stillwaddler Wrote:will read your Frankfurt one v.soon too Andy.

For me, perhaps, living just two miles from the start, the day begins more strangely than for many. Everyone is used to the idea of marathon streets being quiet before the pack surges down them – of marathon towns experiencing the calm before the storm, but for me, it’s the double oddness of my own town and my own street being devoid of traffic as I step out of the front door.


The walk down to the park takes me past at least fifty policemen (which is a lot, even for South East London), each guarding a road, ensuring the route stays untroubled by traffic. I’m within a hundred yards of the park before I see any other runners, when they seem to arrive en masse, and by the time I’ve walked through the side gate, I’m confronted with the full scope of things. Baggage lorries, tents, tannoys and people peeing – everywhere. This is my usual Sunday morning route, and it’s usually dead to the world, save for a couple of dog walkers, until at least half past eight.
[SIZE=3]I stroll across the park to meet Colin, a former work colleague I’m running with, and James, a friend of Colin’s. Collin talks non-stop at the best of times, and today he’s noisier than usual, and I’ve never been so glad to hear him. Inane banter and daft jokes, and the nerves hold off. Until the point I’m standing, handing over my bag, and standing there in a bin-liner, surrounded by thousands of other similarly attired people. A year ago I was planning a day on the booze, having cheered the field through, and the following day, having made a rash promise, I embarked on my first run for a long, long time. How did it get to this point?
Normal rules about peeing in public don’t seem to apply. To my right, as I stand amid a line of urinating runners, intent on killing a privet hedge which wraps around the park café, is a man with a blow-up doll tied to him, giving the impression that it is the doll relieving herself, rather than him. It’s too strange for this hour of the morning, and I glance to my left. There’s nobody there. Then I glance down and see the top of a woman’s head, as she squats down.
“Well, it’s marathon day, and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, haven’t you?!” she laughs.
I ponder turning to agree with her, and then realise the potential consequences, and keep staring straight ahead. Nine o clock, and I’ve nearly peed on a strange woman’s head. London
Wrapped in our bags then, we’re in the huddled masses, creeping slowly forwards to the start line, a journey of 400 yards and 15 minutes. I spy my brother, with his wife and two children, standing by the side of the field, and make my way over. He looks as stunned as I feel that this is all actually happening.
James, for reasons best known to his charity, is running with an inflatable spoon in his hand. Within seconds, two small children, independently of each other, have called out to ‘Mr Spoon!’. We have a brief ‘team meeting’. James has five more ‘spoon shouts’ in the bag, and then it’s got to go. It doesn’t survive to the end of the park’s outside wall, as a young lad looks bemused at his luck, collecting the inflatable piece of cutlery within 200 yards of the start line.
The first mile is half jogged, half walked through the huge crowds, ticking by in 11.16, and the second and third sail by slightly quicker in 10.45 and 10.01 as the flock around us thins. My daughters see me as I go through the second mile, standing there with my wife in their new ‘Go Daddy, Go’ T-Shirts, which must have been printed in the week and hidden away until I was safely out of the house. The pair of them are wearing the sort of delighted expressions only the under eights, who have pulled the wool over a parent’s eyes can manage.
Mile four drifts past in 10.07, and five is livened by the sight of a woman dressed as a bunny girl emerging from the park to the side of the road, having just joined the long line of urinating males. As Colin pointed out, there are certainly people who pay good money to watch that sort of thing. I don’t remember seeing her on the video supporting the Olympic bid, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have harmed our chances any.
By mile five we’re into a decent rhythm, or so it seems, as the rate drops back to 10.32, and the crowds start to congregate slightly, awaiting the bottle neck at Cutty Sark. I spy my Dad and youngest brother in the crowd.
“You’re being beaten by a Goodie” my brother calls out, slightly to my bemusement. Tim Brooke Taylor plays a bit of golf, and
A hundred yards further on, and all becomes clear, as I see a chunky, perma-tanned ex Big Brother contestant trundling along. He’d actually told me I was getting beaten by Jade Goody, who went off the Green Start, and thus claimed a 15 minute head start. Relived, I get my mobile phone out and called him back, to assure him she’d been ‘reeled in by my relentless pace’. Well, I said it was a strange sort of day…
By this stage I also got a call myself, from BBC Radio, who I freelance for, and who had arranged to speak to me from the course as part of their marathon coverage. They had equipped me with a heart rate monitor – a device I’ve never used before – which was transmitting my nearness to death through to a ‘fitness expert’ in a studio somewhere. Given that I’d never even bothered to measure my resting heart rate, quite how he knew how close to exhaustion I was is beyond me, but I cheerfully went along with it, burbling away until they had heard enough and cut to another piece of audio somewhere. Daft as it sounds, it was actually quite pleasant to have someone to talk to, and it passed the time nicely as the sixth mile slides past in 10.45.
The Cutty Sark, if I’m being honest, was something of a disappointment, as the route seemed to be surrounded by particularly high barriers, making it feel a bit claustrophobic. I walk past it about three times a week anyway, so there’s no novelty, and as a piece of course design, as great as it is to the spectator, I just found the twists and slopes a bit annoying. The thought that I’ve become a miserable, moaning runner occurs to me all too clearly – sod the view, let me moan about the route. I muttered to myself through to the end of mile seven, which results in a 10.45 mile.
Eight and nine are, let’s be frank, dull. Deptford is, well, Deptford, and as the Aussies like to observe, you can’t polish a turd. The fact we went through them in 10.31 and 10.24 is in no small way connected to the fact that we just wanted to get out of the place. The combination of twisting and turning though, looking for gaps in the flock, and changing my pace every few strides in the desperate search for a clear run, left me facing an unexpected problem.


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Good luck to all FLMers - MickCollins - 26-04-2006

My thighs were starting to cramp. I wasn’t imagining it, it was really happening. I felt sick with worry – really, genuinely panicking. I’ve run 22 miles in training, and not had cramp. I’d spent the last four days drinking water and eating pasta, and suddenly, on the day it mattered, my body was letting me down. The truth was that the dodging around was killing me, and the lack of flow to my running, not that it’s ever exactly in the Steve Ovett class, was causing problems.

Coupled with that, we were now heading out around the Canada Water/Surrey Docks loop, which makes Brookside Close look like an area of outstanding architectural beauty. On we sped, on gossamer wings, past those famous London
An 11.08 tenth mile reflected the all-pervading sense of gloom, and while the eleventh, along towards , was quicker, at 10.39, I was worried by the onset of cramp, and starting to feel fed up at this unexpected problem. Given the way I felt, the fact I felt so uplifted by the sights and sounds which awaited me over the next half a mile or so, tell their own story about this particular stretch of the course.
Looking up as I turned right, it wasn’t so much the sight of the bridge that stunned me – I’ve driven over it a million times – but the flood of people in front of me, both running and watching. The noise was extraordinary, and for the first time, for reasons I still can’t quite understand, it felt as if spectators were trying to make eye contact with the field, not just cheer them on from a distance. Three times people didn’t just call out my name, but did so looking at my face, and cheering on further when I greeted them with a smile. I wished I’d felt more emotional, but to be honest, halfway across the bridge, I started to worry about my legs again.
The crowds were amazing, the noise fantastic, and I got an insight into what it must feel like to be a star – to compete in front of that sort of crowd the whole time, but my heart felt as heavy as my legs. I think, to be honest, I’d invested a bit much into this, and the thought it might be going wrong on the very day it was meant to be going right was making me panic, as well as ache.
Mile 12 was 10.56, and 13 took 10.52, but I’d trained really happily at just under 10, planned to run the first half a fraction slower than that, and now, halfway through, found myself heading inevitably towards 11 minute miles, with legs which wanted to cramp whenever I tried to speed up.
As I headed for Docklands, and away from the bulk of the support for the next few miles, my times of 11.23, 11.21 and a sixteenth mile of 12 minutes dead told their own story. It was going wrong, and I didn’t have the experience to deal with it. Trying to do calculations in your head at this stage is close to impossible, but 16 miles is an easier point that most, as 10 is at least a straightforward number of miles with which to deal, even if the reality of still having those 10 to run was becoming steadily harder.
[SIZE=3]I’d been running for 2 hours and 53 minutes, and ten minute miles would have got me home just over four and a half hours. The problem I had, was that ten minute miles weren’t going to happen any more, and it had been three miles back since I last ran one in under eleven. By this time Colin was blowing hard, but James was drifting off, as a groin strain he’d hoped would hold off raised its head and left him walking. The agreement we’d made was that if one of us cracked, the other two would press on, and to his huge credit, James was insistent that we go on ahead. Now there were two of us, ten miles to run, and a world of tiredness.

While Colin’s ability to find sweets from the sparsest crowd was impressive, mine still needed refining. Claiming the jelly baby from the young girl’s outstretched palm was a good move, but shoving it into my mouth and discovering it was sherbet was not one of my greater moments. Foaming at the mouth, I sought out the next drinks station looking as if I’d contracted rabies, not hit the wall.
Managing to run 11.55 and 11.51 for miles 17 and 18 was a real slog, and stopping for a second to stretch my thigh caused me only to cramp my hamstring, as the effects of the early stopping and starting, really began to tell on my legs. Colin’s sudden departure off in the direction of a pub was odd enough, given the circumstances, but his return, complete with a handful of sandwiches, won all prizes.
“Cheese and pickle or egg and cress?” he asked, cheerfully.
I couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to turn him down, but getting the message, he gulped them down himself. When people tell me about having an iron constitution in future, I’ll think of Colin, wolfing egg and cress sandwiches at mile 19, and ask them to reassess. The buffet stop notwithstanding, the 19^th mile took us 12.05, while the 20^th – a slog through grim, undeveloped East End streets took exactly 12. The next was slower still, at 12.31.
It was decision time. I hurt everywhere, and despite the fantastic occasion and the emotions, I could still salvage something from this. Five and a quarter miles to go, and 3 hours 53 on the watch, this was only a disaster if we let it be. I wasn’t coming away with a time that started in 5, and that was all I really knew. I had wanted low 4-something. I’d done my last long training run – 20 miles, in 3 hours 10, yet I was half an hour off this pace and slowing. Victories are relative though, and I was going to claim one, even if it was only a minor one.
Mile 22 took a second over 12 minutes, mile 23 three seconds longer, and suddenly the Embankment was beckoning. I did another four minutes on the radio at this point – that I haven’t lost my job yet, is a testimony to my ability to retain some sort of civil tongue in my head, despite the provocation. Quite what I said, only the listeners could tell you, because from here on in, it was one, long blur.
It was here though, that the crowds came into their own. Screaming and cheering, willing us on to the end, somehow they let me carry on running when all I wanted to do was stop and walk. My legs hurt – hurt like they’d never hurt in training, and I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, but I just knew I had to plod on and finish as well as I could. Mile 24 was 11.56, and mile 25 three seconds quicker.

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Good luck to all FLMers - MickCollins - 26-04-2006

A mile and a bit to go, and 19 or so minutes to break five hours. To cut a long story short, it took 14 of those available minutes to get to the end, and what I’d spent months imagining to be, if not glorious, then at least an emotional ending. And yet, it wasn’t. I ran through the line in 4 hours and 55 minutes, and within half anhour found myself on a train back home, tired and confused as to exactly how I should feel.

[SIZE=3]I couldn’t have finished without Colin’s help, and he said the same about me, and hopefully we both meant it. I think we did. I hugged the family like we’d been apart for years when I saw them, 20 minutes later, and understood what people mean when they say that the marathon changes you forever.
I under-estimated it. Under-estimated what it can do to you, how many tricks its got up its sleeve, and how hard it will try to get you. You’ve got to avoid every blow it aims at you, and it only has to get lucky once. It’s a bastard of an opponent, and if I want to give it a decent scrap, I need to learn from all the mistakes I made this time around.
So, a day of saying I’ll never run again, a few days of beer and pizza, both off the menu since new year, and now I want to get back after it. I might not be a very good one, but I’m a marathon runner now, and for all the aches and pains, that’s something I’m proud of. Now, I’ve just got to become a faster marathon runner. Unearthing a previously happily slumbering competitive spirit might yet entail rather a lot of hard work…
Oh, and if anyone doubted the wisdom of giving London
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Good luck to all FLMers - Bierzo Baggie - 26-04-2006

Welcome to the marathon running club and well done to everybody Love these reports and as a lonesome "no-mates" sort of runner (what I mean to say is that I run alone 95% of the time) I find them really inspiring.

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Good luck to all FLMers - Nigel - 26-04-2006

Congratulations, Mick the Marathon, and well done on completing the race whilst commentating at the same time. With such talent available to the BBC, no wonder Sally Gunnell was left disappointed this year.

Hope to see you make a regular diary of it now, and best of luck in your new role with the Deptford Tourist Office ...

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