrels. Hilarious in retrospect, but at least she was heading for heaven, whereas I'd just booked myself eternal damnation in the Eternal City.

  Chapter Sixteen: 'Don't Stop'

  The Love Goes On – Mallorca 2010

  So, once again, I had to face up to the annoyance of a marathon which ultimately ended in disappointment – one made all the worse for the fact that I had been completely on my own. I'd half expected to bump into Marc at some point, the kind of coincidence that does tend to happen in big crowds, but no such luck. Instead, I was a sad, solitary failure, a fact which did at least spur me on to some vigorous sightseeing the following day. Still wearing my sports watch, I walked a ludicrous 18 miles on the Monday. Or maybe it wasn't so ludicrous. Driving me as much as anything, I suspect, was some kind of desire to compensate for the day before. But the upshot was that any stiffness in my legs was soon dissipated and I had a great time exploring one of the world's most fascinating cities.

  Back home, however, I really did start to enter new and uncharted territory. The usual pattern, whether my time had been good or bad, was to feel more and more frustrated with it once I was back in the normal run of things. But after Rome, something rather different happened: I grew increasingly forgiving towards the time I had achieved. Instead of beating myself up about it, I found reasons to believe I had done respectably, not least for the fact that Rome was so obviously polluted. By the time I'd finished recounting it, the skies had been black with clouds of filth which threatened at any moment to descend and choke the life out of me. I conjured visions of a marathon in which breathing apparatus should have been de rigueur. Instead of making a good time worse, as I usually do, I was attempting to make an average time better. Something had indeed changed.

  I was winding down. Without realising it, there was an element of signing off in my behaviour. After Rome, my couple of weeks' lay-off stretched towards a third as I found more and more reasons not to go out running. One marathon is usually the spur to the next. Not so Rome. It started to seem as if I had roamed enough.

  In the end, it was Michael who rescued me from my self-indulgence and sloth with the kind of plan only a marathon runner could come up with. Fifty years before, he and Stella had honeymooned in Mallorca. In their golden wedding year, any normal husband would have taken his wife back there. Instead, after an anniversary party for family and friends in London that summer, he suggested that he and I go out there to run the Mallorca Marathon in October. I liked that man's thinking – the kind of warped thinking I could relate to.

  At last, I had a purpose again. And so it was that in June 2010 I resumed training. However, that's when I started to get seriously worried. Something grim started to happen. I found myself once again in new and unexpected territory. Suddenly, I found myself really hating the training. It had never happened before. There had been times in the past when I had endured it without enjoying it, but I always did it. And in truth, I didn't duck out of it this time. But I started to grab a few extra minutes in bed. I would always go in the end, but procrastination was creeping in. There was no spring in my step, and no enjoyment either.

  Over the past four or five years, I have invariably announced my next marathon as my last – and at first, I imagine people believed me. But then, the marathon over, I would always book another. I couldn't stand the thought of being someone who 'used to run marathons'. Stopping running altogether seemed to me the most monumental defeat. It seemed like saying goodbye to everything. But still, as some kind of self-defence mechanism, I would spread the word that I would be quitting after the next one, and at times I probably even managed to kid myself.

  After a while, whenever I said it, I was met with disbelief, groaning and 'I've heard that before'. It was annoying because part of me meant it. But others had seen what I was slow to see – that announcing my imminent retirement had become part of that complex package which counts as training. It was one of the ways I psyched myself up. Believe it is your last and you make that extra effort. Announcing my retirement had become a way of saying 'this next one is special'.

  And so the marathons came and went, and always I added a next one. Always the thought of stopping was worse than the thought of continuing.

  Then came the run-up to Mallorca 2010. It felt different. Much more of me meant it this time when I said it would be the last. The training simply wasn't fun anymore. For each new marathon I had taken to inventing a new 18-mile route going out in a different direction from Bishop's Waltham. For the Mallorca training I lumbered myself with an absolute rotter, pleasant enough back roads to begin with, taking me to a new town which I always got lost in while trying to find my way through to the other side. It was infuriating every Sunday as I hit this bizarre mass of identical houses plonked in the middle of nowhere. All I wanted to do was to emerge on the far side, but time and again I would run down blind alleys, run into building sites or simply end up where I started, all without seeing a single person up and about. I started to wonder whether the town was inhabited at all.

  I was going nowhere – and it seemed somehow symbolic.

  Each week I would get a little bit further before getting lost, but there was no pleasure in it. It was just an annoyance. Eventually, I started to make it all the way through, thanks to the ruse of treating the whole thing as a maze and making a succession of left turns on the lifeless, deserted, early-morning streets. It wasn't the most direct route, but it got me through. But even then, there was no pleasure in the run.

  Again, it's behaviour that normal people would find baffling. Fiona insists it's pretty weird. Surely the obvious thing would have been to find another route, but not being able to get through the town annoyed me, and so I kept going back. I didn't want to be defeated by it. Just as a cat returns time and again to the spot where it deposited a bird on your carpet long after you've disposed of the corpse, I kept niggling away at my route – behaviour which some might consider appropriate given that the name of the town is synonymous in local folklore with the asylum which once stood there.

  Also, I felt locked in. I was recording good times over the first 8 miles of the route, and my sports watch made me want to stick to it. Stubbornness and stupidity played their part as I pursued a course that was so obviously sapping my will to run. Maybe I kept at it for the reason that I was actually falling out of love with running. By heaping up the frustrations, I was subconsciously making it easier to hang up my trainers for good.

  Interest was sparked a little by the fact that Michael and I, using sports watches and computers, were able to follow each other's progress as we counted down to the selfsame race. But after a while I took myself in hand. I was being stupid. I had to make it more fun. Having cracked my labyrinth at last, I did finally resort to variations and combinations of my previous long routes, but none of it quite worked. Not even the chan
ge could bring back my desire. It was a grim few months in my running schedule.

  I looked forward to the chance to revive my running on holiday in France that August, a way to step things up a fraction before the October marathon, but once again I stalled. We stayed just south of Limoges in a gorgeous cottage and had a fabulous time, the whole family together lapping up all the pleasures of la vie française. But as a place to run, it was duff in the extreme. The routes were hopelessly hilly. This was going to be my second sports-watch marathon, and my sports watch didn't mince its stats: my French runs were just as poor as my English ones.

  And then I hit a new and utterly unexpected low. I was running through a deserted French village, the kind of village that looked as if no one had lived there since the war. The shutters were up; no humans were around; the only sign of life was the barking of dogs, that low-level yapping so typical of rural France. But I was experienced in these things. I knew that all the chiens méchants would be slobbering and slavering behind bars. Except that this time one of them wasn't. A ghastly nippy little thing, it shot right out and bit deep into the flesh just above my left ankle, sinking its teeth into me just as I was going through with my stride. In that split second, the dog hung on and the flesh ripped – a V-shaped tear which bled profusely.

  I paused to look down at the back of my leg in shock and horror. I could hear the owners shouting. I didn't want to find out whether it was at me or at the dog. Instead, I fixed my eyes in the middle distance and hobbled on. Glancing back, there was blood on the road.

  I didn't have a phone with me. That would have been far too sensible – all too counter to that great spirit of running (or at least my conception of it) that I was just starting to stop worshipping. By the time I got back to our holiday let, the bleeding had eased, but the back of my leg was a mess.

  Clearly I needed to go to the chemist's. Fiona came with me, and in my best French I explained what had happened. The chemist leapt backwards in terror and told me to go straight to the hospital, where I was seen quickly and treated with a lovely mix of efficiency and friendliness. The doctor explained that you don't stitch up wounds made by animals. You allow them to drain and heal naturally. She also explained, when I asked perhaps slightly tactlessly, that no, they no longer had rabies in France, only in certain illegally imported Eastern European dogs and in wild bats. Clearly I just had to hope that my dog was as French as a string of onions. The doctor put all sorts of plasters on the wound to hold the sides together, and off I limped – with two months to go until Mallorca.

  In the event, I was running again within a few days – much to Fiona's disapproval. She thought I was crazy to attempt it so soon after such an unpleasant injury. My view was that I had a marathon to do. As far as Fiona was concerned, my attitude said it all about runners. In the event, the wound healed quickly, and I was running without pain within ten days. However, I couldn't help but see an underlying significance in what had just happened. It seemed to crystallise the way I was heading. Whichever way I looked at it, running really wasn't any fun any more, and that was the thought that stayed with me as the marathon approached.

  For Rome earlier that year I had churned out two 8-mile runs a week, plus an 18-miler, plus intervals. For Mallorca, I continued with the long run, but I dropped the intervals and reduced one of the 8-milers to six. I continued to push myself on the shorter runs, aided by my sports watch, but while I put in the effort, I was conscious that I was marking time. More than ever, I was ticking off weeks, forever counting up how many runs remained until I could stop. Rome had been a tough one. Something had snapped, and now it was obvious, even to me: I'd run my course.

  Mallorca was a last marathon which really was going to be a last marathon. Mixing up my sports, I even started telling myself that I'd had a good innings. I'd had a good run for my money. All things must pass. And all the other clichés.

  In the final few weeks, I knew. Mallorca was to be my farewell to running – and it was a relief to realise it because with the realisation came a resurgence of energy. In the final ten days, just a little bit of the buzz crept back in. I wanted to sign off in style.

  Michael and I flew out on the Friday for the Sunday start, which was from the main waterfront promenade in Palma, just opposite the Parc de La Mar. The Parc offers an attractive lake which stands in front of La Seu Cathedral, a building which reflects gorgeously in its waters. It was instantly obvious: this was going to be one of the most picturesque starts to a marathon you could wish for.

  The registration was novel and exotic, open air in tents under palm trees at the north-eastern end of the lake. As we registered, we could see – across the water – the finishing area being constructed on the southern side, on the seafront. Later that day, still the Friday we arrived, we walked right by it, seeing the final few hundred yards all laid out, still protected by polythene. It's always good to get an idea in your mind of what the finish looks like. A clear image of it will help once tiredness sets in, and here it really did look enticing – several hundred yards of raised gangway, the cathedral standing proud above the lake to our left. It was the kind of finish I could happily envisage; I could imagine how much just the thought of it would help weary feet towards the end.

  Importantly, we were beginning to get an idea of the beginning and the end. Now we tried gropingly to get a feel for the rest of the marathon route, very grandly bringing the fruits of our combined experience to bear on the course ahead. We came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to be a good one.

  The first quarter was a couple of seafront loops, at the end of which the 10-km runners would leave us. The second quarter was in the Old Town centre, after which the half-marathon runners would leave us. At 13 miles, the marathon runners embark on quarter number three, 6 or so miles eastwards and slightly inland on roads parallel to the coast, occasionally glimpsing the sea to the right. At about 18 miles, the route twists back on itself to come out on the seafront promenade for the final stretch westwards to the finish, the sea now open on the left until a final turn sees you double back on yourself for the final couple of hundred yards.

  Wandering around Palma on the Friday and the Saturday we came to the conclusion that the city-centre stretch was going to be a nightmare, particularly when we started noticing the stripe of blue line showing the way to go – invariably along tight, narrow medieval lanes and around twisty corners. It was impossible not to imagine that we would be horridly bunched, especially as we would still be with the half-marathon runners at this point. Plus a few doubts started to creep in as to just how interesting that third, backstreet quarter would actually be.

  Another factor emerged as we looked across to the starting/finishing area. The size of the respective bag deposits suggested the marathon runners would be outnumbered three to one by the half-marathon runners. We'd imagined there was going to be around 7,000 or 8,000 doing the full marathon. In fact, that was the total number of runners across all three races, with the marathon comfortably the smallest element. As it turned out, there were 1,372 marathon finishers; 2,977 half-marathon finishers; and 1,795 10-km finishers, plus various walkers and Nordic walkers, who presumably had a fine line in knitwear. It was clear it was going to be a very different kind of marathon to the vast city slogs we'd become used to.

  The night before, as almost always, was bad. It was difficult to get to sleep and then even more difficult to stay asleep. We left the hotel at 8.15, just three-quarters of an hour before the start but still in plenty of time. Funny when you think how early you have to get up in New York; how soon you have to get cracking in London; and just what an awful crush it is in Paris. This was leisurely indeed. It was barely ten minutes' walk to the start, and it was all terribly relaxed, no wait to hand over the bags, everything calm, unflustered and simple. The queues for the loos were long and slow, but there was a huge city wall you could use instead, and plenty of people did. Mallorca has probably suffered worse indignities in its long and sunny history.

  F
rom there it was a gentle amble around the eastern end of the lake and up onto the seafront dual carriageway to assemble at the start. I left it a little bit late. The runners were quite tightly packed at the front by now, which meant a quick clamber over the barriers. But plenty of people were doing the same, and it was all very friendly as we stood shoulder to shoulder. Michael was already in his group further back. I was a hundred yards or so from the starting line, and it wasn't long before we were off – the usual process of standing still, shuffling forward, increasing in pace and then getting into your stride as you cross over the timing mat.

  Once again, armed with my sports watch, I was most definitely running in miles whatever the roadside markers said. Annoyingly in the first mile or so, however, quite a number of people were running several abreast or in little groups, which made them difficult to get round. There were also plenty of people who had started too far forward for the pace they were now running at, and so the first mile seemed comparatively slow. I was quite surprised to see it come up in 7:33, far closer to my 7:30 target than I'd expected.