Keep on Running (29 page)

  On the back of turning it around in La Rochelle, this was the London where it all went right, where none of those last-half agonies dragged me down, where marathon running on one glorious day was the easiest it will ever be. I was only 79 seconds quicker than my previous fastest marathon, and it was hugely annoying not to break 3:20. But even I had to admit that, on the whole, the positives outweighed the negatives. It was boiling hot, the hottest London Marathon ever, and yet I didn't run into any serious discomfort. Instead, I did my best time ever, beat both Nick and Rob and finished 33 minutes quicker than I had ever run London before.

  So what was I complaining about? Nothing really. A healthy dose of discontent is simply the natural state for a runner who hasn't run his final race.

Hindsight, great thing that it is, makes me look back moderately fondly on the Amsterdam and Dublin Marathons. However much I love to hate them, I still love them grudgingly, just a little bit. Berlin – in October 2007 – was an altogether different kind of experience, one that makes me shiver even now whenever I think about it.

  My marathon-running career has been remarkably free from injury provided I change my running shoes fairly promptly once my knees start aching. I also have to transfer across to the new shoes the little inserts which correct, to a degree, my bandy legs. Decent shoes and a little bit of in-shoe support have kept me running through the years, for which I am eternally grateful.

  However, it's not just about the aches and the pains, the twists and the stresses. It's also about the sniffs and the snuffles, and when they hit you, there's really not much you can do about it. Marathons are set up to make sure you run only if you are fit; London Marathon places are much prized things, but the organisers really, really, really don't want you to attempt it if you aren't fit, and they will do everything they can to put you off. They don't want you keeling over any more than you want to – and they do all they can to encourage you to be pragmatic in the face of illness. If you're not well, you simply post off your postponement form before the race starts and you get your place back the following year. You shouldn't risk yourself, and the London Marathon organisers don't want you to either. Pulling out couldn't be simpler – and, in the vast majority of cases, effectively it's a decision made for you by the nature of your injury.

  But colds are something else altogether, putting you in the shall-I-shan't-I middle ground where doing the sensible thing isn't always the easiest thing. Well, not if you are me. Berlin was a case in point. After the usual three or four months training, after all those long, tedious, Sunday stamina runs, I succumbed to a heavy cold a week or so before we were due to fly out to Germany. Common-sense runners take their vitamin C all the year round; I never get round to it until two or three weeks before the race, if at all, and then I simply hope for the best.

  However, for my autumn marathon of 2007, hoping wasn't enough. I was a snuffling, hacking wreck; dosed up, spluttering and shivering. Had the marathon been in the UK, I like to think I would have thrown in the towel and never even started. But Berlin had been on the horizon for months. I was to fly out with Michael and with Rob. We were all going to run it. It was our great adventure, three lads together for a weekend away.

  From 2006 to 2007, I was in the running form of my life, consistently pulling off marathons which reflected well on my ability, especially given the fact that I was juggling training with my job and home life. Berlin offered itself as an alluring next chapter. More than ever, by now, running had become a quest for the new, and Berlin, traditionally flat and fast, appealed to all three of us as we contemplated our invasion of Germany.

  Sadly, a few weeks before our departure, the three had been reduced to two when Rob couldn't ignore any longer the serious knee pains which eventually meant surgery. Gamely, though, tickets booked and paid for, he decided to come along anyway. Michael too was suffering. He was recovering from an injured ankle but intended to run just within the time limit, the point at which the organisers reopened the roads. Our trip seemed ill-fated before we even started.

  And then it was my turn. With ten days to go, I started to feel ropey in a different way; heavy, lethargic, dull-headed and snotty. However, bloody-mindedness kicked in. To an extent, I was influenced by Rob's enforced abandonment. As the week of the marathon dawned, I was damned if I was going to allow cascading snot and aching limbs to reduce our gang of three just to one injured septuagenarian. I thought of all the hours spent training and I resolved to run through the pain barrier.

  Oddly, on the Thursday and Friday, my cold lifted, but on arrival in Berlin on the Saturday, I was feeling worse again – worse than I let on. I was coughing; I felt feverish; and I felt the time had come to add another act of gross stupidity to my roll call of marathon debacles. Starting too quickly in Amsterdam had been an error of judgement easily made. Running 20 miles in a bin bag in Dublin had been idiocy on a grand scale. Now it was time to run while palpably unfit – the daftest crime of all.

  Berlin had been a pleasant discovery on the Saturday afternoon, but, as seemed par for the course on my big-city marathons, the weather deteriorated as the day wore on. We explored a super-chic shopping arcade and emerged to discover that the rain which had been threatening all afternoon was now coming down in torrents. Continuing along the road we ran into the crowds gathering along the marathon route, waiting for the late-afternoon roller-skating marathon. It was exhilarating stuff to watch as the skaters sped by, the puddles growing ever greater and the splashes ever higher as the skaters zoomed through them. It was not a particularly good omen, though. Not least, it was unwelcome exposure to the elements in my fragile state, and by now I was feeling decidedly sorry for myself.

  As it happened, the marathon morning dawned bright, but by then the damage had been done – a phrase I know I keep using, but the fact is there are so many points in a marathon from which there's just no coming back, and I had definitely passed one before I even reached the starting line in Berlin. Stubbornness is a vital weapon in the marathon runner's armoury, but there are times when it will count against you. If anyone had said, 'You mustn't run,' I know I would have ignored them.

  As you'd expect – if you like following the stereotypes – the start of the Berlin Marathon was excellently marshalled, and organised with the maximum efficiency to minimise the hassle for everyone concerned. The bag deposit was easy and obvious, and there was plenty of room to hang around in comfort as we waited for the off, just to the west of the Brandenburg Gate, a few hundred metres from the Reichstag – buildings rich in history and, on any other day, doubtless magnificently inspiring.

  We were gathering in the shadow of places which had shaped the destiny of Europe, and the Reichstag was certainly imposing, just to our left – an immense, brooding presence from which so much had so fatefully emanated. We were in the heart of what had once been Third Reich Germany. Now it was the heart of a confident, reunified Germany – a Germany which was in itself an astonishing achievement. In 1986, for my finals in French and German at university, I had been given ten minutes to prepare a speech to a couple of be-gowned dons on whether
Wiedervereinigung
was possible, let alone desirable; five years later, reunification actually happened. To those of us brought up in an era of cold war, the speed – and indeed the success – was mind-boggling.

  But that counts for little when you are mentally wading through snot.

  Michael and I bade each other 'farewell' and 'good luck' and set off for our respective starting pens, but already I had a bad feeling. After all the rain of the day before, the weather was just perfect for running, fresh and invigorating, but I was starting to sweat and shiver before we had even started – which was all the more galling for the fact that the race offered a splendid opening kilometre or two, straight onto wide roads which allowed us to spread and find our own pace quickly. Within minutes, we were racing through the Tiergarten towards the Siegessäule, one of the city's great landmarks, an impressive column, 69 metres tall, featuring a statue of Berlin's 'golden girl' on top.

  We were on the move, and it was straight, fast running on a course known for its speed. Turning right at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, we headed towards Alt-Moabit for a stretch, which took us deep into the old East Berlin before we headed south again for a huge loop south-west of the city centre, which eventually took us back to the start.

  To begin with, things went well, and I enjoyed that usual off-the-leash sensation of running strongly while the early kilometres slipped past nicely, but all the time I was conscious that I was sweating far too much. I tried to compensate by taking on extra fluid. I knew I absolutely had to, but by about 5 to 6 kilometres, my stomach was sloshing unpleasantly and uncomfortably. I had reached a kind of saturation point, and yet still I sweated. I tried to drink, but it simply made me feel worse, and I started to remember all the tales of the dangers of hyponatremia or 'water intoxication', the potentially fatal condition which can result from the consumption of excess water. Apparently, it's a condition which has become increasingly prevalent as more and more people have taken up endurance sports.

  In the early days, all the emphasis had been on drinking and drinking, never allowing yourself to dehydrate. But it was clear that some people had overdone it. It never occurred to me that it was just as dangerous to go the other way until I stood at the start of the New York Marathon. There, all the announcements – despite the hot day – were geared towards the dangers of overdrinking rather than not drinking enough. It seemed reckless, given how hot New York was on that November morning. But clearly it was an issue, and in the intervening years it had become increasingly recognised as a marathon peril. And it was very much in the back of my mind as I tried – and failed – to force myself to drink as I shivered on Berlin's streets.

  Everything felt wrong. The sweat was making me shake; I was feeling colder and colder. And yet I wasn't feeling any less full. Normal bodily processes were suspended, and a glimmering awareness of my foolishness started to descend. I was mad to be out there.

  All of which meant – given that I wasn't going to give up – that I needed some help from the route. I wanted to be inspired, lifted and launched forward. Seven or eight kilometres in, it was clear that this was not going to happen.

  Berlin has got some fascinating areas and many beautiful areas, but the marathon route was essentially through huge, wide streets – the nondescript cityscape of could-be-anywhere Middle Europe. There were flutters of excitement at recognised street names and squares, but one kilometre was undistinguishable from the next in an unending, slowly passing succession of grand buildings, imposing but grey, with nothing about them capable of raising flagging spirits.

  Support along the route was sketchy, to say the least, and from just a few kilometres in, I can remember almost nothing of the course. I wasn't motivated later to pour my thoughts into a post-marathon diary, and few lasting impressions took root at the time, save for the overriding impression of the relentless big-city anonymity of it all, undifferentiated
Alleen
and
Straßen
merging one into the next in a panorama so unchanging as to be almost disorientating. But perhaps that was the fever taking over, exactly as it was always going to.

  Disaster struck somewhere between 25 and 30 km. I can't remember the preliminary. I can't remember the event itself. All I know is that all of a sudden I was half-sitting at the side of the road. I couldn't remember being sick, but evidently I had been. I must have blacked out very briefly. There wasn't any question of anyone having to bring me round. I came round naturally and swiftly, but somewhere a few moments had been lost, not least the one in which I decorated my very own little section of Berlin gutter.

  The spectators were sympathetic, remarkably so in the circumstances. After all, it can't have been terribly pleasant to have a sweaty Englishman lurch towards them and vomit. However, they were solicitousness itself as they eased me to my feet again and gave me the once-over.

  I remember feeling quietly pleased with myself as I remembered that the German for 'to be sick' was irregular in the past tense. I conjugated it perfectly as I apologised for my antisocial behaviour. Perhaps they took my spot-on grammar as proof that I had recovered. They asked me if I could continue. Maybe they just didn't want me to linger. I assured them I was fine, and I felt it. Throwing up was the best possible thing I could have done.