There’s a point in the Silverstone Half where the course seems suddenly thrown into uncertainty, and you become part of an eternal snake, looping up and down and back on yourself. You lose sight of where you are. Those people over there – are they faster or slower than you? Are they the fat bastards or the fast bastards…?
And as far as the eye can see, ahead and behind, nothing but long lines of pensive runners. One serpent with ten thousand heads and ten thousand tales.
Last year, I remember someone posting a message on the Runners World forum saying that, as he surveyed this scene, he was struck by the utter futility of running. I knew what he meant, but couldn’t agree with the sentiment. Maybe I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy, but where he saw futility, I see only inspiration and a kind of reassurance that what I’m doing must be OK. It’s a bold and brilliant illustration, and maybe not within the appreciation of all. Some say that a race is about the need to win. Well perhaps. But what they cannot see is this: that it isn’t one race but ten thousand races.
Take Paula. She came with us on the coach last year, along with her partner, but he was injured this year, and couldn’t make it. So Paula came alone. Nothing remarkable about that, you might say, except that she’s severely visually impaired. I sat next to her on the way up, and asked her about her disability. “I can see something two inches from my face as well as you can see something twenty yards from yours”, she explained. “Or to put it another way, when I look down at my feet, well, I can’t actually see anything…”
How does this affect her running? “I have to accept that I’ll fall over. Happens all the time. Just one of those things. You get up and get on with it.” Yet she runs on her own most mornings along the Thames, whatever the weather. “The day I decide not to run just because it’s cold or raining, is the day I’ll give up”.
I agreed with her. “Running in the rain brings out the kid in me”, I said. “Yeah, me too”, she said. Then we giggled for a while, like we were sharing some grubby secret. She’s a fine runner too, planning to run the 56 mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa before she’s forty, in 3 years time.
None of my worries about the coach had been borne out. Last week was difficult, with the discovery that White City tube would be shut, but the revised plan, to meet at Marble Arch, turned out to be a good move. Most people actually preferred it. One of our worries was where to leave the car. How much would it cost to park in Mayfair for an entire day?
The surprising answer was… nothing. If it’s a Sunday. Even at eight in the morning, in the middle of that dead period between the nightclubs closing and the Oxford Street shops opening, we were shocked to find acres of car space in Green Street. We unloaded our bagels and bananas and chocolate and Cava, and crossed Park Lane, where we found the coaches waiting for us. This was the second of our worries to be crossed out.
The third was the arrival of the runners. Everyone was on time. Even the two people we nearly left behind were on time. They just didn’t know where exactly we were meeting. They turned up at Marble Arch, but didn’t actually catch us until we were speeding up Wood Lane in Shepherds Bush. They fell out of a taxi and flagged us down just as were about to be sucked up the A40.
We’d sold 94 seats, but after last-minute pull-outs through injury, were expecting 84 people to turn up. Remarkably, 84 did turn up, and we were on our way.
One of the first to arrive had been Robert from Switzerland. He went off on the first coach while we waited with the second. He’s a public-spirited sort of chap, and we benefitted from it. Who else would have noticed that the coach driver had blithely driven past the motorway exit? They were almost in Leamington Spa before Swiss Bobby took matters into his own hands and ordered the fellow to turn round. We left London twenty minutes after they did, but got to Silverstone twenty minutes before them. Cheers mate.
I’m not much good at urinating in the public eye. It’s one of those seemingly trifling skills that has, nevertheless, devastated my entire existence. At Silverstone, squashed into a corner of that fetid latrine, trying to pee, as the clock ran down towards the 12 o’clock start, was surely my nadir. I implored my inner god to help me in this darkest of moments, and amazingly, he came up with the goods. Or so nearly did. Just as I could sense relief spilling over the horizon to rescue me… my phone rang in my back pocket. It was my wife. “Where are you? The race is about to start…”
I abandoned all hope of respite at that point, adjusted my dress and legged it. Paula took my arm and we made our way to the start. There was nothing to worry about, of course. We hung around in the cool Northamptonshire air for ten minutes or so before the hooter sounded, and we began to move off.
For five minutes I tried keeping up with her. Then I noticed my GPS watch. It said I was running 8:30 pace. Suicidal. So I told her to carry on, and off she sped on her invisible feet, vanishing almost instantly into the crowds in front of me. Despite running on her own, and being unable to see, she was hoping for another 1:40 half marathon. It was somehow too much to take in.
So I thought about emptying my bladder instead. My stomach felt distended, like I was running along bouncing a gigantic, water-filled rubber ball in front of me. It was a surprise to be able to move at all, yet I wasn’t just running but running quickly by my standards. It’s not unusual for me to run training miles at 11 minutes a time, yet here I was effortlessly striding along at a minute and a half quicker. The opening miles went: 9:27, 9:24, 9:48, 9:20, 9:33, 9:40. For me, amazing.
Around mile 6 I finally spied a sort of reverse oasis. A toilet. Veni, vidi, vici.
It was a shame to lose the time, but my rapid start had stored a few unexpected minutes in the bank, and as I rejoined the field, sans superfluous fluid, found myself still a few yards ahead of the 10 minute mile pacer. Hey, this wasn’t bad. Before the start, my rather wild aim had been to run the whole race at that speed. If I could just keep ahead of this guy, my life’s work would be complete.
-ish.
We experienced the Silverstone Snake just around here, and for ten minutes or so, I tasted serenity – like only a guy who’s very easily pleased can taste serenity. Mile 7 was 9:29, but after this high came the abrupt start of the hangover. Miles 8 and 9 slowed markedly to 10:11 and 10:03. Mile 10 took a long time to come around, and even longer to burn up. 10:20.
My only real sniff of despair in the race came now, when I suddenly noticed the 10 minute mile pacer up ahead of me, fifty yards away. Where had he come from? Somehow he’d slipped past without me noticing. I tried catching him, but I felt like a man drowning. The more I thrashed and wailed, the more I felt myself slipping beneath the same tides that had carried me here. Mile 11 was a painful 10:30 – slowest of the race.
And that was it. After spending ten miles gushing with over-confidence, it had proved itself to be nothing but our old enemy, complacency. These negative feelings lasted for a wretched half mile or so – the low point of the day. Then mile 12 arrived. Yes, mile 12 arrived and with it came a thought. The thought was “bugger this”, and I suddenly began to run again. The penultimate mile was 10:04 – not bad. And now I could see the 10 minute pacer up ahead again. I had a mile to catch him.
It was hard, but I finally reached him a hundred metres from the finish, turning in a final, weary mile of 9:42.
This was my third half marathon in six weeks, and my third PB – this one a 3 minute improvement over Reading last week. And with it came, for the first time ever, the realisation that I really can get round a half marathon in under 2 hours. Not this year, but who knows? Perhaps in 2006.
And barring unforeseen circumstances, there will be a Silverstone 2006 for me. I can understand some people thinking it a drab venue, but I like the place, and I like the occasion. People come here to run and to worry about the London Marathon. It’s a sort of festival of anxiety. Yet every year it ends up in a celebration of all that’s good about this activity. So many people break down barriers at this place. They realise they can do it.
And there’s the Running Bus of course. A bit like the race itself: hard work, and full of fretful and frustrating moments, but ultimately satisfying. Maybe we’ve been lucky, but the runners who come with us are really good people. Friendly, courteous, appreciative, good fun. How can we not do it again?
And one other thing. Next time you’re moaning about running in the dark, glance downwards. However dark it is, I bet you can still see your feet…
