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116. London is Olympic - The London Marathon

Roads — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:27:33 +0000

1. London is Olympic – 21.04.2006

The London 2012 film and music were playing at the Expo last night, reminding me that Sunday will see the first marathon in this newly Olympic city of ours.

And inspiration for the marathon start line just doesn’t get any better than this.

I look into the window of my mind
Reflections of the fears I know I’ve left behind

I step out of the ordinary
I can feel my soul ascending

I’m on my way
Can’t stop me now
And you can do the same

Heather Small – May 2000

2. Leap for London – 22.04.2006

It’s a beautiful April evening as I walk past the delis, bookshops and trendy restaurants of Regent’s Park Road. A few minutes later, I stand on Primrose Hill and the views of all of London spread out before me in the sunshine.

The crowds are out upon the hill – the young urban set with their Gucci shades and designer child transport, and the early tourists, enjoying this first and unexpected evening of summer. I walk slowly upwards, willing my legs not to use any of their energy for tomorrow. They feel heavy, abused, chiding me for their lack of use these past few days.

The skyline extends behind London Zoo and the park. There stands St Paul’s, dwarfed by the modern City with its Gherkin and the BT Tower.

Far to the left, Canary Wharf tower is catching the evening sun. These are the landmarks which will frame my race tomorrow.

The upper half of the London Eye’s arc is showing away to the right, looking for all the world like the high jump bar in that London 2012 Olympics poster.

I stop to think, trying to visualise running between these architectural delights. The buildings I can conjure in my mind – it’s just the distance between them laid out in front of me which I can’t easily fathom.

I walk down the hill and catch a lift to Baker Street. Just like in the video from that song, I jump onto a double decker towards the West End. There’s a saxophone solo waiting to play in my mind somewhere, yet I suppress it.

As journeys into London in preparation for the marathon go, it’s been almost effortless today. And yet I can feel that tension rising in my throat, and a heaviness in my stomach.

There’s nothing left to do but eat that pasta. I stop reflecting, and head for the Spaghetti House. Now this is where I know I can excel.

3. Relight my fire – 23.04.2006

Sunday all the lights of London
Shining – sky is fading red to blue

I’m kicking through the rainy streets
And wondering where it is
I might be going to

Turning back for home
You know I’m feeling so alone
I can’t believe

Climbing on the stair
I turn around to see you smiling there
In front of me

If you want it
Come and get it
For crying out loud

The love that I was
Giving you was
Never in doubt

David Gray – 1998

Seventeen miles, and I’m running on the rims. I’ve fought it for three long miles, all the way down Westferry Road in Docklands, struggling to reach Island Gardens. If I can just reach that point, the road heads north again, and I know I’ll be turning back for home.

The road curves on and on, much longer than I thought, but finally I’m there. At last I face the inevitable, and walk a minute. There’s no shame in that, and to be frank, I’ve been passing walkers intermittently for five miles or so already, ever since Tower Bridge. I look up, and Canary Wharf Tower is looming up ever higher in front of me, three miles away, as I knew it would be.

I’ve only got to get that far. Then run six miles more.

And it’s unimaginable. It’s just unimaginable now.

The sheer enormity of the task remaining beats me down. I can run nine miles, any day. But not from here. I can’t do it. There’s just no way. Because fourteen good miles and three bad ones more are in my legs now, and there’s nothing left. Here I am, amongst thirty thousand joyful runners, feeling all alone. Defeated.

At that exact moment, the band beside me strikes up. And as soon as the music starts playing, I know this is it. The one moment to define my whole race – an entire marathon encapsulated. A single instant which will stay with me, for ever.

Relight my fire
Your love’s my only desire
Relight my fire
‘Cos I need your love

It’s just one moment of commitment and conscious will. The realisation that although I’ve nothing more to give, the support of the crowd can get me home from here. They’ve been beside me every step so far, all through my South London smiles, roaring at me across Tower Bridge and coaxing me through limping Limehouse and this long-impending Docklands doom.

The pain and grind of an endless nine mile struggle lies all ahead, but no matter what physical weakness and mental frailty afflicts me now – the crowd just have no doubt. I’m going to finish, if they have to scream at me until I do.

They’ll carry me home, if they have to – because their love, right now, is simply unconditional. There’s a hundred runners loping in better shape beside me, and that’s exactly why they single me out, determinedly, relentlessly.

“You’re going to make it,” they shout, and I know it then – I bloody am.

And that will to fight is what I need, so badly now, that I’m overcome with emotion. My eyes fill with tears in that moment, as I feel the beginnings of a sob heaving through my chest. And with it comes a great drowning, blinding burst of adrenaline, and I hit the road again.

Looking back, a ream of writing had been arranged around my wall, lurking for the longest while – shining bright as neon, and yet still unrecognised, or at least ignored. The pace band, sitting on my wrist, strangely unconsulted. That slight and indefinable sense of unease I’d experienced, ever since the start line. The faint feeling of detachment I’d felt, looking at my watch, whatever the numbers were saying. That oddly missing sense of achievement, and increasing sense of foreboding, growing as the miles fell behind me.

It had all started so smoothly. My first time ever at the Blackheath start. A fantastic opening to my race, crossing the line in just a minute from the gun. No congestion in the opening mile, and just the briefest of stops to re-tie my left shoelace in the second, to relieve that tightness that I know will nag me if I don’t.

I make a perfect reunion with my friends at the bottom of their road in Greenwich, and their banner, raised thumbs and wildly smiling eyes lift me far beyond the Cutty Sark. The dreaded miles seven and eight fall behind, where I had stomach trouble last time, and then at eleven miles I hear a familiar voice call, “Good work – keep it steady”. I look up and see it’s Simon Hughes, the Bermondsey MP, urging me on, just as he did in 2004.

The halfway marker comes by in 2:01, and with it that oh-so-welcome knowledge of miles now counting down and no longer counting up. So much is going well, and I don’t know why, yet deep inside I still can’t shake that lurking, inescapable sense of dread which every runner fears. The warning signs of heavy thighs, and rapid breathing just before Tower Bridge, which tell me it’s not all going my way. The doomed sensation of quickly fading legs that strikes me, as soon as I limp my sorry way into Limehouse.

It’s way too far to bring it home from here, I think. There’s twelve miles still to go, for crying out loud. And that’s when the desperate bargains begin.

The furthest end of the Isle of Dogs – now that’s appropriate. And what better place for a headlong slide than Mudchute station ? A desperate struggle to make it here – for what ? A view of Canary Wharf – and then oblivion.

Relight my fire.

It doesn’t last long, that burst of resolve, but it’s enough. Just half a mile or so, before the next crisis strikes, and I fade once more. The towering Docklands skyline is right in front of me now, and the crowds are huge. They’re at their peak here, where I am weakest and need them most.

And they are fantastic. Simply fantastic. Thronging masses – twelve deep, twenty deep, or fifty ? I’ve no idea. But it feels like every single one of them is screaming encouragement at the runners, feeding raw motivation for every stride. Under a bridge in Cabot Place, a huge, unseen and booming drum bursts out the primaeval rhythm of instinctive enervation. A prehistoric heartbeat, calling out of fear and flight through ages past. A sound to kick all living, limping things into life again.

I run, for one mile more, until that noise fades away. And then I try to drink. It doesn’t help. My stomach is heavy. I’m thirsty, and yet somehow I simply don’t want to drink, not now. Hungry, but I can’t face food. ‘Pain is merely information,’ I try to remember – but it isn’t true. Pain is deep, and physical, and it’s washing over me.

There’s nothing more to feel than sheer existence, and the road ahead, beckoning, taunting me. Desperate determination is losing that internal battle with draining, darkest doubt.

Outside the torment of my mind, the rain is falling now, but I’m not cold, or even hot. Just numb.

The massive, damp monolith of One Canada Square drifts behind me. My one minute drink has somehow become two or three, and yet still I’m irresolute, overpoweringly hesitant to run. It’s far too comfortable to walk now. And why even walk fast ? What’s the point ?

The road starts its gentle slope down Trafalgar Way. I let the shallow incline spare my empty legs, and spin my feet once more. And even here it’s awful, and terrible – but not because it hurts. It’s because the road ahead is endless.

Another half a mile goes by – grey, concrete, roundabout, tarmac, puddles, anguish, pain.

On Poplar High Street, at twenty miles, I try to think, and fumble some calculations through my head. Six miles more of walking will see me home – in what ? Five hours, or five fifteen ? Five thirty ? But I know I can’t bear that, I simply can’t – at least not today. Four and a half is the most I’ll take, and it’s almost gone. But it’s only me who can change that number now.

‘If you want it, come and get it’.

There’s never a truer word in life than that, I know – not even here. I’d pay a fortune to stop right now, but I grimace through another hundred yards or so of rain instead. I try to imagine how many dozen hundred yards are left, inside six miles. It’s too depressing. The only thing that matters now is to run one more. That’s what I do.

And what’s that thought ? That twenty miles – it’s just half way ? It’d better bloody not be. I just blank my mind. I run some, walk a bit, and run some more. And the same again. It’s not pretty, but I’m shameless now. I’ve lost so much will along the way that I just can’t know if it’ll bring me home in time. But there’s nothing more to do than hope it will. And then run some more.

4. Bobby Moore and the super-powerful magnet – 23.04.2006

I’ve been looking out for each mile marker. I’m certain they space them out much further beyond mile 20, but at least in London the green and yellow signs and huge hoops of ballooons are hard to miss. I smile as the twenty-first arrives – but no – it’s just a pub decked out in Flora livery. A moment later I wonder at how quiet The Highway seems, then as we round a corner I realise I’m not that far at all.

I’ve been running for three and a half hours and more, so perhaps it’s not surprising that confusion reigns. Amidst that eternal struggle to shift my feet, I flounder to confront my time today. I’d thought five hours – disappointing, maybe, but at least I’d finish. But the last clock said 4:25 already. That can’t be right – or can it ? I wonder if that’s the timing for the wheelchair race, the elite women, or the main event, and it’s only later I realise that nearly all the clocks along the course are wrong.

For now my GPS watch says three hours forty, but I can’t be sure. I think I’m past 21 miles, just as it chirrups 20. All morning long, the miles chimed up slightly early, so have I miscounted ? Or was the satellite signal punch-drunk like me, way back at Canary Wharf ? I fumble my wits together. Where am I now – and do I care ? And I’m walking again – when did that happen ? The road is rising, and I’m finally on The Highway now, or at least I think so.

Twenty two miles and the JDRF support stand should be be just ahead. Ash and Andy mustn’t see me walking, so I knuckle down, and run again. It hurts like hell – a dull but non-specific pain I can’t describe, and it’s mostly in my head. The 22 mile marker appears (thank God for that – I’m not quite mad).

I limp towards some blue balloons in the distance – but those belong to the Anthony Nolan Trust instead. I grind on desperately, but the road drags by for half a mile and more, and I know I’ve missed them. I stop to walk, and so of course it’s exactly then they spot me, and roar my name. I stagger over, tongue lolling across an inane wide grin – because familiar faces are simply such a comfort now. We shake hands, and I trot along again, smiling like some naughty schoolboy.

I miss mile 23, but the Tower of London is on my left as the road slips down Tower Hill and into Thames Street. St Paul’s Cathedral stands close nearby, but I never see it. The pavements are raised to form a sheer chute of noise, with shouting, screaming, wildly baying mobs all around me. Thank God I’m running here.

I’m searching the crowd now, and two hundred yards or more ahead I catch the sight I’ve long been seeking. It’s just a tiny green square at first, but it grows and grows. The green Macmillan board I gave my parents last week. I’d told them not to come if it rained, and I didn’t see them at 13 miles, so I’d presumed they were warm and dry at home today. But they’re here. Hooray !

I take my hat off as I run, and whirl it round and round my head like a madder Marlon Harewood with his shirt. I shake my dad’s hand, and kiss my mum. A hundred miles they’ve travelled for just this fleeting moment – and I’m so glad they did.

The road burrows under London Bridge, and I risk a breather where the crowd can’t see me. There’s a brief glimpse of the river and then down again into Blackfriars Underpass at mile sign 24. Four hours ten have gone by now, but perhaps I can scrape inside four thirty after all.

There’s just one small problem – I’ll have to run it. And I know I can’t.

The Embankment at last. My running home. A small boy is holding a sign saying ‘Keep going, Daddy! We love you,’ and my heart leaps – because the whole family should be just ahead. In fact I run right past them, although we never see each other amongst the throng.

Big Ben is far away to the left. That puzzles me. Surely it should be straight ahead ? But the river curves, I now remember. That’s not Hungerford Bridge, but Waterloo, and there’s so much more to run. My head goes down, and I walk again. I want to say that I beat four thirty – but do I really care enough ?

The crowd are unforgiving now as I lope along and stagger on as best I can. It’s alright for you, I think, to shout, ‘It’s not that far’. If you’d run 25 miles already, you’d change your mind pretty swiftly. Everyone around me is struggling, too, and the calls are nagging. ‘Pick it up now, old son. Get it moving, Mr Incredible, you can do it. And come on Scooby – all the way home.’

For nine miles it’s just the crowd that’s kept me going, and although I love them for just that reason, the insistent shouts begin to irritate me here. I can’t bear it any more, so I start running, just to get them off my back. They cheer, and then a minute later, we do it all again.

Beside me, the London Eye looks quite fantastic. It always does, and never more than now. But what’s this – the mile 25 marker ? Oh hell, just that far ? I hardly see Big Ben as I grind up the tiny slope to Westminster Bridge. Just a metre’s rise, but now it kills me. I’d grit my teeth, if I could only spare the effort.

Great George Street is a blissful minute of downhill running (you just check) and then it’s Birdcage Walk. The Longest Road in the Entire Universe Which Really Isn’t All That Long but Stretches On For Ever and Ever and Ever. And Ever.

I can almost taste Buckingham Palace and The Mall now, but they’re not here quite yet. Eight minutes to go, I reckon, but it might as well be eight days more. I’m beyond all caring, and I haven’t looked at my watch for hours and hours it seems. I simply daren’t.

A number 6 shirt runs by – not the red cancer campaign edition, but a proper West Ham strip. Bobby Moore’s shirt and number, on FA Cup Semi-Final day. I have to walk again, if briefly – it’s just pathetic – and that shirt slips ahead. It’s only twenty metres, but I’ll never catch him.

And then a miracle happens. The police are working a sort of scissor system here, closing half the roadspace to let the people cross. Bobby goes left, and then a second later, they open up the right ahead of me. It’s just a few strides shorter, but my road is empty whilst his is blocked, and a moment later I’ve sailed right past, madly grinning.

I’m at the corner now, and there’s the Palace. I take my hat off again, and windmill it wildly, winding up the crowds. I’ve just run twenty six miles, you know, and I’m going to celebrate, however crass that seems.

So here’s The Mall, and I can see the line. I’ve heard some people say it always looks far away from here. But it really doesn’t. 200 metres is almost nothing, when you’ve come this far, and that finish gantry draws me like some super-powerful magnet. Those final steps go on for – how long ? A minute, maybe ? But it seems they flash by in just a second.

And then I’m there. It’s over, and at last I’ve done it.

4:26. Not all that difficult, really ? So let me tell you now – oh yes, it bloody was.

5. The greatest race in all the world – 28.04.2006

Dear Suzie

Well done on running a fantastic race, and for coming so far to run it, all the way from Calgary. Sorry to miss you whilst you were here – in the meantime here are some final thoughts to share.

What I know now is that there is no better way to sample the cityscape of London than to run the marathon. You see it all, from the Victorian terraces of Lewisham, the neo-gothic tension and false drama of Tower Bridge, the Blade Runner landscape of Canary Wharf and the Georgian splendour of the West End.

There is so much that is annoying and imperfect about London that gets to me, sometimes. And yet, even after a tour of some of the supposedly less salubrious districts in the early miles, I find that just the most inspiring thing about the race.

The whole themes of diversity and inclusion are, I’m sure exactly what won London the Olympics. Here is a link to one of the 2012 organisation’s films which hammers home just that point in the most effective way. Those themes rang home to me through all my miles on Sunday, from the Caribbean communities of Deptford to the gorblimey Cockneys of Poplar High Street.

London is a world city now, and the opportunity for so many young kids high fiving beside the route to see world-class athletes of so many nationalities run down their street is such a gift. The majority of the runners may still be white, male and middle class, but it’s not a stuffy or exclusive race in any sense.

More than anything, I was overwhelmed this year by the certainty that London embraces its marathon like no other city. There is a spirit about the race which is quite unique. I struggled home for much of the last few miles near to Mr Incredible and Scooby Doo, and there’s nowhere else in the world that could ever happen. The London Marathon is such a spectacle, at every level, and I know that’s just what makes it the greatest race you can run in all the world.

The crowds have grown enormously in the past few years. Paula Radcliffe’s success may have helped to grow interest in the race, but she wasn’t running on Sunday, and there wasn’t even a serious British male challenger for the title. It didn’t matter, for I believe that it’s not the winners that all those hundreds of thousands of Londoners both new and old really want to watch. The elite race is not the main event as far as these folk are concerned, but rather it is every single one of the ordinary runners they come to cheer, however much those strugglers may hang their head in pain.

I learned on Sunday that it is one of the very hardest things to do, to have to grind home pitifully through such an urgent crowd. If my legs run out, as they sometimes do on a long run, then I know well enough just what to do. It’s happened so many times over the years – that sorry state that demands a managed and faltering decline home through the closing miles.

And yet – on Sunday, the London crowd just would not let me do it. I found that not just uplifting, but quite emotional too.

I’m sure those last nine miles were some of the very hardest that I have ever raced. And still, even now when I am sore, jaded and reflecting on a journey which was pretty slow and very painful, part of me knows already – that’s exactly why those final miles were amongst the most rewarding which I will ever run.

I hope we see you soon, next time you are racing over here.

115. A postcard from Greenwich Park

Roads — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:10:48 +0000

My winter’s journey of 18 weeks and 499 miles is over. Only four more days and 26 miles to go.

From the bleak beginnings of a frozen, snowy Christmastime in Scotland, through fifty Crawley lunchtimes and Guildford nightfalls I’ve wandered.

Along pretty Surrey towpaths and under pitch-black Houston skies, I waved those winter months goodbye.

I’ve seen the North Downs slopes from every side, gasped breathless in the Alps, and loped lazily down last weekend’s Warwickshire lanes and the Avon riverbank, too.

It’s been a long way, this year.

I’ve felt no real promise, honest aspiration, or even false pretence of quicker feet or swifter legs, this time.

Just run through winter, until you reach the spring, I said.

So I just got through it. And now I’m here.

I’d like to say I’ll run a fast race, this Sunday. But I won’t do that.

And yet – there’s so much more to take, from all of this. Because I know.

I know how that spring in my step will feel, along the early morning Camden pavement. I’ll share the tube with a score of lonely, anxious runners. I’ll smile and shiver on that overcrowded train, and tingle through the whole of that frightened hour in Greenwich. I’ll test myself, just by starting. I’ll do my best, through South London’s streets, and beam with joy, on Tower Bridge. I’ll despair through the depths of Docklands, and face those forty kilometres of unforgiving tarmac to crawl, somehow, atop The Embankment, if I can. And from there – I know I’ll struggle to make it home, in whatever style it takes.

It’s just one word – Endeavour. That’s what it’s all about, for me.

I’ve come this far. I’m glad I’ve made it.

There’s nothing more to ask, or say, not here. And nothing else that counts about my winter’s journey, not now.

Just run.

113. The Pilgrim's Progress - Surrey Hills 2

Roads — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:02:21 +0000

(… continued)

As I turn left off the main A25, uncharted territory lies ahead. The narrow lane rises in front of me, and I neither walk, nor confidently run, but somehow cobble together an unheroic if effective mix of both until the gradient flattens.

The ancient pasture land of Abinger Roughs lies to my left, that name describing quite well my personal symptoms of oxygen deficit and lingering virus.

It’ll only get harder from here, and so it’s just the ideal time to spy a couple of puzzled walkers standing by the roadside with their map.

The perfect excuse to stop for directions.

I’m looking for the North Downs Way. I know it must head off left, somewhere up the hill ahead. And so I ask.“Ah, yes, it heads off left, somewhere up the hill ahead,” they inform me, helpfully. “Are you running it ?” they enquire.

“Yes, I am,” I cheerfully lie, thrusting out my chest and smiling modestly, whilst trying not to choke, the longed-for part of seasoned hill runner finally falling unexpectedly into my lap at last.

“It gets jolly steep up there, you know,” they confide, their brows furrowing in instant and instinctively accurate assessment of the true capabilities of this dishevelled, heaving-chested and snot-dribbling lunatic who stands before them.

I wave farewell, and trot gamely on, over the railway bridge of the North Downs line, and into the climb. Then when I’m safely out of sight, I walk.

And when I hit the hill, it’s hard – it’s truly hard. The road rounds a hairpin and then ascends in earnest. My head is down now, and I’m looking at defiant black tarmac, rising. The roadsign tells of an 18% gradient, and even walking isn’t easy. I think of my friend Sweder’s repeated recent reconquistas of the South Downs, the mirror images of these hills. And I keep walking.

Four or five minutes go by. I pass the time with panting, and protracted musings on such problematical and pragmatic acceptance of my fallibility. I risk occasional half-hearted glances at the climb, continuing up ahead for ever. I knew it would. It does.

There’s a brick pillbox above the road on my left now, forming part of the defensive line built against the feared German invasion of 1940. If the Second World War Sturmtrüppen were as slow as me, they’d have been dispatched much faster even by the Abinger Home Guard, I’m sure.

Finally I see the footpath. The road ascends further, and I ponder following it to the top, just for the hell of it. And then half a nanosecond later I turn left along the path. That way rises too, but soon descends into a thick pool of squidgy mud, rounds a corner, and starts a more measured climb which more closely follows the contours towards the highest crest above.

I can manage this, I know. Alright then, maybe intermittently. Whenever the path turns right, into the hill, it steepens, and so I walk. When it flattens off again, I run. I always knew this section would be gruelling, but I’ve whimpered my way through too many marathon raceday walls to give up simply because I can’t run any more. It’s inconvenient to plod-walk my way up here, but I know it’ll get me home.

There’s another pillbox just below the path. It’s at least a mile from the road, and must have been placed to catch those invaders who decided not to risk the perils of the sunken lane, taking their chances instead along this muddy path. I can’t imagine anyone forcing a tank up here, and even multiple-marathon running footsoldiers would have made easy pickings for Private Pike at this point.

This modern long-distance path, the North Downs Way, runs close to the crest of the Downs from Farnham to Dover. It more or less follows the ancient course of the much older Pilgrim’s Way which mediaeval travellers used in the middle ages. For hundreds of years, religious folk passed through here from all across England, drawn to pay homage at the altar in Canterbury Cathedral, where Archbishop Thomas à Becket was slain by Henry II’s knights in 1170.

A pilgrimage offered a kind of tourism in those days. It wasn’t all piety and religion – and the romance and risk of travel was certainly laced with occasional debauchery along the way. That combination is precisely how Chaucer paints his picture of a pilgrimage from London in his Canterbury Tales. The more southerly route, running from Winchester along the North Downs here, may likewise have inspired Bunyan’s great allegory about the journey, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

But in fact the path’s romantic name was never used in Bunyan’s day, appearing first on Victorian maps – and in many ways it’s more a concept than a hard and fast reality. And yet the route itself dates back much further still, carrying Stone Age travellers, Celts, Romans and pilgrims across the sands and chalk of these hills since time immemorial. As late as the seventeenth century, many a traveller and pilgrim would have used this maze of criss-crossing paths along the scarp face. And it’s certain that exhausted souls would have sought food and lodgings to break their journey, in each of the villages and hamlets along the route, including Bunyan’s Shalford, if he ever really lived there.

I’ve been climbing slowly for quite a while, and despite my torpor I’ve left the Tilling Bourne some way behind. The drizzle is stronger as the trees open up on Hackhurst Down, the cloud hanging dejectedly on the ridge above my head. The views must be wonderful on a clear day, and even now there’s a kind of gloomy splendour. The green of the valley floor is far away, and all faded out from here, with only the splodges of conifer on St Martha’s Hill to break up the greys with shades of black. Beside me, the scrubby beech has long since given way to ash and wattle fences, hawthorn, gorse, and finally to ancient yew.

There’s a damp and gentle breeze blowing in my face now, and the fine raindrops are melting softly on my face. It’s an elemental kind of feeling, running all alone on this deserted track. As I follow in the footsteps of travellers long ago, not a single road is visible through the murk, no houses or people, no trace of the modern world at all. It’s just me and the hillside.

I look up the muddy slope to the treeline, hoping to glimpse how much further remains to climb. Not that far. Some gorse ahead, a stile, more mud and a sign pointing left and down the hill this time. A brief respite, another short slope up to a crossing of paths, and finally I turn onto a well-made track, blissfully flat as it heads off into the trees. This is the ancient Drove Road, used by herders to move their sheep across the county, to new grazing and to market. And I know it’ll carry me all the way back to Guildford, as yet unglimpsed ahead through six miles more of yew and Down.

I’ve never run this stretch of hillside before. There’s no reason why I should have, lying as it does up this God-forsaken and deserted muddy slope. It’s been hard running, this route of valley, hill and ridgeway home. As I run the final hour back to town, the yew trees drift slowly by, standing and watching silently beside the path, just as they have done for centuries. And I think about it. This journey.

There’ll be more runs ahead, and a climb or two in the Alps next week, I’m sure. A few more gentle plods before London, and a fantastic race to come.

But now, as I near the end of this longest of training runs, across all the pathways of those who have travelled this landscape before me, I can feel a circle closing gently in my mind. Because somewhere deep inside, I’m suddenly and surprisingly sure.

There’ll never be another journey quite like this one – not for me.

112. Forests of fire and iron - Surrey Hills 1

Roads — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:58:15 +0000

A drizzly morning, the last Sunday in March. And so, it’s come to this.

All those freezing January lunchtimes, seemingly endless February slogs into that slowly lengthening winter dusk, and forays into the primaeval darkness in the rain.

Looking back, it was nothing more than preparation for what lies ahead today.

Spring is here – I changed the clocks this morning – and at last it’s not that cold. My drink bottle is filled, my biscuits stashed, my MP3 is charged and I’m ready to go.

Twenty miles.

Ideally I’d run them next week, three weeks before London, and not when I’m recovering from a cold. But I’ve learned there is no ‘ideal’ in marathon training. No perfect progression of numbers across that spreadsheet, because life gets in the way. Next week I’ll be on the slopes in France, and so it’s now or never. Just slug a paracetamol and run. The music might cheer me up – if only the opening track today weren’t that little-heard yet somehow appropriate classic (You must be out of your) Brilliant Mind, doubtless sneaked onto the iPod under the extravagant hair gel of some old 80s compilation or other.

Wisely leaving the cultural ephemera of synthesizer-based electronica aside for a moment, I try to concentrate on the task in hand. Twenty miles is a daunting prospect at the best of times, and an easy start is always wise. I glance at my GPS and sketch a new route in my mind – a run of valley, hill and then ridgeway home.

South at first, and down the hill. Two easy miles of park and lane take me to Shalford. In mediaeval times King John granted the rector of Shalford the right to hold a gathering, which later expanded from the churchyard to take over much of the now tranquil common. Local legend tells that John Bunyan once lived here, with the Great Fair of Shalford providing inspiration for the fair at Vanity in The Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s a deserted scene this morning, and I fancy he might yet emerge from one of the pretty cottages as I lope along King Street and past the village green.

From here the Tilling Bourne valley stretches invitingly eastwards beneath the Surrey Hills. The land is home now to open meadows, scattered copse, and farmland, but in centuries past the poorly-drained valley soils and dense woodland offered little to sustain the farmer. Charcoal burners lived in the forests then, their smoking fires still recalled in local names – there’s a Colekitchen Lane which snakes up the Downs not far away in Gomshall, with a kiln nearby where chalk was burned for making lime. A mile further on, I find Blacksmiths’ Lane in Chilworth, too – recalling that iron has been mined from these hills since Roman times, extracted from sands beneath the rising slopes of St Martha’s Hill up ahead.

I turn off the lane at Chilworth Manor, onto a wooded footpath beside the Tilling Bourne. For much of its course I could almost jump across the stream. Yet in years before steam, its constancy and manageability lent itself perfectly to water power, and each of the villages along the valley boasts a water mill. And here, buried in the trees and ivy of the forest, lurks the darkest secret of them all. The broken, half-consumed buildings tell ghastly tales of mysterious explosions, each one more violent than the last. These are the Gunpowder Mills, founded by the East India Company in 1625, one of the most important in the country and active for four centuries until after the First World War. Perhaps the explosives for Guy Fawkes’ Plot were made right here.

It takes another half an hour to reach Albury. At first glance, there’s no more beautiful setting for a village in the whole of southern England, with cottages, post office and mill, looking out calmly over pretty fields and the highest Downs far ahead. And yet, it’s all entirely new. Even the church, strangely red-brick built, is from a younger age. The original village lay in the Albury Park Estate, until 1780 when the owner, Captain Finch, decided he needed more space and privacy. His solution then was simply to build new houses for the villagers at a hamlet down the road called Weston Street, where the present village of Albury now stands. I wonder what the villagers thought then of their unexpected move.

From here I shamble on to Shere, the most beautiful and up-market of all the villages in the Surrey Hills. I turn right down Upper Street, so different from its trendy Islington namesake, past the old water fountain and along the High Street. It’s full of pretty black and white houses, and over-sized SUVs. From Albury in 1780 to here in Shere today – it’s such a fault that affluence so often breeds unsocial arrogance in undesirable degree.

Ever onwards I gangle, through Gomshall. Abinger Hammer comes next. The village name recalls its proud past as centre of the iron trade. The brightly-painted figure of Jack-the-blacksmith strikes the village clock, and an ironsmith still works just nearby. Beyond the pretty green lie Abinger’s mill ponds, where the Tilling Bourne was dammed in Tudor times to power tilt-hammers for beating out iron artefacts. The waters are home to fishing and water cress beds today.

Nine miles gone, and I step inside the tiny local store to buy a Lucozade, which slips down smoothly, like it always did as the convalescence cure of my youth. Two mud-plastered mountain bikers rest outside, and I stop to chat, so afterwards I shouldn’t really walk, not now. And yet walk I do. Somehow I’ve decided that time and speed don’t matter, not this morning. Simple distance is my only goal today.

I finish my drink, and kick the verge once more. Another mile or two goes by, and now I’m over half way there. A few minutes further, and I’ll turn north to face the Downs, full on. A struggling climb and tiring legs stretch out from here with painful certainty. But the forest of fire and iron lies all behind me, and my twenty miles will soon be run.

(to be continued …)

111. The plan

Roads — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 18:54:20 +0000

The glass of the second bottle felt moist and cool in my hand. Inviting.

5.30 pm at an exhibition in Earl’s Court, London’s very own suburb of Melbourne. It wasn’t an Australian beer in my hand, this time, even if three of those had slipped down effortlessly the evening before.

One more had disappeared just a moment ago, subsumed in seconds and without a thought. As they always are, at the witching hour which closes any trade show.

It was hard to believe my eyes, really, but it was happening. The bottle, so helpfully handed to me just a moment before, was moving back towards the table. My papers were gathering themselves into my bag.

Time for a decision. I collected my coat, mumbled a few feeble farewells, and headed out into the dusk and the rain, raising my collar and shuffling forwards along the wet pavement towards the tube station.

A rainy evening on West Brompton High Street wasn’t the most auspicious place to find that spark, and it was just the faintest of glimmers that shone in the streets ahead of me then. Two tubes and a train, a walk up the hill – an hour and a half to get home, and another ten minutes to change.

It was half past seven as I closed the front door behind me. Dark, wet, and every bit as uninviting as that second beer had been inviting.

But it had to be done. The first mile or so was easy, as I always knew it would be, down into the valley along the Pilgrim’s Way. Romantically named, this segment of the ancient trackway was now just another stretch of silent suburbia skulking under orange streetlights. A mile or three splashing through the park and the puddled lanes of Shalford. And then the run begins.

The problem with living on the 90 m contour as we do, is that there’s too often a hill to get home. There are different ways of doing it, but from the south there’s just a steady climb up Pilgrim’s Way again, the road pitilessly steepening towards the hairpin on Echo Pit Road, where the flints and clunch for the foundations of Guildford were mined for centuries long forgotten.

From there, it’s a gentler climb up onto Warwick’s Bench, but harder with so much of the hill now behind you. Another 89 rasping breaths, and I know because I always count them, to reach the next corner. And then 46 more, sprinted to the lamppost at the crest, before I gasp more easily down the gentle slope home.

In the beginning, there was a plan. Not any more – not really.

The latest London Marathon pack arrived yesterday, on the day I hit 300 miles for the year. 320 since my 18 weeks began on the lanes of Pitlochry. I ran 12 miles in soft, tiring snow there, and 19 last weekend through the grey Arctic breeze which has for so long replaced that faint dream of a long-awaited Surrey spring.

Six miles around Crawley yesterday lunchtime. Grey, dull, and bitterly cold. Breathlessly tiring. It should be easier than this, I always think. But it never is. Because somehow those six March miles are always four minutes faster than their December forerunners, even if they feel every bit as tough to complete.

The plan, I said – so what is the plan ? Just run until spring, and the plan will be clear. That discarded second bottle of Beck’s, that dark wet front doorstep, those muddy damp socks, and the chill on my chest for three hours and much more of a frozen Sunday afternoon. Those stiff-legged panting lunchtimes, rushed showers before meetings, and that miserable soaking in the late winter nightfall of a West London street.

It may not be a carefully crafted fitness regime. And it certainly isn’t a classically-plotted route to Greenwich.

But they all make a difference. So maybe, just maybe, that must be the plan.

109. Happiness, more or less

Roads — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:38:23 +0000

Happiness – more or less
It’s just a change in me
Something in my liberty
Oh my mind

Happiness – coming and going
I watch you look at me
Watch my fever growing
I know just where I am

Well, how many corners do I have to turn ?
How many times do I have to learn ?
All the love I have is in my mind
The Verve – September 1997

The runner’s high. Goodness knows, I’ve sought it long and hard recently. I’ve waited long enough.

Some would argue that it’s exercise-induced narcosis which keeps us running in the first place. But I know that’s not true. Because whilst I appreciate the benefits of running, and a certain post-run clarity of thought is up there on my list, there really is much more to it. You can’t manufacture those moments – they just happen.

It’s been a long winter, already, and still it’s only January. I’ve struggled with my running these past few months. Don’t tell me why – too fat, too tired, too lethargic, too bored with just running day after day – all of those are true. I run happily in all sorts of weathers (I’m a marathon runner, after all) but grey, cold – January – it gets us all down in the end, I guess.

That monotony spills over sometimes. The classic way to lift yourself from a running trough is to plan a race. But my problem now is really too many races. After Abingdon last October, this year I didn’t really need that place in the London ballot. Which is doubtless why I did get in that way – the first time ever.

The dream of London should do the job. Where else can I compete with world champions, world record holders and Olympic gold medallists, and be cheered on by a million people shouting my name ? Yet somehow, it’s still not enough, not this year.

It shouldn’t surprise me, since I know that every marathon training programme has its own character. Each one carries different thoughts – it’s just the way it is. There’ll never be another first marathon for me, and as for the subsequent ones – maybe you’d think that they would all blend into each other, but they don’t, not at all. So perhaps this one is just special in its own uniquely soul-destroying kind of way.

Maybe I should have run in Almería this weekend, chasing down that hard half marathon. Whatever suffering the course threw at me would have been worth it, I know, just to enjoy the community of runners. But somehow my running just wasn’t up to it. My legs didn’t have the fire; my desire was just too fragile.

This Saturday in southern England it’s bright, but bitterly cold. And I need that lift, so although I never run with music, today I take it with me. Into the wintry sunshine, down through the town centre. Soon I’m at the fateful lamppost from two weeks ago. Those memorial flowers have gone, replaced by stark words: ‘Police – Accident – Can You Help ? Monday 9th January, 0655′. A bleak, dark hour, before dawn and just after Christmas – the pits of winter. That’s where it ended for Paul.

I decide to shun the guilty road this time, and turn beside the River Wey navigation. Maybe I’ll find some solace down there.

And it takes a while. But eventually, I stop to slug a drink, and chomp a biscuit. Here, four miles out, I’m in open, quiet countryside. It’s just me and the riverbank in the sunlight. The village of Send lies hidden amongst the trees which frame the church ahead of me. And it’s true, that I’ve come this way, many times, but I’ve forgotten just how beautiful this landscape really is.

Six miles go by, and then seven. Music is such a big part of my well-being, and always has been. I’ve set my MP3 player on shuffle, and sure enough it’s winding through the soundtrack of my life. Funny how it finds the words on a day like this. ‘The bitterest pill’ from The Jam – perfect for the start of such a long run. Jon Secada’s ‘Otro día más sin verte’ (‘Just another day without you’) also somehow loops into today’s mix, in honour of Antonio and the runners in Almería this weekend. Obscure Europop band Gold reacquaint me with their phlegmatically laconic lyric: ‘C’est la vie qui vient, c’est la vie qui va’ to fill mile 5. Will this be the song of the day – or will it be Madonna’s ‘Frozen’ from mile 7 – surely apt enough for today ?

My planned turning point is at Papercourt Lock, but there I catch a glimpse of an old friend in the distance, and at 8 miles I’m there – Newark Lock, and beside it Newark Priory. Founded in 1189, the Priory was destroyed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. The story has it that a gun was set up on a nearby hill and the building destroyed with cannon fire. There’s not much more to see than an incomplete shell now, but it’s enchanting all the same.

The scene is restful here in the sunshine, so I take a break, muse on my rising spirits, and resume my trot with a smile. The wind is on my back now, the sun on my face at last, and with the light sparkling on the water between the reflections of the trees, it’s blissful running.

And then it happens. The first really special moment of this entire campaign. The one I instantly know will keep me going through many more grey lunchtime plods ahead. The opening bars of this track from The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’.

I rarely play this one, but I hear it now, and it grabs my full attention. Nick McCabe’s guitar riff, blasting through my headphones across the Surrey countryside is, quite simply, sublime. Richard Ashcroft’s lyrics – combining the deeply personal and the universal. I’m reminded of Prof Robert Winston last week, when he said that our happiness (more or less) in life depends on whether we’re optimists, or pessimists – and how that disposes us to view the same set of events. It’s the lesson of this song, and it speaks to me loud and clear.

Many years ago, there was a time when my life fell apart. It collapsed all around me, and very slowly I had to build it up again. In those months, I went out to buy a new record collection then, because I just couldn’t listen to all my old music any more, not for a long while. It held too many memories of the past. That time is long behind me now, and I refound my old favourites some while ago. But perhaps it did teach me one thing, that there are times for looking forwards as well as times for looking back.

And now, I have to play this song three or four times over. Miles 10-12 drift by in a glaze of sunlight and reflections. If there were random testing set up here, I’d fail any narcotics test ever devised.

Finally, I let the player move on. ‘Fragile’ by Sting is no longer appropriate, so I stomp through mile 13 to Robbie Williams opening up at Knebworth 2003 (as at Live8) with ‘Let me entertain you’. We didn’t go to the concert, but heard some of it whilst stuck in traffic on the A1 outside. The geologist’s anthem ‘Solid Rock’ by Dire Straits brings me to my final drink at mile 14. The struggle is on here, but at least I’m gazing now at the runway lights of home as they beckon in the distance ahead. BB King and U2 find ‘When Love Comes to Town’ especially to greet the mean streets of Guildford’s suburbs, and then Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ brings me to the High Street shopfronts. Finally I’m home to another recently rediscovered gem – ‘Running’ by No Doubt.

It’s been a great morning. Too late for Almería, perhaps, but I’ve found my muse. The long search is over, at least for now, because I’ve renewed my ticket for the journey. I’ve found that something in my liberty: running happiness – more or less – which has eluded me for so long. Sixteen miles. A run through sunshine, music, narcosis, and renewed self-belief.

I’m off to Houston tomorrow. But look out London – here I come.

108. The moonlit door

Roads — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:33:03 +0000

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ’d the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor.
The Listeners
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

It’s unusual to find a poem on the side of a building, especially picked out in brick and 15 m high, but that is one of the unique attractions of the Guildford Travel Inn.

It may be one of the few, actually, since its location right beside the booming A3 dual carriageway is nowhere near as lyrical as the inspiration adorning it. But it cheered me to learn that its author Walter de la Mare was born in Maryon Road in Charlton, just a short sprint from mile 4 on the London Marathon course.

Poetry in unlikely places enriches lives, as anyone who has enjoyed the Poems on the Underground campaign will agree. And I have seen these words before. At first I wondered whether they’d been put there to entice the weary traveller, but in fact they’re not really visible from the main highway. You can just about see them from the slip road, if you happen to stop at the traffic lights and glance over your left shoulder. But the best chance to read them comes when you’re headed northwards out of town, on foot. Like me, today.

I don’t know why they’re set up like that. Maybe because the other walls were all full of doors, or windows, or car park signs or something. But the words did seem to resonate yesterday morning. Not because I wanted to stop and take a room at the Travel Inn, you understand, although at a dodgy mile and half into my twelve mile run, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. No, it was more because it seemed to address the question which was vexing me then.

‘Why am I doing this ?’

A good question. A dangerous question. And in a week when our friend Seafront Plodder had given up marathons, I knew it was lurking, menacingly, and waiting to be addressed.

Uncannily enough, the absolutely perfect time for some pretty heavy ritual self-examination and motivational analysis is exactly at that place. One a half miles into a twelve mile run. Before you’ve settled into a rhythm, and before you’ve really made any sort of meaningful dent into the distance ahead of you.

‘Is there anybody there ?’

Frankly, the answer is still unknown, at that stage. No clear idea yet, of how the run is going to turn out. Grey, damp and chilly – that much is a given in January. Uninspiring – well, that much is certain as well, heading out on the A320 Woking Road and crossing a bleak traffic intersection with multiple flyovers and feeder lanes.

Last week the attempt to run back-to-back weekend runs caught me out. It’s not a plan I’m comfortable with. But then the same scheduling problem had afflicted me again – a busy week at work, and too many distractions from what I should really be focusing on at this time of year. My running. But that’s how life is at the moment. Six miles run on Saturday may not be the perfect preparation for twelve on Sunday, at least not in my book, but it has to be done. Just deal with it. And so preparations were taken. Or at least – more toast was eaten.

And now, as I knock on the moonlit door of my long weekend run, at least the horse within me can be figuratively munching on the grasses of the forest’s ferny floor which I’ve stuffed inside my stomach for just that purpose. It seems to be working. There isn’t exactly pace, or power, or even much certainty there, but there’s progress, of a sort. The legs are ticking over, slowly, without panache or aplomb, but with just a hint that they might be able to keep doing so a while longer. Promising.

The thundering overpass roars above me, and I’m on my way. Just four miles of suburbs and main Woking road lie ahead, and then I’ll be onto the quieter lanes of Sutton Green and Jacob’s Well, halfway there and heading home for lunch. It’s not too bad a prospect really, if I can just grind through this first bit.

And then I see it. Just across the river bridge, beside the Council Depot. A lamppost, half-hidden in fresh flowers. Bunches. Bouquets. Plastic wrappers. Ribbons. Cards.

I stop to read them, as I always do. ‘To Paul. Sad to see you gone so soon, but you will be missed.’ ‘Dearest Paul. Forever in our hearts and in our prayers.’ ‘From all your mates in the A3 gang.’

And now I know, as I did before really, at least until I’d forgotten. That’s why I run. Because life is short, and there’s a lot to pack in.

I’m out here, on a grim January morning because there’s stuff to see, and things to do. I could be lying in bed at home. The road more travelled, perhaps, but running is so much more than that. In so many ways, it’s a celebration of being alive. It’s a thought that has often struck me, not least at the start line of the Great North Run. Thinking about it again last week, I realised that although it might be a crap race, really, the GNR is a wondrously joyful event. All that humanity, streaming down the road together.

I’m alive. And Paul is not. There’s an injustice there, I know. Why him, not me ? I don’t know the answer to that one. His number came up, I guess, and his luck ran out, poor fellow. It happens. So many times, all around the world, every day and to so many people less fortunate than us.

So what do we have to complain about ? A car, a good job, a house, food to eat, healthy kids, a comfortable life – that looks like good fortune to me, but why should we have it, when others don’t ? I don’t know that one either, as I was reminded in Morocco last year. The human condition in the third world. Millions of people struggling, to find every meal, and just to live another day.

And here I am, well-fed (too well-fed, if truth be known). If my biggest struggle is whether I’m going to have to walk a bit before I get home – is that really a problem ? Am I joking ? Because truly, that’s a gift. There’s just no other way to describe it.

I knuckle down once more. My feet patter on the pavement with a little more speed and resolve than a moment ago. There’s a smile now, too, to meet those visions of the Chicago River and The Embankment which fill my mind. There’s a long way to go along this road, and I may not get there today. But I do know where I’m going.

I’m running to live my life, and I’m living now, right here, today.

100. Half a million steps

Roads — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:35:55 +0000

It takes half a million steps to train for a marathon. Around 500 miles, more or less.

And if I haven’t managed quite that distance this time, in those 18 weeks, it’s because for quite a few of those, I didn’t know that I was training for a marathon. Even now, I’m not certain that I was.

It was a slow and injury-bound winter which forced me to jump on my bike last Spring. Hills, more hills and harder hills fell behind my forks in place of long runs beneath my feet. Frustrating in a way, and yet somehow refreshing, too.

I finally bought the new pair of stability shoes I needed back in April. They made no difference, not then. Each new run was a risk for my hip and my confidence. So I kept on cycling, each and every Sunday.

7-7 had gone by, with London a newly-bombed and Olympic city, before the hot July morning which saw me carve my first 12 miler out of Chalk Downland and sandstone ridges. And it was already late July when I splashed through 17 on the coolest, wettest evening of the season. The most blissful, perfect run, but I paid the price with sore legs for a week beyond.

Three times in all I slogged my twenties through warm late Summer. The first and last of those went fine – just as well, since I’d crawled the last six home once in between. You just never know how those runs will go.

For two weeks I plied the Atlantic coast of Spain, soft sand and dunes beneath my feet. Greeted August’s new football season by meeting Real Madrid’s footballers at Jerez airport on the journey home. September came and went, bringing softer days, swifter feet, and a second pair of those hip-healing shoes.

Perhaps I’d dreamed of Cardiff, of finishing a marathon in the same Millennium Stadium where West Ham triumphed back in May, but that weekend was always taken up with other things. And it would have been a raceless autumn if rural Oxfordshire hadn’t beckoned to me, just in time.

It’s been a different journey, this time. More tracks, more hills. Fewer miles, less stress, less certainty. Uncertain of where, or even if, I’d run.

But here I am, on the road to Abingdon. Half a million steps behind, and just that single lonely stairway ahead of me, once again. My summer’s lease is all but run.

And yet, it’s now – it’s only now – that it can all begin.

97. Only scars carved into stone - a summer 20 miles

Roads — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:20:49 +0000

Your sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only scars carved into stone
On the face of Earth
U2 – March 1987

If I think hard enough, I can probably remember each and every one. Not just my marathons, each of which are easy enough to recall, but the long runs which go before, which form the basis of any training campaign. Those twenty-milers which lie at the far end of all those long weeks of running.

Because no matter how much you increase the frequency of your regular mid-week runs, at morning, lunchtime or evening, somewhere along the line you’ll find yourself facing one of those runs which seems to occupy all three.

It’s nothing like that, really, since even I can polish off runs like this in three and a half hours, give or take a bit. But they seem to occupy far longer, not just in the time spent actually running, which can feel like for ever, but in the time spent thinking and worrying beforehand and in the hours spent recovering afterwards.The first time I ran twenty miles, I collapsed on the doorstep for half an hour on arriving home, before levering myself wearily into an armchair. There I pondered for a good while more, slept another hour, and then tucked into an enormous meal which was brought to me where I sat, slumped and immobile for much of that evening.

These days, I make less allowance for the distance, and so do those around me. But still I’m preoccupied for days before, planning how to fit it in, and it has an effect afterwards. I may not rest up quite like I did then, but I’m not exactly bouncing off the ceiling either.

It does take planning. Weekends should be best, but they’re often too busy at home.

Early mornings should be fine in the summer, but somehow my body doesn’t like waking up to such a hammering. So it’s afternoons or evenings which work best for me.

Although no single run can define a training programme, I’ve still no doubt that these are the most important runs you’ll do in the whole schedule. Speedwork, tempo runs, hill runs, fartleks …

I’ve tried them all, and yet in each and every marathon I run, I’ve always made the same new observation. That the marathon is all about ENDURANCE – nothing more, and nothing less. It really doesn’t matter how fast you ran your intervals three weeks ago. It doesn’t matter how well you ripped up that climb last month. It doesn’t matter that you beat your lunchtime best on Tuesday. The only thing that counts at all is just how you feel, and how you run, in the final miles of your marathon. That’s why the long run is so important in preparing you for the race.

It takes a lot of training, to be fit enough to run this far. And it takes it out of you, when you do. That’s why just one twenty-miler may be all you need, or all you want, before your race. Some people do more, especially if they’re training extra hard. That first year, for London, I completed just one twenty, and it nearly killed me. Eighteen months later, I did three before Chicago, where I ran a personal best. Three again before Stratford in 2003, three more before London a year later, and one more before Blackpool soon after – each time chasing that improvement which hasn’t yet come.

That’s eleven times now, I’ve run twenty miles in training. And today, I’ll make it twelve.

There’s no good window to do the run this time. Those smoothly ascending numbers in Hal Higdon’s spreadsheets make perfect sense, in a perfect life, but brook no allowance for reality. Because those family holidays and business trips just crop up where they will, and you have to work around them as best you can.

That’s how it’s always been, for me. That’s why I find myself running now. I know it might be better to run this far in Spain next week, but I know too well it’ll be far too hot along the beach. It might be better to arrange everyone else’s plans around me, so that I can run, but then again I might just want to live a simple life. It’s run this week, or not at all – that much is clear, so I’ll just get on with it, and do my best.

An extra hour or two at lunch will have to do. An unconventional working day, but I’ll make up the hours, there’s no doubt I will. An understanding boss who runs is a great help at times like this, and I pass on my thanks as I head out today at eleven o’clock.

It’s warm, already. Too warm, in fact. But that’s how it is. Just deal with it, mate, and run. The route I’ve chosen is familiar enough – along the Worth Way to East Grinstead (10 miles), and along the Worth Way back again (another 10). It’s a boring run, in many ways, along the old railway track. Just the uncertainty to enliven my time, of not knowing where an unexpected collapse might catch me out. As they do, from time to time, on runs like these. And as indeed they often must.

It seems to me that the point of ever longer runs is that the last few miles are always hard. In early training it’s miles 5 and 6 which catch you out. And then it’s 9 and 10. A week or two more, and it’s 13, 14 which hurt so much, but by that stage, miles 5 and 6 are a piece of cake. Maybe it’s only by persistently extending that endurance envelope, oh so cautiously and painfully, that your capabilities really do grow.

My first ten miles pass right on cue. Slow, deliberate, steady. They take me to the hilltop town of East Grinstead – it’s hardly Alpine, but its modest slopes test me out, just a bit, and I’m glad it’s not entirely flat. It’s hot though, and so I buy some extra juice. The next few miles seem really smooth, as the long slow hill back down to Crawley Down eats up the miles quite fast … a little too fast, though, I soon find out.

Because although 15 miles are safely run, my legs have each gained 10 kg in weight, and my mind’s not quite so clear as once it was. The village shop is quickly raided for another drink, and my legs decide to walk again whilst I gulp it down. I’ll run a mile or two more, and then briefly rest. But straight away I discover (deep down perhaps, I always knew) that it’s not quite like that, and the walking urge catches me out again too soon, at mile 16. The last four miles are not that great. They hurt like hell, but maybe that’s fair enough. It’s hot, and it makes a difference, it really does.

Four miles of struggle – that doesn’t sound so tough, but it’s hard work all the way. Dispiriting stuff, I find, to run a few minutes, then walk a few. But that’s how it is – there’s just no other way. Usually the final stretch sees a rise in pace, as my goal approaches. But not today. Just one walking break inside the last mile – I’d rather not, of course, but with spinning head and grinding feet I know that’s how it’s got to be.

Ten minutes later, it’s over. A long shower, and then I’m back to work. I’m not moving much from my desk this afternoon, but otherwise it’s like any other working day. Most folk have gone home by the time I leave, my hours made up. But I’m walking freely, more or less. No injury problems, and that’s a saving grace.

And so – that’s one more time again that this geologist has run twenty miles in training.

Just one more scar, carved into stone.

60. Dual marathon decline

Roads — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 18:01:07 +0000

I’m hardly running at the moment, having more or less completely exhausted myself by running two marathons in quick succession.

It was a controlled risk, not without benefit and certainly not without consequences.

I’ve been out on the bike in the evenings a couple of times recently, if only to keep up the regular summer consumption of flies inhaled along the River Wey towpath, but beyond that I’ve been sore, limping and listless recently. In the past month I’ve rediscovered lager and my dormant golf game, with both of these distractions offering potentially dangerous and perhaps one day terminal implications for my running career.

Never mind. In the spirit of a rainy day at Wimbledon, where the misery of inaction is often accompanied by the sometimes unwelcome chance to relive some of the scenes from earlier in the tournament, this wet and largely inactive London July provides a welcome resting space. Below my house, the River Wey runs by, and I know I’ll be running alongside it again soon. Maybe it won’t be tomorrow, but whenever it is, the riverside path will welcome me just the same.

57. Blackpool Marathon: Welcome to the Pleasuredome

Roads — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:46:56 +0000

I know it’s out of fashion and a trifle uncool
But I can’t help it, I’m a romantic fool
It’s a habit of mine to watch the sun go down
On Echo Beach, I watch the sun go down.
Martha and the Muffins – February 1980

It’s a cold and blustery June evening, beside a deserted beach somewhere in Northern England. Far out to the west, the sun is setting beyond the receding tides, as the Irish Sea is whipping itself up into a swift herd of white horses. The weather doesn’t look that good for tomorrow, but it’ll be far too late to worry then. For when I see this spot again in the morning, it’ll be at the 23 mile mark of the Blackpool Marathon.

Like many a mad notion, it had seemed a good idea at the time. To take all that training from London, and put it to good use. To rest a while, and then pick it up again in full flow. To run a race with minimal preparation, but to maximum effect.

That was the idea then, although it wasn’t until a few days ago that I really believed I’d make tomorrow’s start line. Just two months of time, and four long runs were needed, but it was always going to be a fine line to tread. Between keeping my fitness, and pushing too far, too fast.

And so it’s a sporadic, and increasingly defensive training programme that lies behind me this time. A few lunchtime runs, ditched by expediency. A few little niggles, that threatened to become more. Somewhere mixed in, a fast race in Manchester, so good for my soul, yet exhausting of energy. A couple of long runs, completed much slower than plan, and a few shorter ones which simply proved shockers. A sore last five days, with no running at all. But I’m here.

It’s truly a fine stretch of coast. Miles of open beach, facing wide onto dune fields, peaceful tidal marsh, and a foreshore stretching far into the distance on a falling tide. There’s just one big blot on the landscape, and that’s Blackpool itself. The biggest and brashest of all our summer resorts, its long strip is all but a parody of the British holiday experience. Lost somewhere between Lancashire and Las Vegas, its elegant winter gardens, dramatic Victorian tower, and friendly faded trams and piers, are all set alongside soaring rollercoasters and tawdry amusement arcades. And with its mile upon mile of tacky diners, seedy hotels and earnestly cheap bed-and-breakfasts, Blackpool invites family fun like of yore, whilst unfaithfully hosting the stag night, the hen party and the dirty weekend.

This long coast of contrasts boasts a proud running tradition, and two thousand runners line up for a start by Ron Hill, a Lancashire legend and 1970 Boston champion. On this grey and cool morning, overlooking a gunmetal sea, Blackpool might be living up to its name, but there’s a warm atmosphere on the road. The first few miles pass almost too smoothly, with just a weary wake-up call from my left ankle. Registering its right of reply, it sportingly settles for relaxed resignation without more ado. Then a timely shower distracts me from all reasonable doubt, and I dart left at the split point, into the scary oblivion of a sparse marathon field.

I’m conscious of feeling fresh and fleet of foot, as we tick off the miles out of town. Six effortless miles, through a long and wild dune field encroaching the road, into genteel Lytham St Annes. This is a different kind of resort, one of flowery wallpaper and afternoon tea, its famous and ancient golf links a regular host to the British Open, but it’s swift feet, not Severiano, that I’m chasing today.

Lytham’s fine white windmill looks tiltworthy at 10, as we start to head back into freshly blue skies and a stiff northerly breeze. At Fairhaven we pass 14 miles, and my credit account, so easily opened, has become a due debt to repay. The splits rise too swiftly. Just thirty seconds a mile, it seems almost manageable at first, so it’s hard to say exactly where the dream fades away. But that dune field has doubled its length during an hour’s run traversed, and by the outskirts of Blackpool there’s a long summer day’s shadow looming straight up ahead.

The marathon’s darkest chasm stands right before me, eight yawning miles wide, a stony steep rockface the only route left to the light. Over a cornice of pain, or a glacier of fear ? Yet it’s an invisible icefield to the hungover clubgoers, now surfacing at noon to gaze on our Promenade plight. We exchange puzzled glances, as mutual amazement runs right through this pleasuredome parade of a marathon course.

Meanwhile, a tortoise-and-hare game is unfolding out here in the pack. Seven upwind miles’ toll has been paid, and not only by me. A flag-waving family inspire a flagging mother alongside, as she surges ahead briefly, before falling back through the breeze. My next mineral water shower sees her burn by again, and we play long restless leapfrog until rejoining the seafront at a fast-tiring mile 20.

Three more endless miles are lived out, in search of a turning point that refuses to come. It’s a seaside stretch of hard bargains – half a mile earns a biscuit, each whole one, two wine gums. Repeat and repeat. Repeat again until my pockets are empty. A parallel reality runs on dimly as background, screening a high tide to send sparse crashes of foam now splashing the path. Another Pennine Spring dousing at 23, and we turn back for the longest lope home.

At last on the clifftop, the wind’s behind us again, but these are hard miles now. That sunset last night cast a long rollercoaster of shadows before a descending last mile – a torrid topography for tired, tortured legs. We leapfrogs limp on, up sandhill and down dune. I inch slowly forwards, onto the heels of five fatally slowed runners, one old, two young and two more now prematurely aged.

It’s time to end it all now, with a mind fully blanked, and legs hurled downslope. A final flat quarter reveals a road surface of red, bucking under my feet. A last runner ahead – but is there a chance ? Competitive – me ? More grist to my mill, and with ten paces left, my leaden legs force past to welcome the line – 4:10:58.

So, should I have done it ? Well, that’s open to doubt. Can you run two marathons, just two months apart ? Yes, you can, but maybe not all that fast. Can you finish a marathon, where the end never comes ? Yes, but it’ll test your resolve. And can you run miles 10 to 23, straight into a wind ? Yes, you can, but it’ll always be hard.

As I step past the line, a grin wide on my face, my double-fist salute is a new one for today. Exuberance is due, for however you get there, it’s one hell of a trek. This medal is just beautiful, but they all are to me. There’s no prize in life for not trying, yet so much pride in the fight.

53. Still crazy

Roads — Wed, 05 May 2004 18:19:04 +0000

Hi Rick
Congratulations on your run. Two minutes off a 5 km is impressive. It’s a gruesome distance to run, so you might as well get it over with.

So, London just wasn’t my day.

All those months of preparation and careful tapering blown out of the water by a dodgy stomach. Cold weather, nerves, grapefruit squash in the morning, a bug from one of the kids. I never was quite sure.

In fact, my gut had been feeling strange for several days, and felt so for several days afterwards. I had thought it was just me eating too much in the last carbo-loading days, but found out there was rather more to it once I set out.

Maybe the fitness behind me was the only thing that kept me going whilst feeling so off, since I’d probably have bombed altogether otherwise. Maybe like Tiger Woods being ill in the bushes on the first at Augusta yet still finishing the round – and playing badly on many occasions recently and still making a half-decent score. Scrambling and getting round, somehow. The annoying thing, though, is that I’d probably have done better just running the thing with far less forethought on any of the previous six or so weekends. But that’s the way it worked out. That’s the marathon for you, of course I know that. Right, so here’s the deal.

I feel that the marathon still owes me some change. And, on the positive side, I recovered pretty well. That could be one unexpected benefit of running the second half slower and with tightly clenched buttocks, perhaps. So, I’m wondering if this might leave a thin line of possibility. Depending on family commitments, there’s a smaller, but flat, marathon I might be able to run on 20th June … It’s hotter in England then, but the race is in Blackpool, some way north of here, and on the sea front. There might be wind and rain, but Blackpool is at least not known for its tropical conditions. Leaving a two and a half week taper, I’d need to run a 20 in the first week of June.

There’d be 9 weeks between the two races. Of course, every time you run a marathon, it’s easy to think ‘now I can run another next week’. I know it’s not real, but the thought strikes me every time. This could be foolishness, then, but maybe it could just work. Impossible is nothing, I know, but practicality and reality are different things altogether.

Perceptions can lie, though, so, as the man with multiple marathon experience, what do you think ?

52. The Edge - from Sicily to Surrey

Roads — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 18:14:50 +0000

We arrived back on Sunday, to find Guildford lying in a warm green haze. The moment had arrived, and I knew it was time for those first three miles. A very gentle loop, following my favourite route along the River Wey from the bottom of my road. The sun was going down, and there were cool patches in the warm air. The path was dry, and the river still. Summer running. Definitely a different season from last weekend in London.

I wasn’t worried about the time, yet the miles came up in 8:52, 9:09, 9:06. Almost metronome-like.

It was a good five days of recovery in Sicily, eating pasta, going to Syracuse and Etna, and resting tired legs on Taormina’s beach.

On the first two days the fronts of my thighs burned like mad. A doctor told me that this is the effect of running in the rain. Colder muscles work lactic acid much more slowly. Things have gradually improved since then, and I’ve no discomfort now. Good recovery is a huge benefit of good training.

Three miles were fine, but enough, and I made sure I walked up the final hill home. Another slow and even gentler three miles on Monday lunchtime, which left me strangely stiff as a board, with a sore butt. I felt like someone who had just completed their first mid-life run. I felt like me, seven years ago, rather than a runner who has completed four marathons.

Four marathons. Count them, four.

Whilst in Sicily, I did some thinking about my race, although I’ve not yet worked it fully through. My report last Monday clutched serenely to that single but sublimest straw, that the more I run a marathon, the more I am certain that there is so much more than the final time.

So much can happen, only some of which you can control. As in life, you have to take the hand you’re dealt, and enjoy the good parts. There always are so many to enjoy.

All of that is true. But there’s definitely some disappointment. Not necessarily because it was over 4 hours, but because on the day I couldn’t make a more decent attempt at getting under. The weather was grim, but really there was nothing worse out there than I’d experienced in training all winter. Better cool than hot, and there was certainly no danger of dehydration. Even if one hour wet is still a lot warmer than four hours wet.

If I’m skilled at finding positives in tricky times, at making lemons into lemonade, it’s because I’ve learned that’s the only way to live a life. But I still get tired of plucky resolve in defeat, since there’s only so much stoicism even a West Ham supporter can stand. The real frustration which strikes post-marathon is that you can’t simply go out and do it again, have a second try. Even though I know it’s not the way it works, I must admit I’d like to do just that.

Where have I got to ? Well, it was a tough run, but I’ve no regrets. London is simply the best race in the world, and I learned much more just plodding slowly towards the start. Now’s not the the time to plan (not yet). So maybe what frightens me most is the thought that I might feel ready to do it again, tomorrow. Well, almost.

Another slow run today, a Crawley loop, the less steep way round. I didn’t look whilst running, but see now my splits were 9:20, 8:27, 9:00, 9:01, 8:54, 8:56. It seems uncanny, but that’s the speed I trained for, through all those weeks.

If the run was fine, it was far enough. The closing mile felt much more like the sixteenth than the sixth. There’s not much gas in the tank, because there’s still some physical recovery to do. And the miles seemed to take much longer to complete, than a few weeks ago, even though the times are nearly the same. That’s the mental recovery still required. It’s normal for this stage of the game.

The real news this week is that I’ve crossed the line. Successfully bridged the dangerous and darkly deep divide which lurks between lethargy and recovery. From descent and despond, to recharge and rebuild.

I’m back.

50. Meteorological meltdown

Roads — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:53:37 +0000

Clothing is now causing me obsessive concern following a deterioration in the forecast.

All week it’s been showing Sunday as 14 C, sunshine and light southerly wind (perfect).

Now suddenly it shows 11 C, rain and wind.

Meltdown scenario.

A big question then, dependent on the weather. Firstly, should I wear the VICTA tee-shirt – warm but cotton, or should I go for the technical tee shirt (cooler, more comfortable) ? Naturally I can change and discard layers mid-race, but I’ll have to retain whichever layer I decide to put my number on.

Technical under cotton works well, and would show the charity logo… but then I have to keep the cotton on all race and it will get heavy and uncomfortable later. How about technical under cotton under technical, and then discard the inner two layers at 12 miles… Decisions decisions decisions. It’s all too complicated. Maybe I’ll just stay at home instead. That might be a good idea, no ?

Second idea, then – considering the size of my bloated stomach this morning, I think maybe I’ll wear the chicken suit after all …

As the rewardingly obscure, and reputedly mad, poet Don Niguel de Jamón Oeste might have put it:

“Correr como en sueño es algo mas bueno
Que correr como pollo, con estómago lleno -
Al fin del concurso llegas, si, y porqué no ?
Pues hombre, queda corriendo, y sin ningún freno.”

Which perhaps could be very loosely translated as:

Running like a dream is all very good,
But you’re stuffing that stomach much more than you should.
To get to the finish, don’t stop till you drop
And run like a chicken, mate, before it’s too late.

49. Ready to run

Roads — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:45:15 +0000

I’m just four days away from the London Marathon.

Four months of training have somehow shrunk to four days and a single two mile jog.

If I can think of little else but the race on 18th April, it seems a good time to take my mind off the road ahead, and to look back on the journey that has brought me here.

It’s a journey that started on The Embankment one chilly night in early December, as I left a party at the Globe Theatre on the South Bank. I walked across the floodlit Millennium Bridge to admire the view.

That reflective walk brought me eventually onto the London Marathon course, as I walked, dreamed and finally had to run to catch my train from Waterloo station.

A whole winter and a passage into spring have gone by since then, and I’ve experienced it all. The highlights and lowlights of just one season in one lifetime.

A sunny January afternoon beneath St Paul’s, a dank FA Cup Sunday spent toiling across a soggy floodplain. Smelly cowsheds along disused Sussex railway lines, a lap of the Shakespeare Marathon course in Stratford-upon-Avon, and a falling winter’s night under purple-grey clouds in Lincolnshire. Rediscovering East Grinstead as a mountain-top village at the furthest point of a solitary 3 hour run.

Spring sunshine whilst running 20 miles with my old training partner beside the River Thames from Reading to Pangbourne. Countless conquests of Prestwood Hill under the Gatwick flightpath, exploration of ever more remote (but always identical) 1960s housing estates. Speedwork and stiff legs.

The Pilgrim’s Way. A busker playing The Verve beneath The London Eye. GPS and Jihad. Canals, railways and Madrid. Sharks in the London Aquarium and tennis balls trapped in the Thames’s tidal flow. Running through rain-drenched Georgian streets in Bath. Arsenal unbeaten, a miracle for Deportivo, and Arsenal humbled. West Ham’s decline through, and out of, the First Division play-off places. University top-up fees. Letters of dismay to Labour’s Nick Brown, Tony Blair and The Independent newspaper. Chaos in Iraq.

A December dream, and an April reality, envisaged on a hundred drives through darkness, dawn and dusk in the Surrey Hills. Tiredness and tapering. The evolution of life from Tower Bridge to The Mall. Snowdrops in Shalford, crocuses in Crawley, and daffodils in Dorking.

Cherry blossom along The Embankment.

Since that evening in December, I’ve averaged thirty miles a week. Five hundred miles and 70 000 calories, worth about 9 kilos in all. In previous marathon training campaigns, my weight has come down only slightly, because I’ve eaten just as enthusiastically as I’ve trained. This time, I’ve tried to eat as normal, and sure enough, in eighteen weeks I’ve lost 8 kg. And 82 kg does feel good, even if I’m bound to put on a little weight this week.

Now the miles are behind me, I’m looking forward to the race, and my loyal support group will soon be waiting for me along The Embankment. But even after half a million steps, it’s hard to believe it’s time to run my fourth marathon, a return to where I ran my first, three years ago. I do feel trim and in good shape, if not quite as fit as last year in Stratford. The course in London is flatter, but will be much more congested. The weather forecast looks reasonable at this stage. My shoes are ready. I’m ready.

So what will Sunday bring ? If I’ve really no idea, then it’s because I’ve learned it’s almost foolish to predict performance. It’s way too far for that – too much can happen, with so many variables, and so few equations to solve them beyond mile 20. Some would say that this is the attraction of the marathon. The embarkation into uncharted territory. The lure of the unknown. A short, yet exquisitely sharp-edged corridor, linking anticipation and experience with accomplishment.

It’s often said that the race itself is a reward for what comes before. And yet, through every moment of delight or despair when Sunday comes, this time I’m certain that the true glory of the marathon is the journey itself. Not just the long road from Greenwich to The Mall, but the much longer journey from dream to reality. From the rash moment of commitment, through all the months and miles of training, to that shivery smile on the start line. A voyage lasting months, not hours, yet passing through the same twilight zone of pain and self-doubt which ultimately forms the stairway to achievement. A metaphor for human life itself.

I ran three miles yesterday, as slowly as I could. After months of trying to run further and faster, now it seems I just can’t slow down. It was a warm afternoon, and a pair of pensioners were walking into town. On this, my shortest, slowest run so far, came the warmest encouragement I’ve yet received. “Well done”, smiled the old boy as I scampered past. This journey’s almost done.

If I told you that I’ve enjoyed every step along the way, it would be untrue. Just as I couldn’t say that I’ve never once regretted starting this journey. But I can tell you that it has been worth every effort, just to get this far.

And on Sunday morning, in London, I’ll be ready to run.

45. T-I-R-E-D

Roads — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 18:47:56 +0000

My computer hard disk crashed yesterday, which seemed appropriate. It wasn’t the only hardware that was suffering.

The Bath Half Marathon last week gave me a useful opportunity to experience the thrill of racing again, and to assess my fitness levels.

The appalling weather also offered a good ‘dry run’ (if that’s the correct word) for running a race in the wet, if that’s the weather which should be served up by the London Marathon.

A successful day, but I’ve paid for it since. My legs have been stiff and heavy. My motivation’s been tested, and found wanting. Hell, I felt tired. I still do.

How could I even think about marathon training without mentioning it ? Because you do get tired, very tired. That’s not just on an individual run, either, although there is lots of that, particularly in the final miles of whatever masochistic distance you’ve selected for the day. And that last half mile of a 3 miler can be just as bad as the last 17 of a 20 miler. Are you kidding ?The problem with marathon training, is that it’s all about the red line. You’re always tempted to push towards it, to gain optimum performance. And if you go beyond it, you might get a bit more speed in the short term. But there’s always the risk that your engine will eventually crack up. The great paradox here is that, over time, as you get fitter, it just gradually wears you down.

Just for a minute then, let’s forget the smoothly progressing daily numbers in that Hal Higdon spreadsheet. That’s the theory, but it belies what we all know, that it’s not actually like that. So, how does a marathon training programme REALLY go ? Forgive me, but my inkling is that most of them evolve something like this:

1. Dreaming.
A sweet, heady time, it’s that halcyon soft-focus season when you make the commitment. You’re running pretty regularly, and your ‘regular’ (read ’sporadic’) long runs of 5 miles seem deceptively easy. The sun is always shining, or, better said, it’s always shining when you go running. Key warning phrases start to appear in your mind, like: ‘If I just keep this up, and maybe add a longer run or two at the weekends, then marathon training won’t be hard at all’. Other danger signals include running a (much shorter) mass participation race, or worse, being inspired by watching the TV coverage. The latter option carries the desperate danger of even more minimal effort levels, yet significantly more beer.

2. Starting out.
A programme of 18 weeks gives you plenty of time to build things up quite gradually. Assuming you’ve already reached a basic level of fitness before embarking on such madness, then the moderate mileage required in the first few weeks of training may even be more restful than the running you were doing before. The marathon is months away still, yet hangs like a particularly juicy and already satisfying carrot at the end of those easy 3 milers and 6 mile weekend runs. This is a breeze. You can even miss a few weeks of training at this stage, and it probably won’t affect your marathon. Fantastic !

3. Waking.
The first month has gone by, and the weather doesn’t always seem quite as good when you head out the door. The long runs are getting longer, but 10 miles is still more than manageable, and you’ve doubled the distance already. No sweat – this is fun ! It’s really no harder than that half marathon you finished so strongly last year (note that the memory of even the most principled people is criminally selective when it comes to recalling pain).

4. Worrying.
The second month sees the long runs up to 15 miles. It’s a bit tough, and what’s strangely puzzling is that 15 seems at least twice as long as 13. But you’ve told your friends you’re running the marathon now. They’re gratifyingly impressed, and hey, you’re halfway through the training. Great !

5. Hurting.
The start of the third month and you’re up to 18 miles. It’s a big hurdle, and you have to walk a bit. Well, quite a bit. But you finish it, and deserve that long beer afterwards – marvellous ! And, when you’re that much fitter, in a month or two’s time, it’ll be so much easier (won’t it ?). The snag is, the midweek runs are a bit longer now. Those three milers are suddenly all fives and sixes, and doesn’t the programme say there’s an 8 or 10 miler in the middle of some weeks as well. What, are they joking ?

6. Nightmare.
Nearly three months have gone by. You’re more tired than you can ever remember. Your feet hurt. Your legs hurt. Your brain hurts. You can’t reliably recognise your family. Your legs and body are permanently burning, struggling to rebuild themselves as you break them down, day after day. It’s like a permanent hangover, except without the wild night beforehand. You’d be much too tired, anyway. Worse still, if sometimes you can run just a bit faster now, why does it ache all the time ? And there’s that final 20 miler in just two days’ time. How can you really be so much less fit than when you did that 18 miler last month ? Isn’t it all this training supposed to be making you stronger ?

7. Taper.
Three weeks left to reduce the mileage and build strength for the marathon ahead. At first, it feels like no rest cure at all, since there are still plenty of miles enough for anyone. But after the first week, you seem to be more tired than ever, despite running less. Now why is that ?

8. Final week.
Aches all over. No sleep. Fat stomach. Tired legs. No chance. Congratulations – your physical and mental preparation are now complete. You’re ready to run !

So, then, let’s see. Where was I ?

Well, let’s just say that I’m definitely running a bit faster now. Or at least I think I was, until last week. But it aches all the time. And I’ve got that final 20 miler in just two days’ time. And why do I feel so much less fit now, than when I did that 18 miler last month ? Isn’t all this training supposed to be making me stronger ?

And, now I think of it, who ARE those strange people living in my house ?

43. A sense of time - Earth history and the London Marathon

Roads — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 18:41:46 +0000

In geology, you learn about time. About a lot of time.

As I look from my window upon the Surrey Downs, I see the Chalk and Greensand hills, walked by pilgrims heading east to Canterbury for eight hundred years and more. That seems a lot of time.

But to the Earth, it’s nothing. Our planet is around 4.6 billion years old, give or take a few. That IS a lot of time.

A new perspective is required, so let’s imagine the Earth’s own lifetime as a marathon course. The longest journey, but even in this unimaginable race, every 100 million years meant just one kilometre en route from Greenwich to The Mall.

If the first half of any marathon is 20 miles long, and the second ‘only’ six, then the Earth’s was much the same. Those early miles are largely lost to her geological biographers, and she has herself all but forgotten. Only the meteorites’ vague radioactive memory recalls her startline euphoria from the birth of the solar system. Just a few fragments of battered crust in Greenland and South Africa remain to witness the long time of cooling when her race was warming up. The first 10 km to the Cutty Sark, virtually wiped for ever.

And after that, through South London’s streets, it was pretty quiet. For a very long time. Barren, wild, volcanic landscapes rose and were worn away, separated by empty oceans which opened, closed and re-opened unseen throughout long and lonely miles. There was no free oxygen in the air, but we’ve found microscopic filaments and strange bacteria-like structures in sedimentary rocks around 3 billion years old. Did they really live, or form as mineral aggregates ? A question to fuel a live debate amongst geologists: since how could we confirm such simple life on Mars, when we’re not quite sure what to recognise as life at home ?

Maybe it was around the twelve mile mark, or 20 km, by Tower Bridge, that saw the pattern for Earth’s race set at last. Primitive algae had appeared, forming mounds and crusts to drape those Precambrian shields. They ruled the Earth for ten kilometres more, through Poplar, past Canary Wharf, and into Docklands. A slow release of oxygen was liberated by their photosynthesis, and a few soft-bodied creatures emerged to glimpse St Katharine’s Dock, with less than seven kilometres still to race. Such old and squidgy life forms have an understandably patchy fossil record and remain preserved in soft soupy muds like the Burgess Shale of Canada.

Almost four billion years elapsed, and only slime and worms to show ? But the pace was hotting up, and our weary Earth was lifted by a sudden crowd as several new animal groups arose at the Tower of London with 5.5 km left to run. Amongst them are many shells like those we find today. But these molluscs and corals would see no fish to swim between them for another long kilometre’s course – since young Nemo’s ancestors can trace their line back only to St Paul’s.

For almost twenty four miles along her run, Earth’s continents had been all but bare of life, and then the plants appeared. Giant forests rose and fell, leaving coal behind. Flowering species, and insects, graced the land when Mother Earth reached Blackfriars, three kilometres from The Mall. And she was already on The Embankment when supercontinent Pangaea was formed, its vast red desert roamed by giant reptiles whilst the Triassic seas ebbed and flowed around its shores.

Soon after, the dinosaurs reached their Jurassic peak as the Atlantic Ocean began to open, near Big Ben, with 2 km still to go. America drifted west across a widening sea, floored at first by stagnant muds later to form the North Sea oil which I and other geologists seek today.

Sea levels fell again, along Birdcage Walk, as giant rivers and deltas plied the European coast, winnowing the orange tidal sands of Guildford’s golden ford which lies below me now. The encroaching waters then rose once more, as the tiny plankton of a warm Cretaceous sea laid down the Chalk beneath my feet.

The Earth had almost reached Buckingham Palace, 60 million years ago with just 600 metres left to plod, when a mid-sized meteorite landed in southeastern Mexico, threatening and in part extinguishing life in Yucatan and across the world. And so the dinosaurs would never live to see The Mall, which instead belonged to the tiny mammals which survived that global storm.

The next hundred steps saw the Downs below my house rise up as gentle folds above a primaeval crustal fault, a far-flung rolling Alpine ripple made as Africa collided with Europe far beyond my Surrey vale.

With 30 metres left, some man-like hunter apes left their footprints across a drying African lake shore, shortly before the Ice Age began to rack our more northern climes. Those apes’ descendant species were then usurped five paces from the line by Homo sapiens, who invented agriculture a metre from the tape.

Inside the last 10 cm, old Moses led his people across the Red Sea’s developing rift, long before a young carpenter named Jesus preached on a Middle Eastern hill, with just a finger’s width of the marathon left to run. The Spanish Armada set sail half a centimetre back, with the Industrial Revolution still unborn inside the final quarter inch.

The last exultant millimetre of our Earthly race has seen man learn to fly across the atmosphere and beyond, those flights to reach the Moon within my lifetime, which so far spans four tenthousandths of a metre along Earth’s marathon course.

I look again from the window upon my Surrey hill, over this landscape etched by unimaginable time. From the London Massif, across the Weald Basin towards the South Downs beyond.

A geologist’s view, to scratch the surface truths of Earth profound.

With grateful homage to Nigel Calder’s ‘Restless Earth’.

42. Twenty six times two - marathon dreams in the Surrey Hills

Roads — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 18:34:01 +0000

A familiar sense of anticipation, and a race at last. The last few weeks of training have gone by in a flash, and it’ll be good to see how I fare on the road again. After weeks and weeks of running into the dusk, at last a bright and sunny morning. I’m feeling pretty good today as I open the curtains and look out. Spring seems to have arrived at last, and I can feel it in my step as I bound down the stairs for a big breakfast.

My mother makes me a mountain of toast and marmite, the sun streaming now through the kitchen window of my youth. It’s a perfect day, and time to get ready. I pull on my favourite racing kit and try to imagine the race, how it will feel. I focus on the good feelings – calm, cool running through the early miles, feeling the distance kick in, but staying with it. For as long as it takes.

‘Marathon running, marathon training – it’s all about control,’ says Hal Higdon, and he’s absolutely right. Ration the energy resources, and all will go well, whether you’ve 5 miles around the village, a succession of speedwork intervals, or a 2 mile tempo cruise. And if the latter stages of any race are tough, the trick is to reach them in good physical shape, with undaunted spirit.

The same will hold true today, through all of my 26.2 miles. I’ve been working towards this for a long time, and here it is, all ahead of me. Visualisation is helping me now, helping to suppress those unwelcome doubts lurking deep within my conscience. Sure, something inside is telling me that maybe I’m not ready. But I’m going the full distance today. It’s time.

My Dad sees me to the gate, and I start warming up. It’s a break from my usual routine. Before my first marathon, the sight of hundreds of runners sprinting earnestly alongside the barriers in London made me wonder. But then we stood motionless for 15 minutes and shuffled forwards another ten, vindicating my minimalists’ assessment. The next few hours would give us plenty of warm-up on the road. But today I feel like a loosener, so I pace a few gentle strides up and down the pavement.

Frankly, it’s a bit of a surprise to find myself here for another try at this race so soon, in Stratford-upon-Avon. In the recesses of my mind, I’d thought of lining up at that Greenwich start again, but the best laid plans…, and what the hell. If you feel ready on the day, or more or less, just do it.

I turn back to finish my strides, still fresh and eager. The wind is getting up a bit now, and the grey and blue clouds are scurrying past in the sunshine. Actually, it’s quite strong, now I think of it, and it’s bound to slow me later. All those months of training can be undone by so many things – a freak storm, a pulled muscle, a cold, or a dodgy stomach. The weather doesn’t look ideal, but it’s wonderfully warm, and besides, you just have to go with what you’re given.

My father wishes me luck, and it’s time to go. I hate hanging around before the gun, but perhaps I am a little late today. If I walk briskly, I’ll make it. But as I wave to my Dad at the gate, I’m a mile away from Waterside, and I’m going to have to jog. If I’m still reluctant to rush, that feeling of relaxed anticipation is subsiding towards anxiety. I’ve got five minutes left when I cross the river, and half a mile to the start. I’ll be breathless, that’s all, but I’ll be fine.

Whatever was I thinking of, warming up so long ? And why on Earth was my Dad standing at the gate of the old house, when they moved nearer in to town once I’d moved away, over twenty years ago ?

It’s troubling me now, and I can’t work out what’s gone wrong. All those miles in training, and this poor planning, to run further than I need. The wind is whistling through the flags on Bridge Street as I reach the start. Just in time. Maybe it’s not exactly how I’d have liked it, but at least I’m here, and suddenly I’m……

…… awake.

It’s not that imagined race day, but another morning, here in Guildford. The sun’s not up, though it’s almost light as I pad around, not wanting to wake the snoring house. It’s good to have the day to myself for a while. My legs are a little stiff from the hill last night, but it’s a great day for a good long run. A solid bowl of muesli today, some steaming tea, orange juice and a banana. The perfect runner’s breakfast.

I lace up my shoes and head out of the door at sunrise. The roads are quiet, and there’s no wait at the lights on Epsom Road. Slowly through the suburbs, and out into the countryside. It’s what I love most about this old market town – the green fields and hills all around it. There’s a river and a theatre, too. The unspoken similarities with Stratford, where I grew up, had remained lost on me for several years, until I realised just why I felt at home.

It’s hard to keep my speed, going up the Downs to Newlands Corner, but the crest rewards me with the usual wonders of the Surrey Hills. Mist lurking in the folds of the fields today, oak trees floating in the far distance.

My long road takes me past the village of Shere, then Gomshall with its fisheries beside the Tillingbourne Stream. The valley landscape was settled after the Downlands, the boggy, wooded ground attractive only to charcoal burners that long ago. Nearby, the stream and charcoal drove the gunpowder mills of Chilworth, set deep in the forest and the scene of many disastrous explosions through the centuries until they closed a hundred years ago.

Amidst the farmland now, I pass the beautiful church of St John the Evangelist in Wotton, its tower framed by the contours, and a match for any Austrian postcard. Down into Westcott, and over a ridge to a glimpse of Box Hill. Through the old sunken lane from Dorking, and across Stane Street at North Holmwood. This Roman highway from London to Chichester skirts the forested slopes of Leith Hill here as they rise high above the road. The tree cover hides a tower the Victorians built, topping 1 000 feet to make southeast England’s only mountain. Sometimes there are deer beside the road, but today it’s a school bus which startles me on the curve at Beare Green. Then Newdigate, strung out all along the lanes. We’re still in Surrey, but the farmhouses here are built in the red tile-clad, Sussex style.

Charlwood next, its village green and football pitch deserted. There’s still no clue of what lies beyond, but the doubt doesn’t linger when a huge shadow, inbound from Karachi, crosses the Perimeter Road just before the jumbo’s deafening roar. The plane thunders fifty feet above my head and down onto Gatwick’s runway. I pass the Flight Tavern, then the warehouses of Lowfield Heath, a shiny but still unrented skyscraper and a roundabout or two.

I’m nearly there now, slower than I’d have liked (what’s new ?) as I burn too fast down the closing stretch. A relieved halt at last, and I’m three minutes over schedule for this run (that’s good, for me).

8.33. As I pull the key from the ignition and walk across the car park, it’s been twenty six miles, and just fifty two minutes today. A commuter’s daily journey, of twenty days each month. The marathon’s course, run just once a year on foot, yet a thousand times within my mind.

41. A Lincolnshire legend - Sir Isaac Newton

Roads — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:18:53 +0000

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night
God said “Let Newton be!”
And all was light.
Alexander Pope

A hundred miles north of the capital, the A1 London – Edinburgh road crosses a forgotten and largely empty swathe of farmland. Forgotten because today it’s on the way to somewhere, but at the centre of nowhere. And empty because of what happened here more than six centuries ago. The Black Death arrived suddenly in Lincolnshire, in September 1348, but, within a few weeks, a third of the population was dead, and this once prosperous and populated piece of agricultural England lay devastated.

The county was laid almost to waste by the scale and speed of the catastrophe. Two hundred and fifty villages were abandoned. Historians argue whether the Black Death was the direct cause, but it hardly helped. These were thriving and established settlements, with names ending in -thorpe, -ing, or -by, recording the Viking occupation of the Danelaw, that tract of eastern England which had been conceded to the invading Norsemen nearly five hundred years before. But history stopped for these villages, and many that did survive remain as just a name on the map, or a few buildings scattered around a church or a farm.

These are not the flat expanses of the Fens, nor the picturesque hillsides of the Wolds, but Jurassic vales where the Lincolnshire Limestone and glacial Boulder Clay configure a rolling landscape of endless fields, sparse remnant woodland and scattered hamlets.

Countless travellers have passed by here throughout the ages, from the Bronze Age Celts, crossing this landscape from the North Sea along the Salt Way, to highwayman Dick Turpin and today’s lorry drivers on their beloved Great North Road. The modern highway follows Roman Ermine Street as far as the ancient junction near Colsterworth, where the legions forged northnortheast along High Dyke towards Ancaster (Causennae) and the fortress hilltown of Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) beyond.

In Friday night’s train from London, it’s just an hour’s journey to reach my destination. A stone’s throw away stands the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, that most controversial of all post-war Prime Ministers. This mistress of free trade economics grew up above a Grantham grocer’s shop on the corner of Broad Street, now fittingly almost within sight of a huge Asda superstore, the town’s modern commercial heart. But the statue and the older shopping centre in town both carry the name of a far greater player on the universal stage.

The small village of Woolsthorpe, where the Romans had once mined iron ore, had survived the Black Death, its name recording both its earlier Viking past and its continuing mediaeval trade. Three hundred years later, a small house here was the birthplace of Isaac Newton. After school in Grantham and a degree at Cambridge, Newton’s visit home in 1665 was prolonged by the return of pestilence in the Great Plague. And so it was that a legendary apple tree in his Woolsthorpe garden gave birth to much of modern physics.

On a grey and bleak Saturday afternoon, I head east from Bassingthorpe. Less than a handful of houses and a barn remain, with only the much larger church recording the four-hundred strong community which once farmed the land. Over the hill to Westby, and Burton-le-Coggles with its French-sounding name and stubby spire reminiscent of Normandy. Beside the fast Boothby Pagnell road, a shrine of fresh flowers stands by a guilty oak tree, where a teddy bear and Christmas cards to a girl named Kelly adorned the verge when last I ran here.

My recently-acquired GPS reports that I’ve five miles behind me, and fifteen more ahead. The satellites instantly recording my position owe their flight to Newton’s legacy, largely laid out in the Principia of 1687. One of the greatest accomplishments of abstract thought, this monumental work states the foundations of the science of mechanics, describing the mathematics of orbital motion, and the movements of the solar sytem. Newton identified gravitation as the fundamental force controlling the celestial bodies, but he never found its cause.

The universal forces occupying me now are from the hills, and the resistance of the wind. One thing I’ve learned from my GPS is that if you have to walk, do it uphill. You lose less speed than if you grind punishingly, but heroically, to the top, only to pause breathlessly and lose the potential energy gain of sailing effortlessly down the other side.

I turn onto quieter lanes and through the doubly Viking-named village of Ingoldsby, enjoying a modern renaissance witnessed by the recent extensions to its once tiny school and playground. Another walking hill through Lenton, as the lane twists and turns, wriggling and then at last unwinding itself along a straight section. This nine-foot wide stretch of tarmac is King Street, the Roman road from Bourne to Ancaster, and diminutive sister of the A1.

A mile beyond the roadside willows, as I turn left, lies the Roman settlement at Sapperton. Twelve miles gone, says Roger, the integrated distance readout a product of the modern differential calculus refined by Newton. The wind is behind me now, the air’s density measured and the speed of sound both calculated in the Principia. A long drink, another left turn to pass the warm windows of the Ropsley Fox, and onto a long but gentle easterly dipslope. A steady toil, heading west, towards a weak and chilly sun. The hazy rays of white light from our home star are diffracted and refracted through the evening atmosphere, appearing orange and purple through a grey cloud blanket. Newtonian optics.

Eventually, there’s a flat and sheltered mile behind the hedges into Old Somerby. A body continues in uniform motion when no external forces are applied, and mine conforms like every other. Newton’s First Law of Motion, simply stated.

Force = mass x acceleration. I’m running slightly faster between all the walks today. The 4.5 kg I’ve lost since December is a meagre 5 % of my body weight, but it means a little extra speed on the road. Newton’s Second Law of Motion.

To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Third and final Law of Motion. The Earth spins faster eastwards as I run westwards around it, although I doubt you noticed the difference.

Soon there’s a more mundane, but equally inevitable, reaction to the distance run and the time under my feet. ‘Boothby Pagnell 3‘, reads the roadsign in front of me, and two more lie unstated beyond. My spirit sinks with the evening gloom, and twilight finds me on a grim walking break still two miles from my goal. A passing LandRover slows, then stops, its hazard lights winking brightly through the murk. A friendly driver jumps out to offer me a lift. ‘I thought you were limping’, he says. ‘I’ve trained for a marathon myself, and I know just what it’s like’.

Such thoughtful and tempting kindness, which I politely decline. Counting the telegraph poles now, I run three, then walk two. Again. And again. Twenty more minutes go by in the dusk. A final assault on Bassingthorpe’s hill, and then the relief of running down past the old Manor to the house at last.

I sit on the doorstep, as the night falls. The bright sky of open country, and the stars of all the universe are peering out. Amongst them are the satellites circling high above, telling me that my 20 miles are all done, as indeed am I.

It’s rocket science, it really is. Thank you, Newton.

40. Running with Roger Black

Roads — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 18:47:11 +0000

It was marvellous to meet Steve Cram once, at the Buckingham Fountain in Chicago before the marathon.

Then, a few weeks ago at the school Christmas production, Roger Black sat down only two seats in front of me.

‘Excuse me, you don’t know me, but…’

No, it wasn’t going to work, so I sat there silently and tried to remember.

Summer 1986. Out of work, having just finished my postgraduate thesis, and I needed some motivation. I must have watched every moment of those European Championships in Germany, where Roger Black won the 400 m gold. Medals in the next six major championships, including two more golds at the Commonwealth Games that year. A second European championship in Split, four years later, and silver at the World Championships in Tokyo in 1991. And still, for all of that, many people probably remember him for finishing second to an unbeatable Michael Johnson in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, despite running 44.41 s in the final, faster even than in Stuttgart 10 years before.Second fastest man on the planet – that’s not a bad accolade. Or ‘Sex on legs‘, as a female friend of mine used to call him – maybe Roger might prefer that one.

For me, the best part of any championships in those years always came right at the end, with the relays, where Britain often had a chance for medals. In the 4 x 100 m we were often in with a shout, and in Christie we had an Olympic Champion, although it was hard to match the sheer depth of the Americans.

But in the 4 x 400 m, Britain always had a fantastic team. And it brought the best out of our runners. Phil Brown was no slouch at the distance, but he rarely seemed to make the individual finals. Watching him running the final leg in the relay, as I often did, it was a different story. He seemed unbeatable. The same was true of Kriss Akabusi – a 400 m hurdler for goodness’ sake. Yet there he was, tearing the heart out of the US team on the anchor leg, overtaking Antonio Pettigrew with 50 m left to take gold in the Tokyo World Championships. Roger Black had chosen to run the first leg there, so that the Americans would at least be in sight and under pressure on the final lap. It had worked, brilliantly.

Fifteen major championship medals – it’s an achievement almost unmatched by a British athlete, and in a career often dogged by injury. And Roger Black often trained – right here, on this track. It’s a thought that never fails to occupy me as I’m doing laps at the Spectrum Leisure Centre in Guildford.

Something to do with standing in the footsteps of champions, maybe of being a hopeless sports fanatic. I can remember similar thoughts on a visit to Montreal once, where I astonished my fellow tourists by putting down my rucksack to run a lap outside the Olympic stadium. This was just the warm-up track – not even the real thing, but I knew that Lasse Viren, Alberto Juantorena and Edwin Moses had run here too.

As for me, with a 400 m PB of 90 s, it takes just over twice as long to run a lap here as Michael Johnson’s 43.18 s. Maybe that’s about right, since my 4:05 marathon is almost double Paul Tergat’s 2:04 world best. It’s definitely not talent or performance which brings me to the track. Maybe you can’t, and shouldn’t, compare different events, or sports. But I doubt I’d be teeing it up again if I shot 130 around a British Open course to score twice as many as Tiger Woods – even if I do quite like the idea that my 75 in a match at Sandwich once might have made me a 2:24 marathon runner at golf.

If I’m no one-lap marvel, it’s certainly great to run here where Roger trained, and I do find that the discipline of the track helps. Sprint intervals are favourites for some people, but I prefer to run those on the road. Then there’s the Yasso, where you run 800 metre repetitions in the same number of minutes as you would take hours for a marathon. Building up to ten 800s, each in four minutes, will give you a four hour marathon. That’s the theory. But it’s a lot of running, especially when you have to make it up the hill afterwards.

My own, easier variant is to attempt four 2 minute laps in succession, and as I get fitter, build that up to eight. Two miles in sixteen minutes – that makes this a stiff tempo run for me. Two minutes’ rest, and then a single faster lap to celebrate survival before grinding home.

Winters are too long, and many times I’ve done this run in the dark, in the cold and in the rain. On just a few occasions, though, I’ve had the thrill of running when the floodlights have been turned on. I may be training alone, on a Sunday evening before News at Ten, but I can imagine I’m chasing Steve Ovett in the Oslo Dream Mile, or wearing down Peter Elliott in the World Cup finals in Athens. It never fails to inspire me.

So it’s a break from tradition when I find myself here on a Saturday afternoon, in the light. For almost the first time, too, there are other people here, since there’s a soccer match going on today. There are about 50 or so spectators, spilling onto the track, and they’re a bit bemused and stare for a while as I start gangling around the laps. But the novelty wears off, and they’re soon engrossed in the game again.

It’s hard to follow the match closely, but with five laps gone, the ref blows for a penalty. I crane my neck to watch as the centre forward takes an age to set, and then re-set, the ball on the spot. There’s so much time-wasting and poor sportsmanship in the modern game, and it wears off even here in Stoke Park. Eventually, I’m on the back straight on lap seven when the ball finally goes into the net behind me, but I hear the tell-tale cheers of a happy home crowd.

The circuits are going by well. In November and December I really struggled to finish four laps in 8 and a quarter minutes, but today I finish all eight, and just inside my 16 minute target. It’s 20 seconds a mile faster. Not much, but it’s a good day. The final whistle goes as I’m taking a breather, before I burn round my extra circuit in 1:39.

There’s still a long way to go in my training. The next month will be the longest, and there’s a twenty miler looming up ahead soon. In many ways, this time around I’ve felt that I’ve been struggling, and that it’s been more about the journey than the race ahead.

But now, running with Roger Black, I know at last that I’m getting ready to run a marathon.

39. Woking - from Necropolis to Technology Junction

Roads — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 18:44:45 +0000

It’s an unsatisfactory sort of place now, but once it must have been a pleasant hamlet beside the River Wey.

This oft-flooded piece of grazing land, named in the Domesday Book of 1086, now carries the name of Old Woking, dwarfed by the newer town to the north.

A Saxon monastery once stood here, but when the railway arrived in 1838, nine astonishing years after Stephenson’s Rocket had changed travel for ever, this was a blasted and empty heath. Woking Common was just a deserted staging post as the tracks grew to Southampton in the west and Portsmouth to the south. The sand, gorse and forest made this poor country for agriculture, and there was little potential in the place then.

But the town owed its lifeblood not to the railway, nor the Basingstoke Canal which had come this way a hundred years before. Rather it was the dream of Victorian developers, who saw riches to be made in a City of the Dead. London’s rapid growth had led to overcrowding not just in the streets and slums, but also in the cemeteries, where space was fast running out. And so arose the unlikely vision of a vast Necropolis beyond the southwestern suburbs, where funereal space and the potential for wealth creation were seemingly unlimited.

The opening of the first cemetery in 1854 saw the land soar in value, and everything changed. A small town sprang up around the station and its marshalling yards – a few humble terraces and shops beside the tracks at first, then elegant Edwardian villas beyond. The rough, sandy, but well-drained soils found admirers, too, replicating as they did the dry and springy turf of the seaside. A swathe of fine golf courses was built in a single decade around the turn of the century, offering the nearest thing to a links within reach of London. Trees made new and unfamiliar hazards to those more used to chasing the white ball around sand dunes on the coast, and parkland golf was born right here.

As for the Necropolis, well, maybe it was a developer’s dream which never worked out. Or maybe it worked out just as planned, since there was money to be made either way. Only 450 acres at Brookwood were devoted to burials, rather than the 2 000 originally planned. The first legal cremations in the country were performed here in 1885, helping ultimately to alleviate the burial space problem. The cemetery is a sleepy place now, nestling in pine trees beside the railway. Dodi Fayed was buried there the day after the Paris crash which killed Princess Diana in 1997.

In America, a town dating back to the 1830’s and with even older roots might be a historic monument, preserved for the educational enrichment of a nation, but this is England. And if Woking was unsure in the early days of its role as railway yard or garden suburb, in truth the town has been restlessly re-inventing itself ever since.

Today’s visit proves just the same. A few unexpected hours of family licence are perfect for next week’s planned 18 miles, and so I happily rip up my schedule and run Wokingwards. The first time I came here, they’d recently completed Western Europe’s largest housing estate, and pulled down the swimming pool to build a shopping precinct. After this came a second mall and theatre, and since then there’s been the unrealistically named Holiday Inn Woking, and a series of huge, demented office blocks for soaring and sometimes doomed technology companies.

The change continues, and it’s relentless. This morning, I see that a light engineering factory has gone, replaced by tiny bright yellow new homes. The pub opposite is a triangle of brown soil behind steel fencing, presumably awaiting the arrival of luxury flats or Another Surrey Living Opportunity. In between Blockbuster and the Police Station, I find a Mediterranean-hotel-style block of new apartments, enjoying an unmatched view of a multi-storey car park.

Nearby, under depressingly darker brown eighties bricks, lies the stationside flat where once I lived for a few months. It boasted a perfect location for the commuter, or at least one resigned to hearing Coronation Street at full volume through paper thin walls from next door. I turn for a quick look around, but just like then I get out again, as soon as I can.

Through the station underpass and past the fast food outlets, there’s another new apartment block, this one overlooking a roundabout. It’s 26 minutes from London, but there’s no other reason to stay here. The Victorian terraces nearby are more attractive, next to the canal and a playground, where I helplessly saw a seven-year old boy run from the swings straight under a car as I left the office on my first day at work. He survived, although his leg was in poor shape, and there’s a fence around the park now.

Across the canal, there are glimpses through the trees of Horsell Common, the place H. G. Wells chose for the Martians’ landing in ‘War of the Worlds‘. Some impressively tall and shiny chrome sculptures in the town centre model the monstrous machines he imagined then, but there is no sign of them now amidst a landscape of heather, birch, sand and scrub, probably unchanged since Wells’ day a hundred years ago.

All the more pity, then, that the far corner of the heath has been obliterated by the McLaren Formula One complex. Based in the town for many years, the company threatened to leave if not granted this new site. It was protected green belt land, but proved a grey shade of green. The farm had a children’s zoo and model railway, argued to be a pre-existing development. How a few goat sheds and a playground ride for toddlers equate to a massive factory, offices and a 600-space car park is beyond me, but then I’m not in planning.

Nine miles are behind me now, with a stiff hill into Ottershaw ahead. The deserted cycle track in the trees is the meagre planning gain from this development, but at least I’m sheltered from the road as I munch some fig rolls filched from home a few hours earlier. As an experiment in onboard nutrition they work well, so I scoff three in one go, and re-boot the legs for a steeper stretch beside the church.

The Otter’s Haugh (Heath) is mentioned in King Alfred’s charter to Chertsey Monastery in 890, and formed part of Windsor Forest, the royal hunting grounds, for centuries. But the parish evolved from a group of hamlets only a thousand years later, and the church is a red brick Victorian delight from 1865, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, famous for St Pancras Station in London (opened the same year), the Albert Memorial (1863) and the Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford (1841).

I turn left, through ancient chestnut woods I know so well, over Chobham Road and onto Ether Hill, scene of my first middle-aged run seven years ago. That breathless and frantic episode in the forest lasted just 14 minutes, but it nearly killed me. The hill is small but steep from this side, and I lapse disappointingly into a walk. But it doesn’t bother me, since the miles are going by. Sadly the rhododendron wood, where we used to roam at will, now lies within a designer golf course, targeted at expatriate corporate members for £ 90k a debenture. There are railings all around, and large Keep Out notices. I am a golfer, yet this and the destruction of a scrubby marsh pond to make a manufactured and ‘perfect’ lake infuriate me.

Out of the woods, a short detour brings me to my old house. The new trees I planted in the garden are now as tall as the roof, and there’s a new knocker on the door, but otherwise I could almost get my key out and walk in, for it looks unchanged. Ten years of my life, here.

My legs are feeling sluggish now, or is it nostalgic, as they lag through the next mile past St Peter’s Hospital. Memories emerging from the maternity and cancer wards threaten to detain me, the moments of joy and desperation from so many a life. But time moves on, and after a reflective glance, so do I. Back in the village, I buy two drinks to refill my bottle. Some familiar tracks and roads now, another hill which I fail to conquer, and down to the canal at West Byfleet. A flat mile to stretch the legs, not quickly, but more rhythmically, and bring me to my goal at last.

Here, the Basingstoke Canal (1788) meets the even older Wey Navigation (1753). Two ancient waterways, trading routes from London to the farmlands and markets of Surrey and Hampshire, briefly even linked with the Sussex coast in Napoleon’s time. High beyond the foot crossing, I can see the railway bridge, built as the line advanced westwards. Upwards again, whispering at this height and somehow almost unnoticed in the backwater below, lies the massive concrete viaduct of the M25 motorway. Unseen above, this vast leviathan of a mega-ringroad carries today’s stressed commuters around London, as well as modern trade from the Channel ports to superstores and business parks across the country. The white hot technologies of three successive centuries meet at this one point like no other I know.

Beside the three bridge pillars, each perhaps 120′ high, stand teenagers in hooded baseball tops of different colours, each with a spray gun in his hand. Openly, and unconcernedly, they are painting graffiti onto the bridge. In broad daylight, at two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Not the colourful, three dimensional script which is almost tasteful, but dull, grey squiggly letters. ‘Shaz‘. If it’s meaningless to me, maybe there’s a cult significance to them.

It puzzles me as I jog the last mile to New Haw Lock and back along the road to Byfleet station. Boarding the fittingly ancient, 1950’s slam-door grime-wagon of a train back to Guildford, I ponder the eighteen miles which have brought me here. Three hours, six fig rolls, two orange smoothies and some silver spray paint. Appallingly cynical urban development and technological progress, testament to a landscape of change. One man’s memories and perspectives along the way.

History, of a kind, all hidden in a lifetime’s journey.

38. At last, the rewards of strife

Roads — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 18:40:01 +0000

Twice this week, I had company whilst running. On Monday, I ran with my boss.

No gentle outing this, perpetually waiting for the breathless old codger to catch up, for this boss is different. Different enough to have a 2:52 marathon PB.

Naturally, we don’t run anywhere near that fast (it wouldn’t be possible for me, even for 400 m), and James is courteous enough to try to keep to a comfortable pace. But the key word is ‘try’, for somehow we always seem to end up at the extreme high end of my speed scale. It makes for some interesting discussions about projects – full, thoughtful and lucid analysis from James, desperate, pathetic and gasping excuses or apologies from me.After a mile and a half, I feel like a tiring 1 500 m runner on the leader’s shoulder approaching the bell, two paces behind and hanging on. But when I grit to pull alongside, magically the pace increases to re-open that 2 stride gap, and I never am able to close it down. It’s good to run together, but I have to limit this kind of running whilst I’m marathon training. Not just to avoid coronary seizure, but also to limit bodily damage and fatigue. Maybe like this, I’ll never really get faster, but it’s regular training that I’m seeking, rather than too much too-fast training.

Our route takes us up a small hill, and James’ legs are lifting gazelle-like in front of me. My oxygen deficit is reaching critical levels, and I whimper that we should take a walk break. Fortunately, we have to wait to cross a busy road, and by pretending to do up my shoe laces I earn the 30 seconds required to restore respiratory function, and we can carry on. It’s gradually downhill back to the office, and I almost keep up. But I’m stiff the next day, even though it was only 5 miles, and I have to take it easier on runs like this.

My schedule for the rest of the week (if there IS a schedule, a thought open to interesting debate) is completely out of kilter. It’s a step-back week, and although I’m not sure if that’s really in the plan, I’ve awarded myself one again anyway. A longer run of 10-12 miles sounds good, and maybe I’ll do a sortalong one somewhere too. But I’m skiving off the speedwork.

I’ve a mid-week meeting which takes me over to Reading, and afterwards I meet an old running partner who is working in Thames Valley Park. His company has a fantastic set-up, with a huge gym the size of a basketball court, running and rowing machines galore, sumptuous showers, and soft complementary towels.

The changing area is adorned with motivational messages outling the company’s ‘Wellness Campaign‘, and even in mid-afternoon, there are people coming and going from the gym all the time. For now, it’s how the other half work, but maybe it’s an enlightened vision of the future by an employer who recognises the value of a fit and healthy staff. Indeed, my friend’s boss is one of several joining the company-sponsored boat for a leg of a forthcoming round-the world yacht race. Now that’s real business travel….

There are running route maps pinned helpfully to the wall, and we pick up a thoughtfully-provided and free sheet of route directions before heading out. A five mile loop into Reading along the Thames, and then a second five mile loop down the less scenic A4 to the riverside village of Sonning and back.

Long runs have been a perpetual struggle in this campaign, and this time it goes… splendidly. The pace is perfect, the discussion is good, and my legs never find the chance to complain. Last week’s motivational crisis required 14 Rich Tea biscuits and 1.3 litres of water to fix, but this time we need… no walking breaks at all. Ten miles in 1:29 and still (nearly) fresh at the end. The feelgood factor is further enhanced by a fireside pint of lager at the Jekyll and Hyde pub.

Now, I could put this almost perfect run down to more rest this week, the hard work behind me so far, or a change in nutrition. Maybe the warmer weather (which really helps) or the promise of a beer at the end (which helps even more). But it’s the conversation which has made the difference, as well as running with someone who runs at a pace similar to my own. Talking keeps my mind off the running, and more than that it dictates a comfortable and even pace.

Another day off (I’m getting generous) and then a sortalong run up Prestwood Hill, site of a desperate struggle just a fortnight ago. There’s a blustery wind, and steady rain, but I manage to stick to a slow, conversational pace on the way out. It’s a key breakthrough which enables me to finish the second half of this seven and a half miler. I’m two minutes faster overall (which is irrelevant, since I’m just happy to have completed it comfortably for once).

The weather means that there’s no one around to hear my monologue, which I become only half sure isn’t spoken out loud, especially when I startle a group just coming out of prayer at the mosque near the office. Outwardly like many another suburban bungalow beside the A23, this one is on a much smaller scale than the magnificent and huge building in Woking, which is a white multi-turreted palace almost like a miniature of the Taj Mahal. Here in Crawley, only the appearance of a small minaret on the roof, where the bungalow’s chimney certainly used to be, reveals this as a place of worship.

Today I saw my first daffodils of the year, smiling by the roadside, and whilst those I planted along our front fence in early December have yet to awaken, the days do slowly lengthen now, marking their advance in a gradual advance of the dawn as I drive to work. Last month I turned the lights off only in the car park, last week in Charlwood, and this week in Newdigate (yes, I was a bit late – sorry, James).

Next week I may even see Dorking in daylight for the first time in three months – an exciting prospect indeed. I’ll keep you closely informed.

76. A year of running, rainily

Roads — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 20:29:44 +0000

2004. A year all about rain. And one glass of grapefruit squash.

It’s a year since I wrote about the first long run of my 2004 London Marathon campaign. A wet and miserable winter run which uncovered some forgotten history on a wooded bluff above the River Wey. A line of tank traps forming the last line of defence for London against a Second World War invasion which never took place.

It was an unexpected and thought-provoking find, and I’ve learned a lot more during my running year of 1 000 miles since then. A year unlike any other I’ve run through.

I could give you the statistics – three half marathons, two marathons, best time, worst time, funniest moment – that sort of stuff, but it was much, much simpler than that.

Rain. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind running in the rain. Some of my happiest times have been plodding through puddles. But when it started lashing down ten minutes before the start of the Bath Half in March, I realised that racing in the rain was a different matter altogether. Maybe it’ll be a dry run for a wet day in London, I joked.

Many a true word, they say, and so it proved. London’s marathon drizzle turned to downpour, I was chilled to my stomach, and spent half the race looking for suitable, and unsuitable, download opportunities. It wasn’t much fun.

But was it really the rain, or the grapefruit squash ? Staying in Primrose Hill has proved a perfect base for many a marvellously scenic London training run – through Regents’ Park and along the Grand Union Canal. West to Little Venice, and east through Islington and Hackney to Limehouse, Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs. And back again. But on 18th April 2004, fate decreed that there wouldn’t be any orange squash in the cupboard. A moment of madness, that’s all it took, to fill my drink bottle with pink grapefruit instead. Whatever it contains, glucose or fructose, it might as well have been Lactulose for the toll it exerted on my race.

Old Trafford, Upton Park, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Alpe d’Huez, Augusta National, Soldier Field, Athens. These are the sites of shattered sporting dreams. And now to this sacred list we can add a roadside rhododendron bush beneath a deluge in Southwark.

Weeks and months of training, hard work, days of planning, and nights of dreaming, all gushing away into the soaking South London undergrowth. 4:18.

There was much, much more to be gained from running that race, from sticking it through. The rewards of The Embankment and The Mall are enough for any runner. And I’m certain that I’d never have finished at all, if I hadn’t been so fit before the race, before the rainstorm. Before that glass of grapefruit squash.

But there was still something more to reach for. Another attempt to be made for belated glory. I’d recovered well. In nine weeks I’d be ready to try again, or I could make myself ready. And that’s where I learned a hard lesson. That at my level, there are only so many races in you. And somewhere between Blackpool’s Golden Mile and lofty tower, the dream finally faded away. 4:10.

In the Olympic summer which followed, at least I could understand Paula Radcliffe’s decision to try again in the 10 000 m in Athens, after her stomach had pulled her apart in the marathon. Since looking back now, the strength in the legs, the resilience, the fortitude, the mental resolve, they can convince you that they’re there, whilst still only being shadows of their former selves. And if everything is geared up to that one race, then perhaps no other day of the year can easily deliver in quite the same way.

At least public opprobrium about an unwise second race was never likely to be a problem for me as it was for Paula. But the impact of that decision lasted a long time. All through a long, listless and sore summer. Tired, uncomfortable tropical runs. Suffering through vacation heat and missing motivation.

Home to more rain. After countless wet and soggy pre-London runs, now I could add some soaking autumn runs to splosh around with the best of them. A cloudburst in Bristol’s Clifton Gorge. Gales in the Great South Run. And on another wild and wet evening, in that same Guildford wood, came the painful run to shake a summer’s long denial. Enforced rest. Seven weeks without running at all.

More rain. Winter rain. Back running now, in my rainjacket received in lieu of a London Marathon place. A breathless, legless way back into any sort of form. Frightening twinges whenever I ran too fast. A lingering lesson to learn hard and well. I hope.

And as for the bright points ? A hundred happy lunchtime escapes and evening excursions across the green and yellowing fields of Surrey and Sussex. A fantastic view opening up en route from the Étoile to the Eiffel Tower. And the sunniest of all my days, in that supposedly rainiest city of Manchester. A place I’d never seen, a distance I’d never understood, for a race I’ll never forget. Just one 10 km inside 50 minutes, perhaps the only one I’ll ever run. And nine sweet seconds of grace to make a perfect trade for so much training, planning and dreaming.

It’s been a full year of running. Like life, it’s had its ups and downs. Running in the rain – it’s a pleasure I’ll keep enjoying. And running in the sunshine, too – let’s have some more of that in 2005. But I won’t be running on grapefruit squash again. Not for a long while.