Keep on Running (17 page)

  After a while, still on the north bank of the Seine, we came into what the official course map calls '
les
quatre tunnels de la voie Georges-Pompidou
', another of the stretches which the map identifies as a danger spot. It certainly was for Princess Diana. The tunnel by the Pont de l'Alma was the one in which she was fatally injured, and it felt strange – though not disrespectful – to be running through it. It looked so familiar from all the pictures.

  The tunnels were effectively underpasses, dipping under the main routes which headed north-south across the river as we headed generally east-west. I'd expected the four tunnels to look the same, but each was subtly different in character, not least for the fact that by now the crowds – at last – were building all the time. The tunnels took us towards the 30-km marker, and the map had warned us to take them carefully and certainly not to accelerate on the descents. In the event, they were fine. It was good to know that there were four and good to count them off, especially as I could feel the atmosphere rising as we emerged from each into the sunshine. This was one of the places where the atmosphere was at its best, helped in my case by knowing that Marc's family were waiting for us around the 30-km marker.

  All the while – and if you are a runner, you will know that you simply have to do this – I was comparing my time to my New York time six months before. In New York I reached the 15-mile marker in 2:01. In Paris, I passed the 16-mile marker in 2:02, a mile more in just a minute more. When you can log such facts as you run along, it's impossible to overestimate just how much they can help you. Success breeds success on a marathon route. If you can prove to yourself that you are doing well, then invariably you will do even better. I was feeling good. At 20 miles, I was eight minutes ahead of my New York time – and I am sure that keeping a close eye on comparative times had a lot to do with it. Over marathon distance, you've got to cling to anything that will sustain your pace.

  Around the 30-km marker there were some fine views of the Eiffel Tower, and there I grabbed a power gel sachet (fortunately vanilla, a flavour I liked). It was the first I had seen of the gels, though there had been plenty of discarded sachets on the road at various points. I don't know how I missed them. I had started out with a bottle of sports drink that I had made up, but after that I was solely on water and started to worry that I wasn't replacing salts. I sucked on the power gel occasionally over the next few miles, always being careful to wash it down with fluid. I am sure it made a difference.

  Eventually the race turned away from the river and up towards the Bois de Boulogne, and here it was great to see the kilometres creeping into the mid-30s. By the time I reached 34 km I was thinking in terms of a run from Wickham roundabout to home, just 5 miles remaining, perfectly manageable, nothing you would get too excited about. It was all about reducing that deficit to manageable proportions and until about 35 km, those kilometre markers had come up pretty nicely.

  But it was here that tiredness started to kick in and take hold. I think 36 was OK and perhaps also 37, but thereafter I was struggling. Maybe it was the lack of salts earlier on. I kept thinking: only another couple of kilometres and then it will be the 40-km marker and I will be virtually there, with just two more to go. But in those final five or so kilometres, it felt that each kilometre was at least a mile. And this was where I was lucky to have maintained my time in hand.

  Those minutes in hand gave me exactly the cushion I needed – just! I was haemorrhaging nearly a minute a kilometre at this point, and it was a huge struggle. The difficulty was that the Bois de Boulogne was vaguely pleasant but completely uninteresting, with nobody there to watch – a very flat final stretch, flat in height but also flat in atmosphere, which probably accounted for much of the discomfort I felt.

  There just wasn't any buzz. And worst of all, it felt as if the organisers had fallen short on the overall distance they needed and so decided to make it up any old how in the Bois. There was one point where you ran around a lake, which wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't been able to see runners much further ahead, already on the other side. All a bit dispiriting.

  The atmosphere was zero. There were a few people around in the Bois but they were just doing their usual Sunday-morning thing. There were even a few joggers going past us in the opposite direction. I couldn't help wondering if they felt they were missing out on something.

  And so the Bois seemed to go on forever. One little delight, though, came out of the blue – a stall, at around 40 km, advertising the Marathon de Vannes, at which they were offering wine and what looked like cider, plus cheese, brioches and all sorts of food. I doubt there were many takers. For some reason a swig of cider and a lump of cheese really didn't seem too good an idea at this point. But the bizarreness of it – as surreal as the stretches of banana skins – did at least elicit a weary chuckle. They certainly do things differently in France.

  The chuckle was just about all I could manage by now. A degree of disorientation was starting to creep in. I was trying to work out the miles and kilometres remaining but it was all just too much to think about. I was chasing thoughts but incapable of grasping them, a really curious sensation. I could feel myself starting to get confused and my thoughts on time in hand, so clear previously, were now all over the place. Suddenly I just couldn't do the maths any more.

  This blasted Bois de Boulogne, a place I'd hoped was going to be a lovely little marathon pre-finale, a chance to take stock and catch my breath before the flourish of the finish, never seemed to end. I was hating it. I'd entered a zone where I simply couldn't picture my way to the finishing line. We were running around all over the place. The distance was stacking up, but there was not the slightest hint that we were ever going to leave the Bois, and I knew that this wasn't where the finish lay.

  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.