The smug weekend continues. No PB was going spare today, but the run went better than expected, considering that my main preparation had been to reread Chapter 19 of Russell Taylor’s Looniness of the Long Distance Runner – the one that deals with his experience of this race.
Perhaps that’s being uncharitable to my feet, who’ve been manfully slapping the pavements of Dartford all week. All told, it’s been a pretty good running week, followed by a corker of a weekend.
Three good midweek outings of around 5 miles apiece. I’ve been staying in a different hotel from usual. The location of this new one, perched as it is on the brink of Europe’s biggest and busiest roundabout, hadn’t offered the runner much hope at first, but it turned out to be better than feared. I discovered the gap in the wall, the entrance to the secret garden, and all was well.
People sometimes email me, asking for advice. From now on, I’m going to tell them to get lost.
It’s what I did three times last week. It was dark and raining lightly. I ventured round the back of the hotel, hoping to avoid the chaos and carnage-in-waiting of the roundabout, and found a small alley leading to a housing estate. I plodded up the hill and onwards, through a playground, across a shopping precinct and down a hill past the fish and chip shop, outside which a gang of Dartford’s finest chav specimens had gathered to sneer and swear and spit as I passed.
Whatever happened to the young proletarians of yesteryear? There was apparently some golden age, which sadly I managed to miss, when these young people would have expressed their disdain by wearing thin moustaches and jaunty-angled trilbies, and even these would have been tapped deferentially at each passing stranger. The real rebels may have spat their chewed tobacco on the floor of the bus back from Hammersmith Palais on a Saturday night, but we are told it didn’t get much worse than that. No longer. Now they guzzle their alcopops, belch loudly and call me a “farkin’ twat”.
Another half mile, another dozen roadworths of sixties council housing, most now owned privately I’d think, before realising that I was nowhere to be found. Where had I gone? I was here a minute ago. Perhaps I was gone forever. The ghostly Dartford plodder, trudging through eternity. But then I decided it didn’t matter much. I was sure to turn up eventually. And eventually, I did.
This happened three nights in a row, and each time it worked out just fine. I slipped into one of Dartford’s dark folds each time, but I never gave up hope. The distant roar of the roundabout kept me reasonably well anchored to the hotel. (It isn’t really the biggest and busiest in Europe, incidentally. I said that to try to make my lodgings seem more exotic and more exciting than perhaps they really were.)
The other good news of the week is that my everything-except-booze-chocolate-crisps-peanuts-and-chips diet is proving surprisingly effective. I was 9 pounds less… substantial this morning than I was 2 weeks ago. Which interestingly, wasn’t quite the point. The New Way Of Thinking was to stop being short-termist. Just lose a steady 1.5 pounds a week for a couple of months by suspending beer and those other things, but not really cutting back too much on anything else. So I’ve been scoffing bread and potatoes and pasta like that gleeful man who (I bet) inhabits the fretful dreams of Atkins dieters. But the result has been more dramatic than expected. I’m sticking to my original target, however, which aims to see me shed 20 pounds by the new year, but in small steps. I’m already ahead of target, but I suspect this will even itself out gloomily soon.
This morning didn’t get off to a great start. Waking at 3 a.m. on a race day is rarely a positive event. I don’t think I got back to sleep again before the alarm assailed me at 7. I put it down to the caffeine and excitement of yesterday.
Unexpected motorway exit closures made the drive to Twickenham rather gripping, but I found an alternative route to get me to the Cabbage Patch pub on time, where I made my way to the makeshift starting pen, normally known as Church Street.
As I arrived, an officious lady with a clipboard said sharply: “Speedy Kenyans at the front please”. I must have lingered fractionally longer than convention permitted, because she sort of peered at me over her glasses and asked: “Are you a speedy Kenyan?” The question threw me rather. It wasn’t one I’d been asked to tackle before, so I’d not had the chance to prepare an answer. I had to play for time. “Not entirely”, was my eventual, rather cryptic reply. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. What a look she gave me. I’d rather she’d stabbed me with her silver propelling pencil. It would have felt the same, and at least I’d have been able to flaunt the scar at work tomorrow. The required effect was achieved, and I moved quickly on towards the back of the crowd.
As I threaded my way to the back, no doubt with that I-know-my place look on my face, I checked out shoes and socks, as usual. I don’t know why I do this. I suppose I’m just curious about what brands people wear. I want to know if they’re a Thorlos chap like me, or a Falke fellow. It struck me, as the lens of my vision moved through this forest of lower limbs, that someone should make a documentary film about a race. I can just see it now. Channel 4, 9pm. So much drama, humour, absurdity on show, and so visual. Any film-makers out there who fancy the challenge? Get in touch.
I got to the back of the thousand or so runners and decided to shelter from the chill in the doorway of a shop that seemed to be selling black magic aids. Here I met up with the personable Dave Thompson for the first time. Dave is an occasional email correspondent, and had tried to persuade me to take his place in the race by feigning injury. That’s my theory. We ran together for a mile or so, chatting about Bob Dylan and Queens Park Rangers. Most agreeable. But then I think I frightened him off by saying that he shouldn’t feel obliged to stick with me if he wanted to speed up. I think he thought I was asking him to go away, because at that, he just shot off into the distance. Tragically, that was the end of my Dylan and football natterings for the day.
The race was almost pleasant, most of it taking place on leafy backstreets full of posh-looking spectators, or along the towpath of the Thames. This brought back quite unexpected memories of my first weeks of running, 3 years ago. It hadn’t registered with me when I entered the race, but it was along this towpath that I first trotted self-consciously on those cool, dark evenings in 2001 when I was striving to run for more than 2 minutes without puking. I’ve been writing about it recently.
As always, I was there to enjoy the occasion, and to celebrate my own ability to run for ten miles, rather than to break records. Next year will see my assault on the very modest PBs set in my first year of running, and ignored ever since. This year I’m concentrating on improving midriff aerodynamics.
Races are rarely as bad as I fear they will be, and this was no exception, even though it was the longest distance I’d run since the Copenhagen Marathon on 16th May. Exactly five months ago. Nigel Platt wrote some interesting stuff on the forum recently about the pleasures of the ten mile distance. I tend to agree with his view that 10K races can be a bit short and frantic, while half marathons sometimes seem too much of a commitment. A ten miler sits between the two rather well. Long enough to impress your colleagues at work and the incredulous blokes in the pub (and let’s face it, that’s what it’s all about), but short enough not to have to undergo special training. Satisfyingly double-figured.
Like me, perhaps. As I plodded along the grey Thames towards Richmond Bridge, I passed a little girl who shrieked “Oh Mummy! Look at that fat man!” Her mortified mother hissed: “Sabrina! You mustn’t say things like that!”
Good for Sabrina, I say. Tell it like it is.
Kingston appeared, then faded again, leaving little impression on me. I have only two vicarious links to the place. I went to school with a boy called Antelope who lived here. (This wasn’t his real name.) And when I languished in the wine trade, I had a dictatorial area manager who retreated to these parts when each Stalinist day had run its bloody course.
Another stretch of river path, another collection of well-to-do ladies in head scarves and twin-sets, and chaps in barbour jackets, eyes bulging from the first fiery Bloody Mary of the morning. We all grinned at each other like half-wits and exchanged polite grunts as we passed. How very civilised a race place.
My plan was to stick to a pace of around 10:30, and I pretty much managed it, with no walk breaks. The worst thing was the final mile. Reaching the 9 Mile marker, I looked at my watch and was astonished to see that I had a full 11 minutes left to get a PB. Fantastic. But 9 minutes later, with the finish line nowhere to be seen, I knew something was wrong. It seems that some jolly local had moved the marker, making that final ‘mile’ 1.4 miles. I didn’t get the PB.
As I crossed the line, evidently looking slightly the worse for wear, I heard some grumpy old bat in a Serpentine Runners vest say “Well if he trained properly, he wouldn’t feel like that”. Rather unnecessary, I thought.
Also at the finish was Dave Thompson, sportingly clapping the slowbies over the line. He’d not run more than 7½ miles before, and had been a bit nervous about the step up to ten. But today he learned that he is a much better runner than he thought, managing something like 1:22 – a great effort.
Would I do the race again? Yes, I think so. Next year, of course, I intend doing the Dublin Marathon once more. The “of course” and the “once more” relate not to the act of doing the Dublin Marathon, which I’ve not hitherto managed, but to the intention, the broadcasting of which, on my own personal planet at least, has become an eagerly-awaited annual event in its own right. Er, where was I?, Right yes, if I do it, it will probably be the week after the Cabbage Patch, so it could… fit in well. But that’s enough speculative fluff for one paragraph.
A reasonable day’s work then, and an unexpected bonus: if I lump Sabrina and Serpie Bat in with the Dartford Chavs, I reckon that was easily an ‘abuse PB’ for the week.
Hurrah!
