To make up the mileage we cross a suspension footbridge onto the North side of the Trent, where we’ll run what’s been described to me as ‘a short loop’. Well, it had better be short, because every step on this side of the river feels somehow malicious: it’s not taking me towards or away from the finishing line; it’s simply there to rack up the mileage. Simultaneously completely fair – and utterly unfair.
Surely we’re going to cross the river, loop back on ourselves and head straight over again? Nope. As it turns out, we cross the river and turn left down something called Victoria Embankment. Lovely spot for the numerous couples and families enjoying a lazy afternoon in the blazing sunshine, less lovely for a would-be Outlaw Ironman who’s resenting every passing metre.
At last we do turn around and retrace our steps towards the bridge. Finally! All my lingering physical problems are the least of my worries on this side of the river – my very resolve is struggling to cope. We reach the bridge, and I prepare to turn right back across towards the cricket ground.
Only we don’t turn left. We carry straight on under the bridge. This loop is anything but short. And I pretty much feel beaten. The pain I could cope with, but it’s getting under my skin now, this injured, undernourished marathon I’m attempting. It’s eating away at my mind, my confidence.
I’m on a flight to Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, and cousin Vassos is unusually twitchy. We’re embarking on the second of our one-night European marathon odysseys, but since Barcelona we’ve decided we only want to run in countries we’ve never previously visited. (This has the added advantage, on my side, of helping me staying ahead of a pal called Tim in an ongoing game of ‘who’s been to the most countries’. The only rule is that you have to mean to go to that country: so a brief stop in Singapore on a flight to Australia doesn’t count as Singapore, but hiring a boat in Thailand, as I once did, crossing a river to spend ten seconds standing up in Laos before heading straight back to Thailand, does count as Laos. Oh, and FIFA, football’s shambolic governing body, are sole arbiters of what constitutes a country. Terrific game. You should try it. Although the friend who devised it is a BBC cricket producer, and I live in constant fear that he’ll be sent to report on a long tour of the West Indies, adding, potentially, ten (ten!) countries to his tally. For now though, I’m well ahead. Thanks in part to this new marathon arrangement.)
My cousin is worried because our flight home from Ljubljana is at 4pm the following day and we’ve just found out the marathon doesn’t begin until 10 in the morning. Working backwards, it means we need to be at the airport, half an hour’s taxi ride outside of town, at 3, so we need to be in a cab with our bags at half past two at the latest. It takes half an hour to get back to the hotel from the marathon finishing line – so basically, he’s worked out that if either of us fails to get round 26.2 miles in three and a half hours, we’ll miss our flight home. And he’s not convinced I’m up to it.
‘It’ll be different this time,’ I tell him. ‘This time I’ve trained properly.’ Cousin Vassos remains sceptical. He has an important meeting on Monday morning, and he is genuinely worried I’ll make him miss it. And more to the point, he’s quick to point out that his interpretation of ‘training properly’ is markedly different to mine: he does two sessions a week with a professional coach, another two with his running club and a 22-mile run on his own every Saturday morning.
Fortunately, as we check into the hotel, the receptionist (bizarrely) gives us each a small toy elephant, and this mollifies my cousin. And dinner that night is epic, even by our greedy standards. We discover that Slovenian delicacies include sausages the size of your arm, hearty beef stews, tasty trout dishes, and for pudding an enormous filo pastry filled with seeds, nuts, fruit and cream cheese. We eat all of the above and wash it down with a bottle of the local red wine. Not recommended by experts, but to us the perfect pre-marathon nutrition.
The centre of Ljubljana is beautiful. Striking architecture, a green-domed, double-towered cathedral, and looking down on it all, a classic castle on top of a hill. The marathon begins right in the middle of this fabulous cityscape. An extraordinary number of people fill the narrow, cobbled streets hours before the race gets under way. The course itself is two loops through the picturesque city centre, but also meanders through quiet (on a Sunday morning anyway) industrial districts, and peaceful (all the time presumably) residential suburbs.
I feel, despite the training, like I’m running quite slowly. I’d done as much running as I could in the two months building up to this including, for the first time ever, some speed work.
There’s a track near where I live, and I used it every Monday (oh, how I dreaded Mondays) to do timed 800m repeats, twice round the track as fast as possible, with a 400m slow jog to recover between each one. Ten times. The idea, devised by a famous American running coach called Bart Yasso, is to convert your 800m times in minutes and seconds (3mins 10secs, say) into hours and minutes (3hrs 10mins) to predict your marathon finishing time. All things being equal, it’s spookily accurate. But the 800m (half-mile) sprints themselves are hell on earth.
Nonetheless, I had forced myself to the track every Monday lunchtime for eight consecutive weeks, and Bart’s system was predicting a finishing time of between 3:00 and 3:15. Trying for once to be conservative, I start the race alongside the pacemaker with the gold-coloured 3:15 balloon tied to his wrist, and five miles in I am still ahead of him.
But I soon find myself wondering, how come so many people are streaming past me, including those who looked like they couldn’t run 4:15, let alone 3:15? For the first time in my life, I wish I owned a GPS watch. My basic stopwatch, which cost £2.99 on ebay and which I could have used to estimate my finishing time whenever I passed a distance marker, is stubbornly stuck at 0:00:00. I foolishly forgot to press ‘start’ amid all the excitement of setting off.
By mile eight or nine, I’ve re-overtaken many of the slower-looking runners who’d earlier rushed by, but the real explanation as to why I’m feeling so slow doesn’t become clear until half way: hardly anyone is running the full marathon. As we arrive back in the beautiful city centre, most people filter to the side and abruptly stop moving. This leaves me, for the 13.1 miles that follow, rather regretting having tried to keep up with them in the first place. And for a long time during that second circuit of the suburbs, regret it I most definitely do.
It’s slightly depressing when you’re aiming for a time, in my case anything under 3:15, to see the pacemaker run past you with around ten miles to go and realise there’s absolutely nothing you can do to keep up. Your legs simply don’t have it in them.
But the difference between Ljubljana and Barcelona was the training. This time, I’d not only started putting in some speed sessions, but I’d also done the long run mileage. So now when I dig in, there are no shocks, there’s no 9km-long wall to run through. I just keep going as fast as I can, with the glorious safety net of the near-certainty that I will complete the course. The only question is how fast.
At one stage there’s a 90-degree right hand turn around a large field before the road goes uphill for a few hundred metres. If you glance back over your shoulder, you can see at least half a mile of the route you’ve just run. I slow, almost to a stop, for a long hard look behind me and to my horror see the next pacemaker, the one with the golden 3:30 balloon, shockingly close behind and closing fast.
And that man with the balloon, it’s like he represents all my weaknesses and self-doubts. The balloon of doom bringing with it, I know, real disappointment. Almost shame. For a moment, I feel powerlessness to resist, almost as if I want the balloon to pass. I’m being sucked into a vortex of hopelessly slowing legs and accelerating time.
But my response surprises me, shocks me even. I just think: that’s great, problem, opportunity... let’s beat this.
I take a moment to enjoy my unexpected, impulsive positivity and then simply go with it. Right, I think, new target, stay ahead of that balloon. You know you can,
so (to borrow a slogan from a major sportswear manufacturer) Just Do It.
And do you know what? I did just do it. Easily.
The kilometres that had ticked by so excruciatingly in Barcelona still felt difficult, but crucially they also felt manageable. Even when I couldn’t resist the lure of the dreaded ‘How far have I got left to run’ introspection, there was no panic. OK, I reasoned, if there are 10 miles to go, that’s going to take around an hour and a quarter.... Just keep going.
And throughout those ever-demanding final half-dozen miles, I felt like I truly belonged. For the first time really, I felt like a proper runner. It was a terrific feeling. Still is.
Martin Yelling
A former England cross-country runner, he’s now widely regarded as one of Britain’s top coaches. Founder of the UK’s number 1 running podcast, Marathon Talk, as well as the Bournemouth Marathon Festival and Yelling Performance Coaching, which he runs with wife Liz and sister Hayley, both also international runners.
I was first introduced to running in primary school. I lived in Yeovil in Somerset. We used to have an annual school cross country in a little country park in the town. I was about eight years old, and I can remember finishing high enough to qualify for the school team, which meant that I would represent my little primary school at the area championships held at the same place.
A few weeks later I went down there again, along with kids from all the primary schools in the area, and raced. I came fourth and I thought to myself, ‘That’s brilliant. This is something that I can do.’ That was probably my first exposure to the positive inner feeling, the intrinsic feeling of success that you get as a young child where you think, ‘Hey wow, I can do that.’
But moving to secondary school, I didn’t take running seriously. I didn’t take anything to do with secondary school seriously. I thought nothing was actually worth me bothering with. You know the mindset of a kid growing up in a less-than-stable environment. Mucking around was what I was focused on.
Running did give me something that I knew I could achieve at without really trying. When I did get some support and some help, it was my local PE teachers that said, ‘Go to running club, I’ll take you there.’ I used to go to the running club, which just happened to be a mile up the road from where I lived in Yeovil. Some of my PE teachers would take us up there and we’d run with the Yeovil Olympiads. I qualified for a couple of English School Championships. I finished, I think, seventh in a final one year.
That was a brilliant exposure for me for the competitive aspect of running. I wasn’t aware of the other benefits. But in hindsight, those other benefits were hugely important. I was spending time with my friends, sometimes just mucking around on the back of a bus going to an athletics match. They were big social occasions that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. I lived with my mum when I was growing up, and she couldn’t have afforded to support me and ferry me around. This was something I could do on my own, independently, and have a social life around it.
And it kept me out of trouble. Looking back, it kept me out of a lot of trouble because I would go to the running track and I’d run.
I love the space that running gives me. It may be space from other people, which isn’t a bad thing. Also the feeling of space when I’m running outside, being in a natural environment, in the surroundings – even if I’m running fast and putting myself through pain and discomfort in that space. I think about space having different forms: a personal space and natural space, an emotional space, a physical space.
That space can morph with you as you grow from a very competitive ego-driven young male athlete through to a more mature, calm, maybe a little wiser participant who loves the recreational and social side of running.
For me, it doesn’t matter where that space is. I love running on the Jurassic Coast, I love running in the Lake District, I love big sky, being in the mountains, being on the top of the mountain running as the sun’s coming up – amazing. At the same time I love running up a filthy set of steps at a railway bridge in the middle of a city. Or down a dingy alleyway, or along the Thames Path through little sections I didn’t know were there. You look up and you can see architecture that is lost in a city. You’re running through it and past it. Yeah, I just love the whole experience.
I like to run slower now and I stop. I didn’t used to stop. If I see something I like, I stop because even as a runner you can sometimes be in too much of a hurry. I did a little bit of work with Eddie Izzard. He is an interesting guy to go running with. We’d stop and talk or we’d stop and look at something. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ve come all this way in my run, I might as well stop and enjoy some of it instead of starting and stopping in the same place.’
When my wife Liz and I used to go running, we’d smash out big runs and break each other. Now we push the kids, stop for a coffee by the beach. We’re still both doing something we love; it’s just not quite as hard. But you’ve got to vary the run because at the same time I still love going out for a smack up. Putting myself on the edge. And when I finish I have to stop a few hundred metres from home and compose myself before I walk in the door so that Liz doesn’t know I’ve been breaking myself again on a run.
13
Kate Bush, Running Up That Hill
‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 13
Not even halfway through this marathon, and I’m finding the new mental struggles so much more draining than the ongoing physical ones. Ever since we crossed the river, I find myself thinking ahead, how much further there is to go, how much longer it’s going to take me, how much more it’s going to hurt. I squint despondently at my watch every minute or so, but the more urgently I wish away the seconds, the miles, the slower they seem to drag.
I’m told, but have no recollection of the fact, that this is when my brother Nick, kindly up from Cambridge with his family to offer moral support, decides that enough is enough and tries to call a halt to my pathetic athletic endeavours. Apparently he starts running alongside me (though by this stage he wouldn’t have needed more than a brisk walk) and tells me he’s seen several people pass out through heat exhaustion, and none of them looked remotely as debilitated as I do. Caroline, he adds, is seriously worried about me and if for no other reason, then I should definitely stop for her sake. I have, he concludes emphatically, nothing to prove to anyone.
Apart from being one of the kindest guys you could hope to meet, Nick is also one of the fittest. Once, on the day before the 1999 London Marathon, he agreed to take someone else’s place (totally against the rules, best not to mention whose) and on zero training and having hosted a party the night before, he still managed to break four hours. The following year he entered properly, trained hard but at the last minute agreed to run alongside his wife. Once again, Nick broke four hours but this time, having wanted to go sub-three and finding himself at a loose end on the Sunday afternoon, his wife having understandably taken to bed with exhaustion, he decided to kill a few hours by going to the gym. Not for the sauna, you understand, or the steam room, or a relaxing dip in the pool. He went to the main gym for a proper workout. Having just run a full marathon. 26.2 miles in the morning; two-hour heavy weights session in the afternoon.
And if you ever go skiing with Nick, which is actually more likely than you might think as he spends every spare second on the slopes, then be prepared for the fact that he’ll arrange to meet you at the top of the mountain, not by the ski lifts at the bottom. That’s because he likes to wake up extra early, attach climbing skins to his skis and physically scale the entire mountain before skiing down it. Hardest of all, he’s also completed paras training in the army.
So when Nick sees that his arguments are having no effect, he tells me that he’s worried about me too, and in my position even he would stop. Now that would have resonated. Perhaps, on balance and on reflection, I might have heeded his advice.
But like I say, I have absolutely no memory of any of the above. At present I’m in my own little bubble of self-pity and
all I can think about is what a long way I’ve still got to run. That, and whether we’re ever going to cross back to the other side of this bloody river.
After Ljubljana (we made the flight home, just about), I became properly hooked on running. And whereas until then I’d merely enjoyed the uncomplicated act of going for a run, now I wanted all the gear.
Just lace up your trainers and head outside? Not me, not any more.
I was subscribing to two separate running magazines, Runners’ World and Men’s Running, and ravenously reading all the reviews of all the latest gadgets and gizmos.
I’m over that now, back to enjoying the sport’s sublime simplicity, but looking back it feels like a rite of passage. You begin by knowing nothing, and just start running. Then you achieve something, perhaps complete a marathon, read a little, learn a little, and get a lot carried away.
So lots to do, lots to buy, before I laced up those shoes and headed outside.
Starting with the shoes themselves. No longer good enough to find a pair of trainers which just felt right, not by a long chalk. Not even good enough anymore to go to a specialist running shop, have my gait examined by a trained assistant and depending on the advice, buy a pair of comfortable neutral or anti-pronation shoes.
I accepted an offer to get my running gait assessed – in three dimensions. The traditional video camera/human eye/2D analysis is fine for detecting larger abnormalities in running style, but I learned that it’s often the much smaller deviations from the ‘ideal’ gait that can cause injury. I found myself motoring up the M40 to a laboratory in Oxford. Friendly, knowledgeable running boffins pinned dozen of tiny sensors all over my hips, legs and feet. Then they set me off on a treadmill whilst recording proceedings with lots of tactically-positioned infrared cameras.
These measured the precise position of each of the sensors hundreds of times every second and somehow calculated my joint angles at pelvis, hips, knees and ankles in 3D. I discovered that the chief boffin, Dr Jessica Leitch, is a more than accomplished runner herself – so inwardly I beamed with satisfaction when she watched me dashing along like a hamster on her treadmill, and told me I had ‘very nice mid-foot strike’. Wonderful, I thought. Been working on that. Pleased to make it official that I’m biomechanically brilliant. This trip was turning into just the sort of massage my running ego was in need of.
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