Keep on Running (37 page)

  One point of interest was how low the jets were coming in as we neared the airport, a point at which we seemed to be on an empty main road in the countryside. After that, we simply trundled on eastwards, never more than a few hundred yards from the sea, often much closer, but only ever seeing it in snatches. Occasionally things opened up when we were probably just a block away, and after a while we would catch glimpses of the front-runners coming back the other way – a bit of a double-edged sword. In some ways, it was encouraging, but it made me realise we still had a long way to go.

  Towards the end of the inland stretch, we were going through towns, with shops either side which made for a bit more interest, and then finally, finally, we turned to the right before turning again to come out on the promenade, the sea clear to our left now as we headed back westwards on the home straight, all along the coast to the finish. Once again, and quite obviously, this was another major psychological turning point, with about 8 miles to go.

  I had been doing well until about mile 16, but then I had started to feel tiredness creeping in around 17 and 18. I was above nine minutes per mile for the first time at mile 18, but the turn along the seafront came just when I needed it. For the next 4 miles, I was well under nine again, helped by a change in the weather. By now, the day had turned cloudy and it was drizzling a bit, which suited me. It was refreshing.

  There were various people just wandering along the promenade; very few, if any, were there specifically for the marathon, but there was some good shouted support, and the encouraging thing was that we could see the curve of the coast in the distance, somewhere in the middle of which was the finish.

  We were running along in ones and twos at this point in a reasonably steady flow, with no great sense of being in a race. At one point, the route took us down onto duckboards on the sand, and then, for a good mile or so, we were running across slightly hilly sand dunes, followed by sparsely grassed heathland, undulating and starting to become just a touch arduous.

  Just as we emerged onto road again, I had my toughest moment of the race, slowing for a minute or two to barely more than a walk as we doubled back briefly and then turned sharp left and uphill. This was mile 23, a stinker and the only one that took me more than ten minutes. But then something suddenly clicked and miles 24 and 25 were fine, among the steadiest I have done at that stage in a marathon, dropping to well under nine for the penultimate mile. In the final mile I started to suffer again as we came back out onto the dual carriageway on which the race had started.

  There was just over half a mile to go, and the starting arch came into view in the distance. There were people milling around the roadside with their medals, but it was difficult to know whether these were half- or full-marathon medals. Either way, it was proof enough that the end was approaching. And so I drew level with the lake and passed through the starting arch. Just a few hundred yards more. Turn right at the next corner and then turn right again to reach the final stretch. Finished runners by the roadside were drinking beer, so it seemed. One runner held up his plastic cup to me in a gesture of 'Keep going and this is what you will get', which left me mystified. I couldn't possibly imagine wanting a beer at that point, especially as I could feel myself flagging.

  But slowly the corner was approaching, the turn inland very rapidly followed by the sharp turn right onto the finishing concourse, the slightly raised, carpeted metal runway towards the finishing arch, and how lovely it was to step onto it, the rain now falling heavily. We'd looked at it the night before and noticed that it was downhill, and now there it was – so unlike the London finish which you first see from far too far away. In Mallorca, the finish was suddenly there – just a couple of hundred yards away, giving me just enough time to take it all in and try to finish in style.

  After more than three and a half hours of Status Quo, still the best thudding running music, the end was in sight. I pulled off my headband, raised my arms and sprinted the final few hundred feet, approaching the finishing clock just as 3:38 came up. My gun time, as they call it, was 3:38:03. My net time – in other words, time since actually crossing the start line – was 3:37:28. I'd done it. Marathon number 23 was completed, and it was great to stop.

  I was just under two minutes slower than New York seven years earlier, just over two minutes quicker than Amsterdam six years before; more than ten minutes quicker than Rome earlier that year; and three and a half minutes slower than Paris the year before. It was well behind my grouped 3:20–3:22 times (London, Paris, La Rochelle), but a big improvement on the big-city stinkers; Dublin (2005), Berlin (2007) and Rome.

  I remember lurching to the right as I came to a halt, but not worryingly so. I felt fine. I sat for a minute or two, just behind the finish, watching a few more runners come in, before walking on through the finishing section where it turned out that the beer was not only free but also alcohol-free, and lovely it was too. I really enjoyed it, though I remember feeling slightly nervous that in my depleted state it might still have a vaguely intoxicating effect. I nibbled on some banana, grabbed some water and collected my medal before leaving the race enclosure, wandering around the eastern end of the lake and picking up my bag.

  The rain had stopped again, and I wondered about hanging around the finish area until it was time to go back along the last couple of miles of the route to find Michael. I got as far as the start of the raised home straight, where I got a chap to take my photograph, but the rain resumed soon after, and I was feeling chilly. I ambled back to the hotel, where I showered and freshened up, before strolling back down to the finish. I retraced my steps along the promenade and was delighted to discover Michael just before 41 km, a lot closer to the finish than I'd dared hope.

  The rain had pretty much stopped again by now, but I imagined he would be drenched and frozen. In fact, he'd rather enjoyed the rain. His overriding feeling was relief that we hadn't had to run in blazing sun. I found him after about 5 hours 25 minutes had elapsed, and it was clear he was on track to come in well inside 5:51, the time he needed to achieve if he was to hit 'bronze standard' for his age – which he duly did. He was running steadily and well, just as he had done throughout. He finished in 5:37 – a fantastic result at the age of 78.

  As I waited for Michael to pick up his medal and collect his bag, I looked around and tried to take it all in, this the most exotic of my marathons. I wanted to register it all in my mind: the palm trees, the lake, the friendliness – all part of the sheer different-ness of the Mallorca Marathon. My last marathon. I wanted to say goodbye.

  And as I looked, I started to smile.

  The smile broadened. Just who was I trying to kid? The only one who'd fallen for it was me. As I stood there, looking back across the finishing line, I knew I wasn't finished. How could I be? Why on earth would I want to give this up? There was nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment. The only thought of elsewhere was 'Where next?' I knew I couldn't possibly give up the sweet knackered-ness of running.

  I was washed and refreshed, but my body was still telling me that it had gone beyond the ordinary, that I had pushed it beyond the point that bodies naturally go. And that was the pleasure. It had been a small marathon, but even small marathons can be great ones.

  For this one day, we had converged from around the world; we had attached our microchips and we had pinned on our numbers. We had gone through our pre-race rituals, and then we had stood together at the start, perfect strangers to each other and yet brothers (plus a few sisters) in the maddest feat of endurance known to common man.

  With our different-coloured vests, our different hopes, our different worries, we had set off as one. With our different gaits, some super-smooth and slick, others straggly and inelegant, we had surged forward, stretching slowly in the next few hours to cover mile upon mile of Mallorcan road as sweaty humanity pushed itself to the limit. And that was the joy; I realise it now. Not to do well, but simply to be part of it.

  As I stood looking at that finishing line, thoughts came back to me that I had had on finishing my very first marathon 12 years before. Thoughts which reminded me why I had become so besotted with marathon running.

  All of us have got our lives, our jobs, our families, our routines, our habits, our foibles. All of us work to get from one day to the next. Very few of us hit the headlines. Very few of us aspire to. But train for a marathon, and for one day you can join the ranks of the immortals.

  I thought of the distance we had just run and I thought of what we had achieved in covering it. This is the way the common man smashes Shane Warne back over his head to bring up a triple century at Lords; this is the way we mortals smash home that FA Cup-winning penalty. This is the way we become heroes – if only to ourselves. Sporting glory is there for the taking every time you line up at the start of a marathon – and that's the seduction.

  I thought of the thousands of people who streamed home in the icy rain hours after me in the Amsterdam marathon; I thought of my Dublin bin bag, my shelter for 20 miles; I thought of my London tears and loud, painful breathing; I thought of the nun I'd cruelly abused in Rome; and I thought of the way I'd pulled myself back from the brink in La Rochelle.

  And I then remembered how sweet life had been in New York; how slippery it had been on the Clarendon Way; how hilly it had been on the Isle of Wight. I thought of those Brooklyn firefighters lining the route in the Big Apple. I thought of the man with the boat on his head who sailed past me in the Dutch downpour. And I thought of the little boy who'd really seemed to believe it when he shouted full in my face, nearly two hours after the winner had crossed the line in London, 'Come on, Phil! You can still win this!' This was my world, and I wasn't about to leave it.

  And then I realised what had made Mallorca so special. It was my 23rd finish and yet it was the only time I had raised my arms and punched the air as I went over the line. It wasn't a gesture of farewell. How wrong had I been? Instead, in that instinctive gesture, my whole body had been shouting 'Bring it on!'

  I was drunk on the whole damned thing, as drunk as I have ever been. It's a world I love right from the nipple plasters through to the blackened toenails, right from the misery of the lonely long-distance training run to the adrenalin surge of the big-city finishing line. As I punched the air, I knew it. I am not done yet. My race isn't run. The best is yet to come – even if, from here on in, the best is likely to get slower and slower.