Tues 4 May 2004

Copenhagen on May 16th is looking increasingly like the American plan to hand over power to the Iraqis at the end of June. We all know it isn't going to happen, but keep saying that it is.

Last Sunday (race day minus 2 weeks), I opened the back door and sort of oozed into the belated final 20 miler. The first four or five miles were OK. Not quite comfortable but tolerable. Then I started to feel that ache in my right calf again. If I ignored it perhaps it would go away, I reasoned. It got sharper instead, till I had to slow right down. I ran-walked for the next 4 miles or so, till even that seemed too risky. So I tramped for a further five forlorn miles, then rang M and asked to be picked up.

The pain never turned into a pulled muscle but I felt that it would if I'd carried on running. I could still feel it yesterday though today it's drifted away again.

Where to from here? I'm going to have a couple of short runs this week to try to avoid losing any more fitness but I'm just going to have to play things by ear next week. We're still going to Copenhagen whatever happens. The time is booked off, the plane tickets are paid for, the hotel reserved. It looks like the best I can do is aim to 'get round' the marathon, and I wanted something more than that. Is it really worth running 10 miles and walking the rest? Where's the achievement in that?

I'm not going to beat myself up about this, but I can't let myself off the hook either. This calf has caused trouble before, and perhaps it was a problem waiting to be rediscovered. But I doubt if the stop-go long run schedule has helped. I've missed weekend runs, then lengthened the next one sharply to try to catch up. This isn't a good method of improving endurance.

Perhaps worse, I've still not managed to lose the weight I was going to, and perhaps this has proved too much of a strain on the old physiology.

Thurs 6 May 2004

I can't get away from it. I really don't think the marathon is going to happen for me.

I've had two brief early morning runs this week, and they've been fine, but a marathon is a different animal, and I just don't believe I could do more than run half of it and walk the rest. I know people will suggest I do just that - and perhaps I will. But it does seem kind of pointless. I doubt if I'd make it in less than 6 hours. Could I really say I'd run the Copenhagen Marathon? I could say I'd done it, but not run it.

Life is strange at the moment. A few weeks ago, our London contract finished, and since then I keep being reminded that our jobs are on the line. One of my workmates has been made redundant, and I'm next in line. Perhaps it's supposed to gee us up, but instead it's generated a lot of uncertainty, instability, demotivation and a loss of self-confidence. All of these things have bled into my running schedule, and made it all seem rather irrelevant. The troublesome calf is real enough but it's almost come as a relief. I think the abortive marathon campaign is as much a victim of what's happening at work at the moment as it is of anything else.

The one bright spot in recent times came last night, with Chelsea's overdue expulsion from the Champions' League. They tried to buy the cup, and almost got away with it. Another Ł150 million or so should see the purchase of the trophy completed next year, but rather like me trotting round the marathon course in Copenhagen next week, it will be a pretty worthless achievement.

Back in the real football world, it was a pleasure to watch a tremendous contest between Hereford and Aldershot in the Conference play-off semi-final last week, and very sad to see Hereford eventually lose after having such a good season. My own team, Queens Park Rangers, play their last scheduled game of the season on Saturday. If we beat Sheffield Wednesday we'll be promoted. If we don't, we go into the play-off lottery. I'll be one of ten thousand QPR fans in Sheffield to witness our first promotion for 21 years. Or yet another miserable failure. Wouldn't it be just so nice to win a big game for a change?

If we do it, perhaps I'll plod round Copenhagen in my hooped shirt after all. Just for the hell of it.

Tues 11 May 2004

Perhaps it's when you feel least able to run that you most need to do it. I'm having, or (fingers crossed) have had, a bizarre couple of weeks.

For some invisible reason, one day, with no warning, running just ran away from me, and I've been struggling to catch up with it ever since.

Demotivation is a terrible blight. All it needs is the narrowest crack to hide in. It descends from nowhere, when you least expect it. The weeks leading up to a marathon isn't the time for it to happen, but that's when it happened to me. Frustrating yes, but these past few weeks will prove to have value. If I can understand why this happened, and how to recognise it, perhaps I can avoid it next time. I'm working on it.

Talking of football (oh wasn't I?), the weekend was memorable. I'd not run for a week, but decided to suspend my gloom for a while and try a spot of anxiety instead. This was it. After 9 months and 90 matches between us, QPR and Bristol City had arrived at the final day of the season, separated by just one point. We had to win. And we did win, 3-1. Promotion was ours.

I'd planned to talk about the day in some detail, but I've remembered that talking about your football team is a bit like talking about your kids. It's a topic of endless fascination for you, but no one else. I'll just say that I've supported this club for 37 years now, and since 1996 when we dropped out of the Premiership, there's not been a lot to shout about.

So what a joyful sensation it was, standing among 8,500 QPR fans who'd travelled up from London to fill one end of Hillsborough. The poignancy of the moment extended beyond my own blue-and-white-hooped vision. Standing there, at the Leppings Lane end, vibrating with delight, it was impossible not to see the ghosts wandering sadly through the celebrating hordes. Hard to believe that we were gyrating on the spot where 96 Liverpool fans - 96 people - died in the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989 - an afternoon that led to radical changes in the way we watch football in this country. It was like dancing on their graves.

At times the match was unbearably tense, so when the final whistle blew we exploded with relief and elation. We were still admiring the instant battle on the pitch between riot police on horseback and the thousand or so disgruntled Wednesday fans, when my phone started ringing.

One of the congratulatory calls came from Griff of this parish. Thanks Griff. To mark the victory, I had planned nothing more than a quiet cup of tea somewhere with a good crossword, but Griff urged me to "go out and get plastered" instead, and I felt it impolite to defy him.

But he added a stern caveat. "And once you get back home, get those shorts on and get running again."

Which is what I did. Eventually. This evening.

Only 3½ miles, but enough to get a bit of blood pumping, and to feel a slight tingle in my enthusiasm glands. The first run for more than a week, and it felt like it. I'm somewhere between 14 and 20 pounds heavier than my moving weight target, even unfitter than normal, and paranoid about my calf tearing, but I did manage to get back home feeling happier than I'd feared.

After two or three weeks of gremlin-nagging, being told that I couldn't do this marathon at this time, I've decided I will. It won't be pretty. It really won't be pretty. Don't say I didn't warn you.

There are at least three battles in this war, and I have to win them all: mental, physical, tactical.

It has to be a mind-over-matter job. Think positively. I've had an extra week's rest. What an inspired piece of unscheduled preparation. Tomorrow I'll get my kit ready and hang it where I can see it.

Physically, my time is limited but I have a few days left to shed a few pounds. I need to feel a bit less bloated. Less weight to carry will lift my spirits. I'll have another easy run tomorrow night to get a bit of air through this carcass again, and to stir the muscles.

Tactics? I'm going to join the 4:45 pacing group and stick with them as far as possible. These guys must become my brothers in arms, and I mustn't let them down.

Bugger it. Let's do it.

Sat 15 May 2004: Copenhagen

I've been trying all week to be positive about tomorrow's marathon, but I keep wondering if I'm doing it right. Of course I'm going to finish, I tell myself. If I take it steadily, I can avoid upsetting my calf. I can beat my Chicago time, and get in under 5 hours. Of course. But this positive thinking lark confuses me sometimes too.

Is thinking positive thoughts the same as really believing something, or are these thoughts just affirmations, self-hypnotising mantras? Faced with a cold reality, am I just slamming my eyes shut, sticking my fingers in my ears and singing loudly?

And discussing it like this is unnerving me further. Have I just shopped myself to me? Or did I know it all along, in which case I'm only really shopping myself to others?

Any idea what I'm on about? Me neither really.

It's all competing realities. Like this morning, at breakfast, discussing the marathon with an English guy at the next table. I mentioned this website, and he said "oh yes, I've seen it." A startling confrontation between the real and the virtual.

And an hour later, back in our room, something very similar. On the Danish TV news was a live interview with the head of the Copenhagen police, talking about the success of the security operation at yesterday's royal wedding. As this was on, I wandered over to the window and absent-mindedly looked out. And there, on the other side of the street, outside what I later found out to be Police HQ, was the camera crew and the interview actually taking place. Quite bizarre.

Despite the assurances I'd received from the royal household back in January, we just missed the wedding between Crown Prince Frederik and Tasmanian Mary Donaldson. (They first met in a pub, apparently, which I found strangely reassuring.) We arrived in Copenhagen at about 5pm yesterday, and found the festivities at fever pitch, Scandinavian style. In other words, the streets were empty, but I did see a bus with a small Australian flag flapping from the driver's window as we went for our inaugural walkabout last night.

The hotel is a scream. The second smallest room I've ever stayed in, and certainly the smallest I've had to share. Its slogan, Sleep Cheap!, should have warned us. We're hoping that its amusement value will outlive the inconvenience. On the plus side, the Cab Inn has been open only a week or two so each cubby hole is clean and new, and everything works - apart from the TV which hasn't had satellite plumbed in yet. We have bunk beds, and naturally, I drew the short straw. Even more naturally, no straws were actually drawn. It was bad enough getting up there last night. God help me tomorrow night when a marathon and a quantity of celebratory Carlsberg have to be factored in. This may be my last ever entry here...

We were up late today, but managed to make breakfast just in time. It was the usual, rather ascetic, Scandinavian style spread: Bread, teas, cheese (goats), oats, ham, jam, cakes, flakes, a fish dish and fruit to boot. Not everyone's cuppa, but breadaholics like me are happy.

Today was expo day. After breakfast, we walked to the station and caught a bus to the northern part of the city where we followed the crowds to the ice skating stadium. Within minutes I'd picked up my race number, teeshirt, champion chip and goodie bag. No one at any point asked me to pay any money, and I could easily have walked off without paying the 400 krone (Ł40). Karma. That's what made me return to pay. I need all the help I can get, and 400 krone worth of good karma has to be a worthwhile investment.

I'd hoped to meet up with some of the Brits at the expo who would, I was told, be rallying under a Runners World banner, but I saw no banner. Instead I did the usual expo things: collect a load of drinks, gels, sports bars and garments - not because I needed or even really wanted them, but because they were cheap.

The rest of the afternoon was spent unwisely. When I should have been in the hotel room with my feet up, I was instead trekking round the city from gallery to museum to cathedral. All wonderfully educational, but to wear yourself out like this the day before a marathon is not a good idea. Best discovery of the day was learning that boghandel is Danish for bookshop.

Just gone midnight, and despite the kitsch magnet drawing me to the Eurovision Song Contest on the telly, I really must get to bed.

Sun 16 May 2004: the Copenhagen Marathon

Marathon day.

It ends with sublime weariness, but starts with such a naive energy and sense of purpose. Highly strung in the morning, totally plucked by the afternoon.

Here we are at 06:30, assembled for a clamorous communion in the hotel restaurant. Water, and bananas and bread and coffee, and more water, taken in the company of 150 marathon zealots. Febrile energy, apprehension, anxiety, manic glee. High-pitched chatter. We're a chaotic army of excited monkeys, and a well-meaning someone is about to throw open the cage door.

The breakfast temperature is high, but Copenhagen remains a cool and decidedly Scandinavian marathon. Slick, tidy, restrained. Yes, the riotous train to Blackheath and those dawn buses to Staten Island may be part of London and New York marathon mythology, but there's something to be said for being able to leave your hotel room fifteen minutes before the start of the race, and still find time for a pee in the bushes and a marital dispute about who was to blame for dropping the new camera. (It has a new dent in it but still seems to be working properly. Just like the camera.)

I make my way to the back of the field and team up with the five hour fartholders, a pair of jovial, grey-haired ladies in their late fifties. The 5 hour fart team is the usual miscellany of the frightened-looking, the elderly, the plump and the grinning maniacs. One particularly haggard looking bloke with stringy grey hair and a deathbed look, inhales deeply on an unusually long, misshapen cigarette.

Next to me a young guy carrying a ladder. Apart from the two teddy bears behind me, ladderman is about the only wacky runner I will notice all day.

I'm too far back to hear the start being signalled, but gradually we move slowly forward, and those distant drums are now less distant and more frantic. Farewell M, farewell dry land. I clamber onto the marathon surfboard.

Not nervous or worried, or even resigned. Negativity has no currency at this point. There's no one to indulge you anymore. Get on with it. The calf was still a faint worry, but there's nothing to be done about it. Try to run steadily. Hope for the best. The weather is a more immediate concern. The forecast was for ideal race weather - cool and overcast with occasional showers. The reality? Strong sunshine and heat.

Other runners fascinate me at the start of races. I look at what they are wearing, and imagine the thought and the research, if any, that went into their choices. One young guy next to me has tracksuit bottoms on, and a thick, coarse teeshirt, complete with collar and buttons down the front. A woolly jumper is draped over his shoulders. On his feet, ancient gym shoes that I suspect were never designed for running, and are now so old that they'd be no use for anything apart from gardening. He's going to run a marathon in them. And he will almost certainly beat me.

We shuffle across the start line and make our way up the opening stretch - Vester Voldgade. I've never been much good at extended periods of intense concentration, but today that will be my strategy. No wasted energy on chatting to other runners, clapping the bands, bantering with the marshals. Just keep focussed. Look straight ahead, keep up with the pacing group, get into the marathon groove.

But concentration isn't easy for the first kilometre or so. An overweight German in lederhosen, galloping beside me, keeps blaring his horn and bellowing. A few people chuckle. My German isn't great, but I am fluent in puerile marathon banter, and would bet my house on him yelling things like "Are we nearly there yet?" Mercifully, his marathon seemed to end after a few minutes. I don't see, or more importantly, hear him again.

The 7000-person snake leads us up through the city, past the State Art Gallery, into Radhuspladsen and beyond, across the canal into the northern parkland areas. The kilometres tick by. There are 42 in a marathon, which is a nuisance, but of course they come along much faster than mileposts, so I decide I like them. The numbers become hypnotic. Each one represents about 2½ percent of the race. Three kilometres become 7½ percent, eight kilometres an encouraging 20 percent. Ten kilometres, and a quarter of the race has gone. But how easy it is now, from some detached, post-race vantage point, to list the kilometres and the percentages clicking by. The reality is different. Every kilometre is a steady plod of seven minutes or so, and doing that 42 times has to be considered something of an inconvenience, especially on a hot sunny Sunday morning.

Still in front of me are the fartholding grannies, constantly waving and shouting at spectators, and being waved and shouted at back. These ladies are well-known to the average Copenhagen male, for reasons about which it seems impolite to speculate.

Concentrate, keep focussed. Concentrate, keep focussed. Eyes forward, arms moving, regular steps. Breathing: slow and steady. Movement: slow and steady. Concentrate, keep focussed.

The rhythm is mesmerising. That's the whole point. Pattern is all. Predictable and regular, with no energy wasted on analysis and decision-making. Let the trance swallow it. This is running narcosis. And into this clockwork universe, almost unnoticed, slips the languid tolling of a church bell. We pass through Elmegade and along the lakeside of Sortedams and up towards the great parks in the north, with the massive boing always there in front of me. Eventually, this great ominous clanging melts into my consciousness until I can no longer hear it, like the sound of one's own snoring. Then it returns. Or maybe it's me that returns.

Suddenly, here it is. I don't know what the church is called, but I see it now, perhaps 15 kilometres into the race. Someone has draped a banner across the entrance: GOD WILL NOT FORGIVE US FOR IRAQ. I was shaken back to reality for a moment.

It reminded me of something extraordinarily perplexing I'd read in Friday's newspaper. Donald Rumsfeld, staging a crass photo-opportunity at Abu Ghraib prison, the place where the USA finally lost the Iraq war, and a whole lot more besides, saying with no trace of irony: "The United States is the last best hope for humankind". Staggering.

Chime on, Copenhagen. Chime on for the rest of us.

On through the park and beyond, past the massive FC Copenhagen stadium, where we come across a spinning class - a group of young guys cavorting on static bikes to blaring techno-funk. We exchange good-natured derision and move on to the next adventure. I'm now behind the two teddy bears again. As I pass them, one of them trips over a cobble, falling heavily. His head falls off as he sprawls in front of me. I stop to help him to his feet. He babbles something in Danish. "Er, I don't understand", I say. Immediately he switches to English, apologising for falling and hoping that he didn't put me off. Sums up the Danes really. Perfect English, perfect gentleman.

I'm still hanging onto the 5 hour pacing group. One of the fartholders has lost her balloon. In deference to our place in the athletic pecking order, we stop to walk for 30-60 seconds at each water station. These are a cornucopia of delights: saft or sports drink, at each. And banana halves, orange quarters, sweets, and water. This one, at the end of the park, also gives me a line of bushes to pee behind. The sun is getting stronger, and I realise that I'll be burnt to a crisp by early afternoon. There's a girl in front of me wearing leggings and a tracksuit top. She also has a Walkman, and kept veering in front of me through that last kilometre. At this water-station Vera gulps down four cups of sports drink, and trots off, carrying another two in each hand. I fear for her.

My other form of nutrition is a collection of Marks and Spencer's Rhubarb and Custard. I set out with 8 of them, 4 in each pocket to ensure optimum equilibrium (and how often do you use two consecutive words ending in -um? Um...). The idea is that I should suck one every 5 kilometres. Apart from giving me a sugar boost, the theory is that my pockets will get lighter the further I run, until a point will be reached when I am so light that I will be floating along effortlessly.

That's the plan, but it doesn't work. The sweets begin to stick together in the heat, and to accumulate large lumps of fluff and other unspeakable elements found in the deepest corners of well-used running shorts. After ten miles, it's like sucking a bumble bee with rigor mortis.

Fifteen kilometres. 37½ percent. Around here I begin to lose it. There's plenty of life in my lungs, but my legs are tiring. Here I have a mouthful of gel, though I drop the lid and it bounces away into the gutter somewhere, so I have to throw the rest away. It seems to help, but doesn't last long enough. 15-20K takes us along the harbour, past the Little Mermaid and the new opera house, past the gargantuan roll-on-roll-off car ferries and the royal yacht, and through the deferential lunchtime crowds. As we move along the dockside I hear one of those huge metallic clanking sounds that you get in these places, though you never see where it comes from. It's also here that I feel something draining from me, and it's here that I begin to lose the pacing group.

I remember leaving the docks and heading back through the city centre now. I remember passing through the crowds of spectators and tourists, and seeing them part like the Red Sea before me. Copenhagen doesn't have crowd support like London or Chicago, but it offers something else much in keeping with the spirit of the Danish: respect. No one has come here specially to watch me. The city is hot and crowded, and as I pass through these medieval streets, people step back from my path, and they cheer and wave and offer applause. It's such a small thing to them, but priceless to me.

How do they know I'm here? And how am I able to hang onto the marathon thread through the multitudes? The answer is red flags and red balloons. Everywhere today there are red balloons and flags to guide me. Just as I think I may be lost, someone steps from the crowd with a red flag, and sometimes a whistle, dispersing the throng, and pointing the way for me. Red balloons straining at lampposts and tied to bushes help to mark the way. If the marathon has no other memories for me, I will always remember the frantic red flags and the applauding crowds shrinking to let me pass.

Every marathon has a hole in it. A period which loses you; a crack through which you seem to fall, an empty space you can't recall. Mine happens around here. As we pass through the city centre and out again, I lose it. The 5 hour pacing team had vanished now. I stop to walk for a bit. I know I've blown it.

Past the halfway point where I'm surprised to find one of the 5 hour fartholders, standing by the side, urging on the slowbies. She's done her duty, and been relieved by a fresh pacer. But she's stayed here to encourage the back-markers as they pass along.

I'm run-walking now through this long, lost stretch. I remember patches. I see a guy lying at the side of the road, writhing with pain and coughing and groaning and shouting hysterically. There are 4 or 5 paramedics around him, seemingly unsure what to do. I see a footbridge crossing the road, high above us, and up there are marathoners. Are they behind me or ahead? I can't recall crossing the bridge, so they must be in front of me. I wonder how I will get up there.

A little further on, I loop back through another small park, and come across a water station being dismantled. And just past this are barriers that are coming down as I pass. I look round, and see no runners behind me. Ahead of me I see no runners. This is the worst moment of the race. I've been abandoned, and wonder if I'll be able to find my way back. Surely the marshals will be going home soon, and I'll eventually arrive at the finish to find nothing there?

Then up ahead of me I see a forlorn looking young guy with bushy sideburns. Dressed entirely in black. He looks like a resident of deepest Somerset, but turns out to be a fireman from Munich called Willy, on his 3rd marathon too. We walk and jog together for 2, 3, perhaps 4 miles. He had been hoping for 4:30 but now he says, he'll be lucky to finish in under 6 hours. Six hours! What a disaster.

Another water station, where I eat a banana and 2 or 3 orange quarters. This seems to wake me up a bit, and as we get towards about 18 miles, I tell Willy I'm going to push on. I feel much stronger for the next couple of miles, reaffirming my faith in the mysterious ways of the banana. I start to do some calculations. There's something not quite right. There are about 6 miles to go, but my watch is showing not much more than 4 hours. This couldn't be right. From Willy's remarks about finishing in 6 hours, I'm expecting to be way behind this. Is my watch malfunctioning? No. I pass a church whose clock says 1:40pm. We'd started at 9:30, so it's true. I have 10 kilometres to go. If I can do 10K in an hour, which I've done many times, I can easily beat my Chicago time of 5:16.

If seeing the dismantling of the barriers was the worst moment, this is one of the best. Yes, my thighs are aching, and I can feel a couple of toe blisters waking up. But I'm in with a chance after all, and I want to take it.

And I really do try, but I just can't stretch far enough. These last 6 miles are a kaleidoscope of fatigue and emotion. It's a long sequence of snapshots. Stumbling past those roadside cafés where dozens of Danes cruelly lunch on herring salads and large glasses of icy beer. Jumping to their feet, raising their glasses and roaring encouragement at this unknown guy tottering past. It's like a scene from Cabaret. Thank you.

Back along the harbour again, past Nyhavn and the old house of Hans Christian Andersen. Through the city centre once more and the army of red flag wavers, slicing a path through the crowds, trying to spot the red balloons. Past Kennedy's the Irish Bar (slogan: "The best feckin' pint in Europe").

It's really hot and sunny now, and I'm struggling badly to keep shuffling forward. I'm trying so hard not to walk, but I can't quite manage it. As I turn off the main road into a hazy, tree-lined avenue, I discover Bob Dylan's psychedelia classic, Mister Tambourine Man, running around my head:

My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

It continues:

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wandering.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

And a marathon really is like an LSD trip. That's it. Acid for the middle-aged. The series of small adventures that you later try to stitch together to make sense of it. The Tardis-like sensation of being away for ages, even though the clock says otherwise. The feeling that you've been somewhere else, but you're not quite sure where. Somewhere that 'normal people' never get to and would struggle to understand. Something that will change your perception forever. Something that forces you to reorder and reposition your assumptions. That complex intertwining of apprehension, excitement, pain and elation, but almost always with a happy ending. Something that leaves you thinking you've been lucky and privileged to have experienced it.

But the last couple of miles of the marathon is way too early to enjoy the experience. Physically, it's where you most feel the pain. But at least you now know it's nearly over. Nearly over. Nearly over now. The worst period is 10-15 miles, where you're beginning to hurt, and to tire, but you still have 10 or 15 left to do. Your situation seems hopeless. But anything over 20 and at least you're on your way in.

I can't say too much about the last two miles of this marathon because I can't recall anything much about them. I try to keep shuffle-jogging, but I have to keep stopping to walk. I pass one of the flag-waving marshals with a dozen red balloons tied to her waist. She calls out: "Nearly there. Just six hundred metres to go." It's a long 600 metres. Along the canal, left over the bridge, round the corner and there, a hundred metres away, the finish line.

They haven't dismantled it. It's still there. They haven't gone home. There are hundreds of people here, cheering and applauding as I reach the finish line. I nearly fall over, and perhaps I would have done if that lovely grinning, plump, blonde lady hadn't caught and hugged me. She squeezes me, and says well done, before handing me over to the grinning teenage girls with their armfuls of medals.

Two glasses of strawberry yoghurt and another banana, before realising I've not stopped my watch. It says 5:20:26. I've missed my Chicago time by 5 minutes, but I don't care just now.

I stop to wait for Willy the German guy. He eventually comes in about 5 or 10 minutes after me, and we shake hands. We sit on a wall and chat. Someone comes by and congratulates him. An English guy. He'd slept in the bunk above him in the youth hostel the night before, apparently. He also sits down to talk. Then his mate arrives, who turns out to be the ladder-carrier I'd seen at the start. They tell me their story. The guy with the ladder has run round Denmark with the ladder on his shoulder, raising money for an African children's charity. His name is Chris Jolly, and you can read his story here. I promise to include them in my race report.

Then M appears, and we pick our hesitant, hand-holding way through the wind-blown marathon debris back towards the hotel.

The shower that you thought you'd never have. Washing the city from your hair and wiping down the marathon slate. Sinking into bed for an hour or two of fitful sleep. Itself, almost worth doing the marathon for.

Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

I did everything I could to make Copenhagen hard for myself. 20 pounds heavier than planned. No successful long runs. Disastrous complacency. Demotivation. Mentally unprepared in the two weeks before the race. Way too much beer. No nutrition strategy. It was how not to do things. But what a lot of raw material to work with. I can sense some déjà vu as I say this, but... next time around, things will be different.

A couple of days later, at the airport, waiting to leave. Using up my Danish coins on a slice of pizza and a coke. And there it is, drifting through the departure lounge, the song I've been looking for. Nena's mid-80s pop classic: 99 Red Balloons.

Ninety nine dreams I have had.
Every one a red balloon.
It's over now, I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir,
Just to prove the world was here.
And here is a red balloon...
I think of you and let it go.

That's it.

Sun 23 May 2004

I'm a great believer in solving problems by throwing my wife's money at them. Today we bought a new lawnmower.

I was geeky enough to wear _colin, my distance monitor gadget while I was mowing the lawn. The garden is biggish, but I was staggered to find that cutting the grass, and making the regular trips to the compost heap in the far corner, involved a total of 3.4 miles of legwork. Even more startling was the discovery that while I spent 2 hours 5 mins moving around the garden I was evidently stationary (according to the "rest" reading on my Garmin Forerunner) for even longer: 2 hours 40. I have to keep this information close to my chest, or it may be misinterpreted.

Yesterday, I had my first run since the marathon. The usual 3½ miler. It was a bit puff and pant, but that had more to do with my few days of... rehydration and carb replacement than a hangover from the marathon.

Tues 25 May 2004 - The Hogweed Trot (10K), Chipping Sodbury

What a very English collection of words: "the Hogweed Trot, Chipping Sodbury". But why did I feel it so important to drive 80 miles at white-knuckle speed after work to take part in it?

The inaugural Hogweed Trot (named after the local Hogweed Trotters running club) winds round 10 kilometres of rustic lanes around Chipping Sodbury and Yate, somewhere north of Bristol. We lived there for 6 months in late 2001/early 2002, and it's on those very lanes that I started running, and on which nearly all of my London Marathon training took place. The nostalgist in me had to be there.

The plan was to leave work in Maidenhead at 4:30, but a succession of trivial catastrophes kept me back until just after 5pm, which was cutting it fine. The M4 isn't a very reliable friend in these situations, but this time it stayed pretty clear, and 80 minutes of reckless driving later, I arrived in Yate, at the home of Pete, otherwise known as Griff Of This Parish.

We didn't hang around long - I still had to register. They evidently expected a maximum of 200, as numbers higher than this had to be constructed from the back of entry forms, and a rather weedy blue biro. I managed to nab the penultimate real number: 199.

We trotted back to the start, and had only a minute or two to spare before the off. For a heartening 30 seconds or so, I was ahead of Griff, but I was soon given the brief opportunity to study the pattern on the soles of his trainers as he moved out of first gear. I nonchalantly dropped back to last place, not because I thought this my rightful position, but because _colin was telling me to do so. I'd set the gadget to aim for 1 hour. I knew I wouldn't manage this time, but I wanted to stick to the pace for as long as I could. I knew there would be plenty of people finishing slower than 60 minutes, but I kept to the pace I was being told to, and there was no one behind me. This could only mean that quite a few people had gone off too fast. I waited for them to drop back.

And they started to do so, almost immediately. By the end of the first kilometre I'd overtaken 8 people, one of whom was walking. Then another 4 or 5 drifted back behind me, and that's pretty much how it stayed.

It wasn't the easiest 10K I've done. As usual, the race was described as "flat" by the organisers, but someone had evidently inserted a few hills over the weekend without informing them. Perhaps "hills" is an exaggeration, but inclines, slopes, undulations, whatever. Bits going upwards.

It was a grand evening for a race. The sun was still warm and bright, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood for a Monday. Perhaps the two or three years since we lived there is too short a distance to talk about nostalgia, but it did resonate (a great word that means nothing very much. Great because it means nothing very much). It's a different kind of countryside from the stuff I inhabit now. The Yate/Chipping Sodbury version is more authentic and raw than sanitised Berkshire, where it all seems a bit more 'pretend'. Once again I had the pleasure of ferocious dogs battering at farm gates, roaring and snarling as I passed, desperate to disembowel and devour me. If I was a kid living round here, I'm sure I'd spend the summer holidays poking sharp sticks into them through the farmyard gates, just for the dry-mouthed, teeth-chattering, terrifying hell of it.

The marshals were friendly and supportive, and surprisingly, even the normally grumpy locals seemed to tolerate the inconvenience in good heart. I approached one crossroads where a young, suntanned figure with shades, sitting in an Audi coupé, an arm suspended through the window, ostentatiously drummed his fingers. "What a twat", I thought, but as I passed he suddenly gave me a clap and called out, in a strong Bristolian accent, and without irony, "Well done mate, not too long to go I hope". I felt bad about having jumped to the wrong conclusion.

But not that bad.

A long stretch round the halfway point saw the race double-back on itself so that we were plodding alongside runners coming the other way. One of them was Pete, and we exchanged some breathless encouragement.

Madness, I kept thinking. Madness. Only a week since running a marathon, and I'm already going through all this again. But another part of me was glad to be up and running again do soon. It's one of the many lessons that I keep saying I've learned from the flawed Copenhagen project. Don't sit around guzzling beer and cheesecake for 6 weeks after a marathon, wondering if you'll ever want to run again. Get out there.

I kept plodding until just after the 5 Miles marker. Here I stopped to walk for a minute or two to catch my breath before chugging on again. During my walk I was overtaken by a grinning elderly lady, and I now set off after her. As I did so, I heard someone come up strongly behind me. They got closer and closer but, rather uncharacteristically, I decided to make a race of it. I kept hearing their footfalls coming up behind me, then receding again as I pulled away. I never saw who it was, and in the end they gave up and dropped right back.

Meanwhile I'd caught up with the older lady, and as we came towards the final 200 metres or so, my flickering competitive spirit spluttered and died. Too cruel, I thought. We ran in together, and crossed the line at the same time. She got a huge cheer from the crowd of faster finishers still hanging round at the end. The time on my watch was 1 hour 5 minutes. Slow compared with... most people (including Griff who managed 47 minutes in his first 10K), and 5 minutes outside my least slow 10K, but I was pleased just to be out there running in a race so soon after the marathon.

The quick follow-up to Copenhagen says something else. It says that the marathon last week was just one of those long training runs that I didn't manage, and the real marathon is yet to come. When and where? Not sure yet. Perhaps Dublin. Perhaps not.

Wed 26 May 2004 - Dartford

I had too much to dream last night.

Here I am, marooned in a motel on a gargantuan business park in remotest Dartford. It feels like the First Preliminary Qualifying Round of the War of the Worlds has just finished. Plucky underdog Earth has been trounced by the much-fancied planet XXor6on-D92. As a particularly fine specimen of earthling, I've been warehoused in some inter-galactic, prisoner-of-war holding camp, waiting to be shipped off for re-programming and redeployment to the crimson salt mines of BigDave, a remote moon of XXor6on-D92.

Bleak and soulless, with no company but the distant whine of the M25 snaking its way through the air, high above me, on its way to the marshlands of Essex, on the other side of the Thames estuary, I know that running is my only chance of escape to a better yesterday.

Maybe tomorrow.

Thurs 27 May 2004 - Dartford

Or tomorrow.

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