Emma and Lil were due round this morning for another long run. I was planning to attempt 20 miles (with a final 22 miler to follow next weekend) and was so nervous that I woke up at 6am. The very prospect was making me feel sick to my stomach. I just know that if the girls hadn't been coming over I would have rolled over and gone back to sleep. But peer pressure is an amazing force.
My brave running partners arrived just before 9. This was to be their last long run (their training schedule being a bit less severe than mine) and Emma announced that they had decided that as this was the case they were going to aim for 22 miles today.
The bloody bitches.
Once again peer pressure dictated that I also go for the same distance. Em and me were going to have lunch with our boat crew in the afternoon and I wouldn't be able to face her going on about having run further than me. Though it made me feel even sicker I told her that I would probably try the same. But I was going to wait and see how I felt after 20 miles before making any decision.
Twenty-two miles is just such a ludicrously long way to run; my brain was unable to register what was about to happen. Which was all for the best, I found the best course of action was to try not to think about it. The realisation, for example, when I arrived at the river, that I still had over 20 miles to run gave rise to even more strange and unpleasant queasiness. But it was actually impossible for my brain to really register what this meant, which made the burden easier to bear.
On Thursday I had given up on a short loop from my house to Putney and back, getting about 4 miles before I decided I was too tired to carry on. As I have noted before most of these decisions are passed on psychological factors, rather than physical strength or weakness. Today I was determined that I would not stop running. I passed the point I had given up at just two days before, but this time I had 18 miles still to run. All I could do was laugh (and cry) inwardly and keep pushing on.
The tow-paths are always busy at the weekend, and with the Marathon so close you see a lot of other runners, going at a variety or paces (mostly quicker than me today), but there always seem to be a fair amount of other strange characters, shouting at thin air and swearing at themselves (perhaps they were once mad enough to think that running over 20 miles was a good idea and have finally tipped over the brink into proper lunacy - cursed to wander the route that they once ran, like living ghosts). Today, an old man with strange sunken eyes an pale skin passed me on a bike. As he did so he looked me in the face and whispered weirdly, "You've left it too late."
I shivered slightly and felt like some kind of Greek hero in the middle of a quest, being warned by some grisly soothsayer.
An hour had soon gone by and I couldn't help noting that at the pace I was going at I probably had another three and a half hours of running to do. That's just stupid. I couldn't imagine it was possible. Again the only course of action was to try and ignore the facts and concentrate on the next mile or so.
I have found that it is always possible to imagine running another mile and a half and so this became my psychological technique. I would just think about getting the next mile and a half out of the way, and then once I'd completed that I would think about the next mile and a half. At every juncture another mile and a half didn't seem like an impossible distance to run and so I carried on.
After about ten miles I was starting to feel tired and hungry, but not so much so that I had to stop. And although things were difficult it didn't seem to get any worse.
Although part of me was beginning to think that I had been running forever and that the Hell would never end, time itself seemed to be passing reasonably quickly. Another hour had gone by and I was still plodding on at the same pace. There was something very trance-like about it all, like it was all just part of a dream. It would have been very annoying to get to 22 miles and then wake up to find Emma was at the door and ready to go.
I didn't want to return home the same way that I had come. Again psychologically, having to pass Hammersmith Bridge (the way home) and carry on down to Putney was going to make the last few miles too painful. I calculated that if I kept running until by watch told me that I'd done 12.75 miles and then turned back, I could cross Hammersmith bridge and my home would be at the 22 mile mark. Although there were advantages to making the second "half" of the race, shorter than the first, it was still quite tough to push myself onwards after ten miles. I conned myself into believing that I might turn back at 11.75 and make it a 20 mile run after all, but once I'd done 11.75 I was able to fool myself that a mile further wouldn't be so bad, so I ran on through Richmond (passing the hotel we stayed in during boat camp) and out into the countryside beyond.
The path on the south side of the river is very stony and uneven and the jolting began to tell. My legs were starting to get tired, but finally I'd reached 12.75 miles and turned for home. And brilliantly I only had to do 9.25 miles. The psychology had kind of worked.
Having said that the return leg still felt unbearably long. My half marathon time was a couple of minutes faster than the last long run (but still pathetically slow compared to my race time) and I reached 15 miles in about 2 hours 50. But it was an unpleasant realisation that I still had 7 miles to do and would have to be running for another hour and a half. In the short term my aching legs were still moving onwards, but the prospect of so much more time and distance had a devastating mental effect.
I couldn't envisage stopping until at least 20 miles or all this effort would have been a waste and yet the idea of continuing was morbidly amusing. I kept giving myself short term goals like reaching a bridge or a distance. Once I'd got to 17 miles I managed to push myself onwards with the thought that I only needed to do another mile and a bit to have run further than I'd ever run before. Then I was less than two miles away from getting to 20 miles. In short chunk like this the impossible became possible.
At 18.75 miles and feeling in trouble I saw a couple with a pram on the tow-path in front of me. I suddenly recognised the man was Mark Freeland who had been the executive at Sky who'd worked on Time Gentlemen Please. Just seeing someone I knew (and not all that well) and saying hello to them gave me an enormous boost and I picked up the pace and felt much better. Not only does this show that running alone is much harder than running a race, but also that having support and friendly faces in the crowd is going to be an amazing boost. Please do come and along and cheer me (and everyone else) if you can possibly make it.
Once I'd got to 20 miles (punching the air with delight) it seemed a shame not to carry on for the final two.
Physically I probably felt better than I have at a similar stage in either of my other long runs. Not that I felt all that good, you understand, just better. I was really beginning to wonder if the run would ever end and was silently cursing Emma for springing these extra two miles on me. I'd be in my bath now if it wasn't for that stupid cow, I thought ungraciously. I'd be eating those Miniature Heroes that I bought for my crew to enjoy (and at this stage I thought I deserved all the chocolate in the world).
At 21.74 miles my GPS guided watch froze. Although I knew that there was much more than a quarter of a mile to my house I was quite annoyed. I'd really wanted to see 22 miles come up on the screen.
Suddenly it flicked back to life and I had got to 22.04 miles. I was half a mile from home (having slightly miscalculated my turning point), but today it was the distance that was important. I stopped running and walked home. Aching, but happy.
It had taken me 4 hours and 24 minutes.
But the real battle had gone on in my head. This had been a real mind fuck.
I am pretty sure that if necessary I could have gone on for another four and a bit miles and barring accidents I think that I will complete the course in three weeks time. I am hoping that I will also be going substantially quicker. In a sense I think that going slower is harder because it takes longer. I'm still hoping for a sub four hour time, but I think realistically that four and a half hours is more probable.
An afternoon and evening of carousing with my crew made the morning's events seem more like a dream than ever. I wasn't feeling tired and my legs didn't hurt too much.
We watched all the BBC3 shows back to back and then the race on BBC1. I thought it all came out OK, but it was never going to give anyone else an idea of the reality of the experience. It was amazing to see how bad I was at the start of the training though and also to be reminded of the early feelings of doubt and regret.
It was so lovely to catch up with the crew and we partied long into the night.
My account of the race is now up. See the
25th February 2004 to get my take on the dramatic events.
