Today I learnt 4 things:
- Kazuo Ishiguro is a top geezer
- Power gels work
- In the space of 16 weeks, it is possible to move from a point where you are unable to run for 2 minutes without vomit dangling from your teeth, to a point where you can run for 3 solid hours and 15 miles
- I will finish the London Marathon
Today should have been a disaster as I was looking forward to running. This is a bad omen, given recent experience.
The karma monster, or whatever it is that casts our destiny dice each morning, might have been misled, as I started to relish the prospect of a run only immediately before I set off. All week I’ve felt apprehensive. Fifteen bloody miles. I seriously doubted that I could do this. Seriously doubted it.
I managed a decent sleep and got up about nine. Learning from last Sunday, I had to have breakfast. Perhaps I’ve hit on the ideal preparation. A cinnamon bagel, banana and a yoghurt. I ate these things silently like I was taking Holy Communion. There was a sense of ritual, and a kind of solemnity about it. Tasted great though.
After breakfast I spent a while measuring out the planned 15 miler on Autoroute. Perhaps it was a delaying tactic but I also wanted to drive the route to be sure of the distance. I ventured outside, and felt immediately better. The sun was shining again – third day in a row. I was togged up by this time. In each pocket I had one of those large plastic sachets of Lucozade Sport. This stuff is sweet and sticky and overpriced, but it has two things going for it. One is that it’s being dished out during the marathon, so it seems a good idea to use it during training (well done, Lucozade marketing people); the other is its carbohydrate content and iso… isoton… isotonicity.
Running in this rural idyll has its downsides, and one is that there are no shops to buy this kind of necessary junk during a run, so it has to be taken with you. I’ve not found a good way of doing this yet, and these sachets were the latest failed idea. Just jogging the few yards to the car with these things in my shorts pockets was enough to ditch the experiment. Had I gone another 10 yards my shorts would have been around my ankles. I had another idea though…
So where does Kazuo Ishiguro fit into all this? Well, he was on Desert Island Discs as I drove round the route. What an interesting guy, and what a superb selection of music he chose. First was one of Leonard Cohen’s bleakest, and greatest, love songs, Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye.
Next up was Dylan. A couple of weeks after the marathon in April, we’re off to Brighton to see Bob Dylan. One of my rewards. Plenty of beer and a Dylan concert. It’s many years since I tried persuading anyone that they should like Dylan. For one thing, it’s not a matter of liking the guy. You either get Dylan or you don’t. It’s like trying to persuade someone to like Marmite. Or golf. Just like my wife gets opera and I don’t. If you get His Bobness you know that he is the greatest troubadour of the 20th Century. The voice of Everyman. If Dylan hasn’t been the soundtrack to your life, you won’t see this. If he has, you’ll know this already.
Then we have Dick Gaughan, one of the greatest folk voices of our time, and a guitar virtuoso. I remember buying a book explaining his bizarre guitar tunings, and spending weeks wrestling with them. Eventually I had to retreat to homely and safe EADGBE, bruised and humbled.
And who couldn’t adore the succulent voice of Stacey Kent and the artistry of Keith Jarrett?
I didn’t realise I had so much in common with Kaz. I’d always admired the film of Remains Of The Day, but I must read some of his stuff, even though I don’t generally do contemporary fiction. I can sense a deep communion already.
Listening to his favourite music as I drove round the route on a morning like this was nourishing, and gradually I began to relish the run. I decided the best approach was to break it up into parts. Five people out of every four don’t understand fractions, and I’m probably part of that 54 percent myself. I decided to think of the 15 miles as four equal sections. So, 15 divided by 4 is… Hmm. There again, perhaps 3 sections is more… logical.
So at the exact 5 mile point, I stopped the car along the deserted lane and hid one of my sachets of orange behind a fence post. The ten mile point coincided with a village so I hid the second carbohydrate reservoir at around eleven miles. Then it was back home. Within 5 minutes I was running.
The first three miles were surprisingly easy, and I had to pull myself back once or twice as I realised I was way ahead of schedule. The idea of a long run is to stick to your marathon pace. What’s my marathon pace? In a sense I don’t have one, as my goal is simply to finish the distance without walking too much. But it will help to at least have a nominal target time, and at the moment that is 5 hours. This means roughly a mile every 12 minutes, and that was my target for today.
Between miles 2.5 and 3 came the hill. Strangely, it had looked formidable when I drove the route. Long and steep. Perhaps I switched into a determined frame of mind, but runnning it was more straightforward than expected. After the hill came a long straight stretch into the pleasant village of Wickwar, then out the other side and a stretch of open countryside till I found my drink at the 5 mile point. I walked for a minute or so, glugging my tooth-rot, then pressed on.
I haven’t quite worked out how much I can drink on the run without feeling bloated and held-back. Slightly less than today I’d say, as I struggled for a mile or two after the drink.
I was now on the same section of road I’d run on my 9 mile Sunday run when the distance seemed awesomely tough. On that occasion, it was misty and cool and desolate. Now it was a friendlier, brighter road, and the countryside seemed more awake and more content with itself. At one point, in a kind of semi-hallucinatory spell I heard some church bells far off across the valley, and had a quite unexpected Adlestrop moment that brought tears to my eyes. I felt like a ghost; an actor declaiming to an empty theatre; a flickering candle in a darkened cathedral. This nervous shadow in a vast, hollow landscape. For a moment I was in someone else’s story. Then I came back. This is what running can be.
It was a long hard pull up to the 11 mile point where my second drink was hidden in a hedge. I passed Cowship Lane, whose sign I am unable to see without reading it as Cowshit Lane. I also passed a small poster tacked to a telegraph pole, advertising a great forthcoming event at the Village Hall in Cromhall. Mrs Albright is giving a talk, with slides, called Living Above The Shop, detailing her working life at Clevedon House. Welcome to rural England. Who said that nothing ever happens here?
Eventually I found my drink. I was beginning to flag. In the previous half hour I’d stopped to walk 2 or 3 times for a minute or so. Not a good sign with 4 miles still to go. I could feel one of life’s great moments coming on. It was time to experiment with my first Power Gel. For the uninitiated, this is a small plastic sachet of gooey… goo. This 20ml or so of… stuff is packed with concentrated carbohydrate and minerals and vitamins. Designed to offer the long-distance runner a sudden energy boost when natural fuel is getting depleted. I bought 3 of them a couple of weeks ago, and was sceptical.
During another brief walking break I tore the top off a strawberry & banana flavoured Power Gel and squeezed it gently to coax this substance through the hole. Here goes. I stuck the thing in my mouth and squeezed. Nothing much happened. Squeezed again, and finally it began to gloop into my mouth. Oo-er. Like molten chewing gum. Very rich and sweet – as expected – but more palatable than I’d feared.
I’m not quite sure what I expected to happen. My wildest hope I suppose was that I would suddenly roar off into the distance like a motorbike from the traffic lights. The worst case scenario was that I would clutch my stomach and fall to the ground in a lifeless heap. To my relief, the truth was somewhere in between.
And that truth is… that nothing really seemed to happen at all. After washing stuff #2 down with another mouthful of stuff #1, I eventually set off again on the final leg, mindful that the time was about right: I’d been running for 2 hours 15 minutes, and had just under 4 miles to go. There wasn’t much to spare though, so I had to get on.
The final stretch was quite painful, and I was aware that I was running slowly. My steps seemed shorter, and had no bounce left. I was now back on the familiar warren of lanes nearer home, which was strangely comforting. I knew how far apart things were, and felt more in control.
I wanted to finish within 3 hours. My watch showed 2 hours 46 minutes as I reached the final mile point. Fourteen minutes left. No problem. Or so I thought. By this time my lower legs were like lead and my feet were hurting badly. I kept going though, past the riding school and over the railway bridge for the last half mile. Past the forge and past the union jack that had given me such amusement on the first ever run on this programme.
By this time there were only 3 minutes left and I realised I wasn’t going to make it. Past the athletics track, round the final bend and up to the main road. Only a couple of hundred yards left. Perhaps I can get there after all. As I pulled round into my road and tried to sprint the last hundred yards, I knew I was going to do it. And I did. As I pressed the doorbell, I stopped the watch. The 15 miles took me 2 hours 59 minutes and 38 seconds. Fifteen miles, and I’d made it with 22 seconds to spare.
Thinking about it later, I realised that I’d not stopped for a walk-break during the final 4 miles. Although I hadn’t felt a surge, I knew that the Power Gel had done its job for this final stretch.
This was another milestone for me. Two full miles further than my previous longest, and a total of 30 for the week. Despite finishing in some discomfort, I wasn’t crippled. I’ve now completed 10 weeks of the 18, and as the training continues to intensify, the thought of running 15 miles will no longer worry me. Next Sunday I run 16, then 18 the week after. Then two half marathons on successive Sundays before the longest training run in the programme: a 20 mile road race. After that the taper begins, during which the mileage tails off to prepare for the big day.
I didn’t find today’s run exhilarating. It was hard work, but not frighteningly so. I’m now sure – for the first time – that I can run a marathon in 8 weeks time.
