So you thought that running a marathon was tough, huh? Well try applauding for 5 hours. I now know the origin of the expression "clapped out".
Marshalling at the London Marathon turns out to be formidable cross-training. Our group assembled, and split again, in Trafalgar Square after a brief, matey breakfast. Those with a haunted look vanished into Charing Cross station to join the queue for the train to Blackheath. The rest of us filed down to the Embankment to begin the long march along the Thames to the Tower of London.
The morning was bleak and wet, but nothing could dilute the excitement on the streets. London is a great marathon and a great city. Evidence of the operation’s slick clockwork was everywhere. A herd of trucks crept along the Embankment, dispensing trestle tables and water and barriers and placards. Silent, intense teams battled the stiff wind coming in off the Thames, struggling to create those arching clumps of coloured balloons, and to tie flags and streamers to the lamp-posts. Everyone was determinedly purposeful, including us.
Three miles along the river, we assembled just outside the main gate of the Tower for a solemn, unexpected, ceremony. Marshals, it seems, are awarded the same chunky medals as the competitors, and even better quality technical tee-shirts. And lists of schedules, and rules and warnings and greetings. And a fluorescent yellow bib that’s a bugger to pull on when your upper body is immobilized by multiple insulating layers. And a badge to wear round our necks. But finally, bibbed and badged and suitably warned and instructed and thanked, we march on the Tower, where we penetrate the walls with only token resistance from the benign Beefeaters.
For a first marshalling experience, the Tower is a good place to be. And what a responsible job I had. Within the confines of the Tower of London, the symbolic heart of the Queen’s dominion, I reigned over my own ephemeral kingdom – a patch of coarse grey carpet. I didn’t just reign, I pored over it, memorising every square inch long before the first competitor appeared. My brief? To ensure that any ruffle and crease was noted, and to take "appropriate action".
The cobbles of the Tower of London are a notorious hazard. The eventual first and second in the men’s race, Kenyans Rutto and Korir, collided on the greasy stones and both went over just as they reached the gates. Perhaps worse than their slipperiness is their unevenness. Ankles and knees that have been punished for 22½ miles now find themselves being cruelly jarred and twisted by the ¼ mile or so of cobbles alongside the Tower. A pretty inadequate palliative is to line the stretch with strips of carpet, about 5 feet wide. These provide a bit of cushioning, but their tendency to bunch and ruffle under the pummelling of thousands of footfalls, creates a new hazard. Weary runners can easily trip and fall.
I was there to save them.
It took a while for the marshalling pot to begin bubbling. For about an hour we adjusted things: our bits of carpet, our rainwear, our knowledge of the other marshals, our relationship with the restless Pearly Queen Mum of Hackney, and I presume her grand-daughter, the Pearly Princess. They kept glistening past us, as though unsure of why they were there, and where to station themselves.
We looked at our watches and we waited.
Above us loomed Tower Bridge, London’s international motif. We could see the crowds leaping and waving, and could hear them screaming encouragement as the runners passed before them. Swinging right into Tower Bridge Road, the weary marathoner is almost sucked across the bridge by the passion and the volume of the celebratory mayhem. This marks the twelve mile point of the race, and is one of the greatest things an ordinary runner will ever experience.
We couldn’t see the competitors, and we wouldn’t see them until the same people being cheered now had travelled another ten miles. But eventually they came.
Suddenly, the cheering away on the Highway seemed to be rolling towards us. We looked at each other, and scrutinised our bits of carpet for the last time. Then bang, it happened. The police motorbikes appeared, then the van with the huge digital clock came past and vanished again. Then for a few tantalizing moments: nothing. Then three or four wheelchair competitors arrived, aching and straining to lift themselves over the undulating, carpeted cobbles. It felt so cruel not to be able to give them a push up the steep stretches.
And then, silhouetted against the East Gate comes the tiny figure of Kenyan, Margaret Okayo, followed a couple of minutes later by the Romanian Dita and Petrova of Russia. These were the first droplets. Then the trickle began, and before we knew it, the torrent.
But if carpet-watching was my theoretical principal responsibility, in practice it was to yell encouragement and clap like crazy. Names on shirts turns this into a strangely intimate experience. Well done Simon! Come on Tracy! Keep going Davinder! Only three miles left to go! I heard a passing American tourist say to her husband: "That guy sure knows a lot of people in this town."
Only three or four times did we have to divert the human river away from the mats to reposition or re-tape a piece. This wasn’t an easy task. After 22 miles, most marathoners are zombies, and have lost the means to communicate with the outside world. We were pushed and sworn at, and one girl started to cry as I tried to move her gently around one stretch. I felt like a monster, but I was only trying to avoid a Foinavon-like tumble and pile-up.
I had a mental list of runners to watch out for, but I saw only two: Nigel Platt, the celebrated wordsmith, and Steve Home, star of the BBC Running Club. Steve is an annoyingly good runner, but he looked to be suffering as he passed me, and seemed not to hear his name being called until he was past me. I bellowed it three times, and eventually he turned his head stiffly. Clearly disorientated, he croaked my name, Rosebud-like, before plunging on into the rain. His eyes were blank with pain. I looked up his time today. 2 hours 48 minutes. Astounding.
I almost missed Nigel. If he hadn’t called my name, I would have done. I ran alongside him for a bit. He too looked pale. Like most runners at this stage of the game, he was coasting on autopilot, and seemed troubled. How was he feeling? "Stomach trouble" came the subdued reply. This is often an adult euphemism for something unspeakable, so I probed no further. I’d not rehearsed this tremulous moment. What could I say in 5 seconds to encourage him? I produced some garbled stuff about how little there was left to run, but knew it must have sounded unconvincing. I now know that he finished in 4:18. A few minutes outside his PB, but still a great performance in terrible conditions.
(Make sure you go to the forum and read his great race report. I can’t link directly to it, but the thread is called London Calling – 18.04.2004, and can be found in Training Diaries > Nigel.)
The marathon is a long and often desperate journey, and here were the travellers on the final, painful stretch. After our duties were over we began the long walk back to the coaches, alongside the weary back markers. Most were walking now, but some still shuffled in agony, their faces blank and distant.
Whether you’re running or spectating or marshalling, every marathon contains one moment and one memory that is the wrapper for all the other moments and all other memories. You mustn’t look for it; it will find you. Mine came as we passed under Hungerford Bridge.
I stopped to ask a policeman for directions. This generously proportioned man, with his bushy whiskers, rain cape, and the sort of avuncular smile that policemen aren’t supposed to deploy anymore, looked like something out of a Victorian comic book. As he was peering at my sodden map, a pantomime camel trotted past, led by a drenched nomad with a towel wrapped round his head. Without warning, the policeman burst into uncontrollable laughter. At that moment, a train rumbled across the bridge above us, drowning out all other sounds. Its loudness and unexpectedness were startling, and in my own tired state, it sounded like a massive burst of celestial applause. That’s when my marathon moment happened.
Caught in this moment of chaos, I glanced along the Embankment, through the dense curtain of grey, teeming rain. All I could see in either direction was the stumbling army of battle-weary marathoners. Next to me, the sound of his mirth submerged in the tumultuous clapping from the passing train, this caricature of the laughing policeman, head thrown back, arms akimbo.
And that’s the London marathon.
PS I admit it. I made up that joke about the American tourist.
