B-boom… B-boom… B-boom…
Two or three miles into the Bath Half Marathon, I began to hear my heart pounding. Perhaps I was warming to the race at last, or perhaps I was just… warming at last. Or was I about to die…?
B-boom… B-boom… B-boom…
The sound was even louder now, and eventually I realised it wasn’t my heart that was beating at all, but the heart of the race. Or less poetically, it was the rhythmic thump of the gleeful, Stomp-like percussion band, strategically located at the base of the one unpleasant hill on the course. The joyful faces of the kids and the middle-aged ladies making this noise must have produced an instinctive, broad grin on my own. And not just once, but twice. They were still there on the second circuit, an hour after the first, and the inspirational pulse was just as loud and as strong and as tight. The faces were still happy, though some were now as streaked with black sweat, and as exhausted-looking, as mine must have appeared to them. And that’s why I call them the heart of the race. They could be heard for miles. (Or did I just imagine that?)
B-boom… B-boom… B-boom…
They weren’t the only inspiration I came across today. At mile 10 I found myself panting alongside Glynn, who mentioned that he’d started running 12 months ago, and so far had lost 70 pounds. Silverstone, last week, was his first race, and he was heading for next month’s London Marathon. I told him that I’d made the marathon leap in 2002, after a similarly short run-up. “Please”, he said, “please tell me it will be worth it.”
I left him hanging for a few seconds. “Don’t worry”, I told him. “It will be worth more than you can even imagine at the moment”.
There are times in a marathon preparation when these must seem like weaselly words indeed. Imagine how Glynn must have felt today, lining up at the start of the race, as the wind whipped the freezing torrents of rain along Great Pulteney Street. It spared no one. We whimpered and wept and cursed the heavens. And then we cursed the organisers.
The eleventh hour, the Gods had pronounced. And verily, we assembled at the said eleventh hour as the great tempest raged. We danced and cavorted and embraced each other for warmth, begging for the start. And then the bastards decreed that we had to wait another fifteen bloody minutes.
Oh for a sling and a weighty pebble to fling at the keeper of the temple. Or the temple of the keeper. I was past caring.
Eventually, what seemed like some hours after my body had shut down, and passed me into a suspended, vegetative state, some kind of weary hooter sounded in a far distant corner of Bath, and the great multitudes shambled and shuffled forth, weeping and scattering rose petals at the feet of their oppressor, as he cheerfully introduced the latest Westlife single.
I was with Peter (Griff from the forum) for about the first five miles. He should have been scampering, gazelle-like, through the field, but felt obliged to trot along at the back with me. Eventually, he was liberated by my bladder. I nipped behind some 1960s office block to urinate, and he took the opportunity to scarper. (Interesting lexicological note: “scarper” is cockney-rhyming slang. Scarper = Scapa Flow. “Scapa Flow” rhymes with “go”. Hence to “scarper” is to “go”. Foreigners won’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Nor will non-foreigners, I suspect.)
I’d arrived at Pete’s house just before nine o’clock, after winning my duel with the motorway. It’s a rather bizarre coincidence that he lives in a house just a few hundred yards from where M and I lived when I was training for the London Marathon in 2002, and he now runs exactly the same rustic tracks and lanes where I learned my own plodcraft. One day, there’ll be a blue plaque on Engine Common Lane – if the ceremonial party can get past that bloody great Saint Bernard who terrorises the lane just past the riding school.
Bath, as mentioned in an earlier despatch, is full of architectural glory, but the half marathon runner would never know it if she hadn’t strolled past the Tourist Office on the way to the ordeal of the starting pen. This isn’t to say that the race doesn’t pass some interesting buildings – but the talking point is why we approved such ghastly developments in the sixties; or how come Environmental Health haven’t shut down that grubby Chinese over there? Still, if I ever move to Bath AND purchase a Morris Minor, I now know where to go to have it fixed.
The city has had some interesting international recognition. Apparently even Saddam Hussein was a Bathist, I heard on the radio recently.
Promises are rashly made in this game. Just last week, after reading the complaints about Reading and Silverstone, I vowed to stop whinging about race organisers. I’m going to make an exception for Bath. The people who organise this race deserve shooting. And that’s a perfectly safe and non-inflammatory statement because on the evidence of today, NO ONE organises this race. Which was the problem. I’ll restrict my detailed complaints to the red-hot letter I’ll be composing tomorrow. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
We bumped into the legendary Nigel Platt after the race. So. So Nigel really does exist after all, though I’m not entirely convinced that he runs the races he says he does. As we talked after the race, I recalled the phone call he made to me after the Chicago marathon. Over the crackly phoneline, he claimed to be at O’Hare Airport, Chicago, on his way to some geological emergency in Texas – or something like that. So how come I heard the Archers Omnibus signature tune in the background? And he called me just before the Great North Run in Newcastle to wish me luck, and to say that he would try to find me after the race. But wasn’t that the local Crawley traffic news I could hear on the radio behind him? (Needless to say, he never made our rendezvous.)
And today. Yes, he was there. (Or someone who claimed to be him was there.) But he looked remarkably fresh and composed for someone who reckoned he’d just run for 13 miles. Perhaps it was the strong aroma of lavender water that raised my suspicions. Or it could have been the silk cravat to which his running number was pinned at a jaunty angle? Or the freshly-torn ticket-stub for the Bath Odeon protruding from the breast pocket of his blazer? And could someone have really run a half marathon in those highly polished deerskin Oxford brogues?
Despite the wretched drenching and the patchy organisation of this event, the kindness and support we were shown was truly heartening as always, as were the individual examples of courage and commitment I came across. The crowds were good-natured and supportive. I wish more people would do this simple thing: thank and applaud the supporters. Why not give them some acknowledgement? At the 8 mile mark, which came right at the top of a steep incline, there were about 20 people enthusiastically clapping all the runners. As I came up to that point, all I did was raise my arms in mock-triumph, and they went appreciatively ape. All I was doing was acknowledging their existence, and saying thanks. Kids in particular love some interaction with the runners. A high-five, a clap, even a smile – it thrills them. We grumble when crowd support is poor, but we don’t acknowledge it when it’s good.
It was good to meet up with Pete at long last, too. He’s had his own troubles recently but has come through them pretty well. Whether you’re running a half marathon or a relationship, the game plan sometimes goes wrong. Marriages are themselves long-distance (some might say ‘endurance’) events. Running or living, the road beneath our feet is human nature itself, but it’s a tough old fabric. He’s kept going through some tough stretches, and has now got his rewards. Good for him.
To run a race is to run your life, and to run your life is to run a race. Almost every event I enter is an intensely emotional and cathartic experience. Running a race sometimes makes me weep. Is it really just me? Always towards the end. It must be something to do with physical weakening and the skewed perspectives that arise from that. A paradox. The erosion of the ‘normal’ psychological vision, and its replacement with a kind of raw spirit with nowhere to go. Sometimes it’s just overwhelming, and a sort of harrowing elation emerges. This is more than just “tears of happiness”. It’s something more profound than that — a kind of joy that you’ve been allowed to see something, mixed with a sorrow at the knowledge that it must be withdrawn again, once normality returns tomorrow.
Without emotion, running has no purpose – and I couldn’t bear that. From an external viewpoint, I’m hopeless at this activity — but it liberates me. It’s why I do it. It’s why I want everyone to do it.
In the last mile today, just as I was slowing to a crawl, a sound reached me from across the rooftops, and turned me into twice the person I’d been just a few moments earlier.
B-boom… B-boom… B-boom…
It was all I needed to remind me why we do this, and that thought, in turn, was all I needed to take a deep breath and kick for home.
