Keep on Running (27 page)

  For much of it, rather rudely, I was in my own little world. By now, I was regularly marathoning to an MP3 player, convinced that thudding rhythms would help my feet thud at the right pace. But the fact that the course was so crowded for so long made me nervous about putting the music on. I held off until about 19 km, partly also because I knew it would give me a boost. In a marathon, you need to try to give yourself things to look forward to.

  A kilometre or so into the race, I saw the 3:30 pacer ahead of me, which was worrying. I was doing OK time wise, and it seemed to me he really oughtn't to have been ahead of me at that point. It felt like he was setting off too quickly – though it would have been somewhat presumptuous to tell him that. Besides, I was sure he knew exactly what he was doing, so I did the next best thing: I eased past him. It seemed the right decision. Four or five kilometres into the race, I spotted the purple flag of the 3:15 pacer ahead of me. That was my man. I overhauled him and aimed to get a couple of minutes ahead of him, just to have something in hand for when the going got tough, as surely it would.

  At a couple of points over the next few kilometres the route curved and I could see him a few hundred metres behind me, which was exactly where I wanted him – incentive enough to keep going on a course which offers every incentive for giving up: a double figure of eight. Lovely for the spectators wishing to see you several times; not so good for runners whose will has wobbled. The day saw an absurd number of dropouts, a direct reflection of a course which brings you back three times to the start before you enter the final quarter – far too much of a temptation to jump ship if you can feel your time drifting away from you.

  The first quarter of the run soon saw us leave the attractive centre behind as we headed north through some fairly dull suburbs. The second quarter, the lower loop of the figure of eight to the south of the start, was much more interesting, taking in a fairly long stretch by the harbour. At about 12 km, I saw Fiona, just as I was finishing the top loop first time round, and though she saw me five times in all, this was the only time I saw her. But it was stimulus enough, and I was going well. I started on a lemon gel which seemed to do me some good, and I felt emboldened to push the music back a little further, before finally giving myself the treat just a kilometre or so before the halfway marker.

  I spent the next half an hour or so congratulating myself on my great choice of running music including The Stones' 'All the Way Down' two or three times in succession and then 'Start Me Up', another Stones favourite, five times straight off. But then Tom Robinson undid me. 'Up Against the Wall' was pretty amusing when it came on, but maybe, just maybe, it unlocked a little doubt lurking in my mind somewhere. Without any warning I started to struggle at about 25 km – a feeling for which I felt quite unprepared. This wasn't part of the plan.

  Earlier, there had been a little boost – something I had never seen before and have never seen since on a marathon. At two or three of the distance markers, a chap was manually turning over numbers on a display to give you your projected finishing time at that point. The first one I saw gave a projected finish of 3:11, which was encouraging. At the half-marathon point a chap was shouting over the microphone '3:10 to 3:15' and later I saw the time 3:18, still reasonably encouraging. I hit the halfway point in 1:36, at that time my fastest half-marathon in any marathon. It was all going so well.

  Soon after that, we had headed into the top loop of the figure of eight for the second time, and the route – after the pleasure of the harbour in the lower loop – was soon pretty dull again. I was starting to tire; the route was uninspiring; and then Tom Robinson started singing about walls. The sucker punch came at 26 km when the 3:15 pacer overtook me – a significant psychological blow, even though I still calculated that I had a little bit of time in hand. It seemed to me that he was ahead of his pace, so there was potentially still hope. I just had to keep him in sight somehow. That was all I needed to do, and consequently I mentally abandoned my 3:15 wristband. He was my human wristband.

  But very soon I had a horrible feeling of drowning, that feeling of clinging on to something which is pulling away from you and loosening your grip till you are just holding on by your fingertips. Like clinging to a life raft, I am tempted to say, though thankfully I wouldn't really know. The pacer was Kate Winslet, serene on her life-saving bit of debris; I was poor old Leonardo DiCaprio, knowing that the ship had gone down and that I was about to follow. It was my
Titanic
moment. A curious seduction started to creep in. I was clinging on, desperately clinging on, but something, a stronger voice, was telling me that everything would be so much easier if only I let go.

  And I did. I let the pacer push ahead, and I drifted backwards as he surged forward towards his brazenly displayed target time.

  That's where the pacers have the advantage of you, I remembered once again and far too late. They are running within themselves while you are at the limit of your endurance. Or at least, I was at the limit of mine. 'Just let him go, stop the agony,' the voice said. In truth, I didn't have much choice. And off he went. I hoped I wouldn't lose him completely. He took my chances of 3:15 with him, and I forced myself to try to readjust, hoping that I might salvage 3:20 as a consolation prize.

  When Fiona saw me again at about 33 km, she tells me he was probably two minutes ahead of me. Soon afterwards, we were back into the figure of eight's lower loop for the second time. We were entering the final quarter marathon, and I was struggling. I can't really remember what I was thinking – except that in time-honoured fashion I was now losing the ability to think terribly much at all. In Paris I'd been telling myself that the only way to stop is to keep going. I don't know that I had those thoughts this time round. I just kept pounding it out, not looking at the clock, just keeping going and hoping.

  I'd had a second lemon gel at around the half-marathon mark and at about 33 km or so I broke into the first of the super-strength OVERSTIM.S gels I had, again a gift from Michael. Maybe I hadn't taken on quite enough water, but the gel seemed heavy on my stomach and made me feel sick. Meanwhile, though, the music was certainly helping, and I guess this is where I started to break through again. From nowhere, I started to believe that I might just be able to hang on in there. I'd wobbled, but I started to feel that maybe I was going to be able to contain it and possibly even overcome it. I forced myself to keep going to the music going through my head, letting it take over my body and willing it to take over my thoughts as well.

  It's not necessarily a question of running to the beat, though of course it's great when, somehow, by some happy chance, beat and feet coincide. It's much more a question of identifying the music that will give you a lift. It's perfectly possible to listen to the radio (OK, let's admit it, Radio 2) for hours and barely notice the music. And then, suddenly, along comes a track which forces you to take notice. For me, those sit-up-and-listen songs, more often than not, come from The Stones, The Beatles, Paul Weller, The Who, Bad Company; my rock gods, my idols, the stars who always make me think, 'Yep, that's what it's all about.'

  And it's that kind of moment I try to engineer with my MP3 player during a marathon. It's impossible to hear 'Start Me Up' without being started up; impossible to hear 'In My Life' without thinking 'life's worth it'. And that's what happened at around 34km in La Rochelle; something clicked and the music kicked in. Jagger crooned; Lennon went all elegiac on me; and new blood coursed through my tired legs.

  Going around the port again was a boost in itself, at last something to look at, and before too long we were curving round and heading north once more towards the distinctive towers which mark the harbour entrance. Just beyond them is the finish. Fortunately, Michael had warned me that you can easily be deceived at this point. Rather like Big Ben in London, you see the towers – but you aren't there yet by a long way, because the route then takes you away again before you finally head towards them for the final time. It was helpful to know, both times round.

  With confidence returning, the kilometres were going up tolerably quickly. It was clear that I wasn't going to get the time I wanted, but the pain had gone, replaced by relentlessness. And then great joy. I saw the sign, which I'd noticed first time round, that there was now just a kilometre to go. The final stretch was back by the waterside where the crowds were at their biggest. Suddenly it was all seeming a bit narrow, a bit hemmed in, and as you went into the very final stretch it was even more so as I passed through a constricted entrance to the finishing straight. Suddenly, it was all happening in a rush, but what a wonderful sight it was.

  I made my finishing time 3:23:15. It was actually 3:23:14. The fact that I have even bothered to note this sums up – so my wife tells me – the vast gulf between runners and the rest of humanity. But hell, I wanted every second I could get.

  I wobbled as soon as I slowed, but an arm came out from nowhere to support me. I felt sick as I went through the finishing area, but then had an experience I never thought I would have – a cup of Coke which I enjoyed. I felt sick of sweet things at that point so I've no idea why I needed that Coke or how I managed to stomach it, but it helped. There was plenty of food laid out, fruit, cake and chocolate, but I didn't feel I could eat just yet so instead I carried on through to find Fiona at the meeting point, which was when I started to realise just how hot the day had been. Once again, it seemed that warm weather was key to any running success I might ever have.

  Again it struck me that you can take absolutely nothing for granted in a marathon. I suspect a good proportion of those who didn't finish stopped because their target time had run away from them. After all, it looked an incredibly fit field – which made me all the happier with my time. I had shown genuine grit in the face of looming adversity.

  It hadn't been a great run, but it had been a good one. It was 90 seconds off my best, but more importantly, it felt as if I had conquered something. The Amsterdam and Dublin demons had threatened, but somehow I had fought them off. And in that sense, La Rochelle now seems a turning point – a marathon in which I did what I have done so rarely: a marathon that I managed to turn around.

  Having seen Dublin and Amsterdam fall away, La Rochelle was the marathon I saved from disaster, pulling it back from the brink, getting back on track and finishing in a time which remains my third-fastest marathon ever. For that reason, it's right up there among the most satisfying I've ever run – one of those rare marathons that you're glad you've done for wholly positive reasons. It's not one of those where the pleasure was simply in stopping. La Rochelle was a good, strong run.

  But with running, of course, as our wives know only too well, there is no such thing as unadulterated pleasure. No result stays good for long. At the time, La Rochelle was my second-fastest marathon. I knew, though, that it should have been my fastest. But the satisfaction was that I hadn't come a cropper. I'd had a wobble which threatened to derail me, but I had forced myself to recover.

  My times in Amsterdam and La Rochelle were remarkably similar until the 30-km point. The difference was that in Amsterdam the wobble became a big one. In La Rochelle, I held my nerve, regrouped, refocused and came in at 3:23 – 16 minutes faster across the final 12 km. Amsterdam and Dublin were very similar races, similar conditions, similar wobbles, and similar times in the end. La Rochelle could very easily have gone the same way. But I retrieved it, and therein lay the satisfaction.

  The dropout rate was massive, and it had much to do with the heat, I am sure. Strangely, I wasn't conscious of it being particularly hot while I was out there, but once I stopped it was clear that it was a very warm day. Fiona and Stella had been uncomfortably hot as they darted around from place to place to see us. Sadly Michael didn't finish, packing it in at about 30 km. He insisted he could have finished but it would have been a bad time, a long way outside what he wanted. It seemed the less demoralising thing simply to abandon it – a very difficult decision which I am sure he called correctly. In all, 1,450 people failed to finish.

  As for the finishers, there were 6,600 of us. I was 1,259th, which equates to 19 per cent down the field. If you include the non-finishers (and why not? After all, they started), I finished in the top 16 per cent – perfectly respectable given that this was a very serious race, as seems the norm in a French marathon. There was no fun run element that I saw, just thousands of very lean French blokes running hard. I'd dipped a little in my finishing time, but unlike Amsterdam, it didn't seem a reversal. Quite the contrary, in fact. My confidence was high.