Perhaps the past really is a foreign country.
Ambling idly through my teens the other day, I came across a tiny snicket I’d not noticed before. Peering down it, I see myself walking home from the pub one evening, aged about 17, and coming across a very fat skinhead with his left hand around the throat of a pretty girl. In his right hand he had a hefty claw hammer, and was waving this around above her head. He was shouting drunkenly: “If you don’t fall in love wiv me, I’m gonna smash yer fackin’ face in, yer bitch.”
Call me conventional, but this didn’t seem to be much of a seduction strategy. It did set me thinking though. The hard routes to the summit often masquerade as the easy ones, and vice versa. For everyone’s sake, I should have advised him of this, but wasn’t minded to interfere.
Let’s take the bullet train through the next 30 years, eventually gliding to a halt six hours into yesterday morning. I cursed into the pillow. Got up, ate dry toast and a banana, then drank a glass of some gloopy Waitrose stuff made from exotic fruits. The carton implied that imbibing this material would see an end to all my troubles. Time to find out.
At seven o’clock I was out the door and away for my last long run of this Hamburg campaign. In the empty early morning, running across an open field, through the thin mist, it was almost too painfully gorgeous. Just one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind.
Mile Two. Back on the lane. Past the waving postman. “Lovely day”, he calls out. Then: “Lucky you! Some of us have to work!”
Into mile 3, and I’m still chewing over his words. Some of us have to work. Indeed.
Through the deer park, and back around the golf course. Even at this time, the fairways are congested with middle-aged, Tory-voting men in outlandish trousers. I fancy that golf is like Gorgonzola, or the mysterious durian fruit. The taste may be glorious but there’s something about the aroma that puts me off.
Around Mile Seven I pass home, and duck into my front garden to download some Boots’ isotonic lemon. Isotonic Lemon? Didn’t I see them on the same bill as Kraftwerk at the Marquee Club in the seventies…?
It’s well after 8 o’clock now, and the sun is getting high. My shirt is sweat-wet, and I can feel my heart pumping beneath it. Within a minute I’m on my way again.
The second circuit is harder. As every mile passes, I find myself still shouting out loud: Mile Eight! Mile Nine! Mile Ten!
Mile ten, and I’m feeling the first signs of weariness. The pistons are getting sluggish. I can feel my breathing now. You don’t notice it for ages. Then you do. You notice the air being sucked in and drawn out again; it’s like pulling a rope through a narrow tube. I feel my neck stiffening. I try rotating my head, but there’s a painful crackling and grinding sensation in my neck, so I stop. The cure is worse than the disease.
It’s really quite hot now. April hot. We’ve not seen the sun for months, remember. Maybe you had to be there, I dunno. But you should have heard the birds. I don’t ever remember them like this.
Mile twelve. Past the old fire station for the third time. Or is it the fourth? My route today is a local six miler that I’m repeating three times, with just enough variation to keep it interesting. Here’s a tip for you. Most of us have a route we run regularly. A round-the-block run. When it threatens to bore you, just do it in reverse. It’s like looking through a telescope the wrong way round. You’ll be surprised at how different the world becomes.
13.4 miles. Two thirds of the way to 20, and right on cue, I’m back in my front garden, glugging more liquid lemon stuff from my Great North Run 2003 souvenir water bottle.
The final third is tough. It becomes a mechanical chug. I get through 14 and 15 but thereafter is something I’ve almost forgotten about now. Head-down, get through it. Just get through it. I’d hoped to make it through without a walk break, but on 16 miles, I just had to take a breather. I walk for a minute then carry on. Same on 17 and 18, and very probably again on 19 and 20, but I can’t remember much about them.
20.4 miles. All gone. Finito. In ze bin. Last long run. Job’s a good un. Done and dusted. Buttoned up.
20.4 miles, and not yet midday. In the warm sunshine I sat on the doorstep and carefully removed my shoes. Hot sweat ran down my nose and into the corners of my mouth.
M is waking up around now. It’s her long lie-in day. As I thump up the stairs and into the shower, she calls out sleepily: “What have you been up to?”
Well, what had I been up to?
“Nothing much”, I call back.
An hour later we drive into London. Halfway down the Goldhawk Road, I turned the car over to M, and jumped out. She goes onto the V & A. The only objet d’art I’m interested in at the moment is a pint of Guinness. This glass of beer is like a three course meal and a good cigar. In the pub I bump into Nik, who I’ve not seen for 2 years. We talk about his shin splints and lack of running. As we walk to the match I give him a pep talk.
I meet up with Andy, who sits next to me in the South Africa Road. He looks relieved. He can drink again after giving it up for Lent. “What a pleasure it is to wake up with a dreadful hangover again”, he tells me.
We comprehensively outplay Sunderland but they beat us 3-1, which is probably why they are top of the league. A travesty.
After the game, I eventually meet up with M again and we drive off to Chiswick, where we enjoy a fine dinner with some old wine trade friends, Monsieur B and his wife, A. It’s a splendid evening. We absorb a lot of good wine and take a long hike through our twenties and thirties.
It’s years since I drank such decent stuff. Top of the shop was the 1983 Château Gruaud-Larose, a great second-growth Saint-Julien. Preceded by some good Australian fizz, a 99 Meursault and a densely packed Spanish number called Flor de Pingus, which was a new one on me. Plus some other stuff.
On the long journey home I thought about all these wonderful wines. They were good, but I also thought about the moment this morning when I sat on my doorstep in the spring sunshine, struggling to pull my trainers off. And I thought about the taste of my 20 mile sweat. Salty, but so sweet. And do you know which I thought tasted better…?
Don’t be stupid.
The Gruaud-Larose won it by a mile.
By twenty miles.
