Pre-race
This will be my first, and my last, marathon.
I shouldn’t even be doing this race anyway. I’d always said to myself that I would never be a marathon runner, but something cracked in late summer 2018 - I think I was bored, or maybe scratching an itch I was coming to realise would always be there - and I signed up to run Brighton in spring 2019, which would be about 18 months after my first ever half marathon. I mean, once you’ve done 13.1 miles, you’re halfway there, right?
Proof that I was far too optimistic for my own good came when the inevitable injuries mounted up after ten weeks of a fairly full-on training plan, and I pulled out of Brighton with about six weeks to go, having amassed so much wear and tear that I had to take three whole weeks out to recover. But I’d got the bug by this point, and didn’t want the experience I’d built up to go to waste.
Chester in October popped up as an attractive Plan B. There were a few other Eagles going, there was time to recover from injury and get a whole 16 weeks of training in... It was even the day before my birthday, and I could see an opportunity for a double-whammy celebration on the Monday after the race.
All that was left was to settle on a target time. Judging by my times at other distances, I was sure that something like 3:10 was within my grasp. But this felt like an odd time to aim for, particularly if I was only going to do this once. Where was the point in getting over the line at 3:05 and feeling like I had something left in the tank? This game is all about risk and reward, as Melissah would often tell me over the next few months. So with grim inevitability, sub-3:00 became the target, and if I crashed and burned, as I almost certainly would, at least I would know that I had given it a shot.
Race morning
On Sunday morning, the alarm goes off at 5:45, and I get out of my hotel bed. I have a breakfast schedule to keep. I’ve been stuffing my face with carbohydrates since Thursday morning and haven’t felt this full literally for years. But the plan said 90g of porridge oats three hours before the race, and I didn’t get this far by only doing the easy bits. I don’t even like porridge.
I potter nervously around the hotel room for the next 90 minutes, somehow also stuffing down a banana and a bagel, and the good luck messages start to come in from friends and family. I’m just digesting a long message on the family WhatsApp group from my brother, with philosophical reflections on paper tigers, some poetry, and earnest quotations, when his wife chips in a couple of minutes later, with the rather pithier: “Don’t be shit!”.
I give up hanging around in the hotel room - it’s impossible to relax - and I’m at Chester racecourse one hour before the start. I take a walk up to the long start funnel, and pass the different timing pen markers on the lampposts: 5:30, 5:00, 4:30… It’s only when I’m literally about five yards from the start line that I get to the 3:00 marker. It serves as a rather blunt reminder of how few people will be trying for sub-3:00, and I’m now all too aware of how crazy the target is. It doesn’t help my nerves. I try to focus and stay positive, and a quiet Irish voice enters my head: “The hay is in the barn”. And I grudgingly acknowledge it, because Kieran knows a thing or two about running.
I make my way back down to the race village at the racecourse and pace around for ten minutes and eventually find a few other Eagles. It’s nice to chat for five minutes before my pre-race nerves get the better of me again, and I decide I need to be on my way. I strip down to my kit and drop my bag, leaving me feeling strangely naked and ill-equipped: just three gels in hand, a tiny container of vaseline stuck in the small back pocket of my shorts (emergency use only), plus the obligatory bin bag for disposable pre-race insulation.
I get myself back up to the road and manage two sets of about 400m by way of warm-up. In between, I’m able to run off the road slightly into a quiet park. It’s a final opportunity to stand and clear my head and to try again to stave off the creeping panic. I feel a bit sick.
Back to the start line, one final pee and then it’s the welcome sight of Ken and Magdalene lining up together for the start. After a quick selfie with them I push forward, and get myself tucked in just behind the 3:00 pacers with about ten minutes to go. After what seems like an age, and some truly awful jokes by Chester’s Town Crier, we’re on our way. There’s the usual crush at the line and I reckon it’s about 20 seconds after the gun that I finally step over the mat and start my watch.
The race
The first mile or so twists and turns around the cobbled streets, but I’m not able to take in the view. All I can think of at this stage is the insistent advice from Raf that I start the first few K slower than the required pace. I begin by aiming for about 4:20 per K, against the 4:15 required for a sub-3:00. All I’m doing is looking at my watch every ten seconds but I just can’t keep the pace down, as I’m swept along by the crowd of runners and the adrenaline. The first K ticks over at 4:16, the second at 4:18… The third: 4:09!! Three K in and I’ve already messed up the plan.
We’re out of town now, and on the quiet country roads which will make up the majority of the route. I focus on finding a rhythm, and now I have Harry in mind, reminding me: just keep it loose. The 3:00 pacers and their accompanying pack, who had sped away at the start, are now back in sight - although still well ahead - and my overall average pace has settled down to 4:14, which starts to feel comfortable. Small villages come and go, with friends and family out in force. Every village has a runner to support. I’m regularly glancing at my 3:00 pace pocket, distracting myself by fixing the time for the next mile marker in my head and counting down until I get there. By about mile five or six, after starting a bit behind, I’m now more or less bang on at the markers with the required pace. I pass the 10K mat with a bleep at 42:40, and I can’t help but think of the Eagles who will be back in London, watching the splits come in, and doing the calculations. (They know, but I don’t, that 42:40 at 10K works out at 3:00:03 for the race.)
I finally catch up with the pacers at around the ten mile mark and stick with them. There’s no easy part of a marathon, but there are easier parts, and I know I am in one now. The next five miles fly by, as we ease down scenic country roads in weak sunlight. There’s a constant rhythm of shoe on road, and the 20 or 30 or so runners in the pack swap and change slowly like a peloton, and individual running vests, sounds and gaits become familiar. A middle-aged woman stands alone by the side of the road outside her cottage, and shouts “Every single one of you looks ABSOLUTELY BLOODY BEAUTIFUL”. Another mat, and I’m through 20K at 1:25:05 (so a revised prediction of 2:59:31. Nearly halfway now, and it’s tight...).
It feels good, and without meaning to, at about 15 miles, I edge ahead of the pacers. The watch ticks down towards 4:13 per K and stays there for a bit. The route performs a 180-degree turn, and we’re running the other side of a contraflow with earlier runners coming towards us. I deliberately shift to the left of the pack so I can see the oncoming runners and sure enough I see Ken and Magdalene, still close together, and I given them a huge shout of “Eagles!” and it gives me a boost.
There’s then a short cameo which acts as a very welcome distraction. I see an East London Runners shirt ahead of me, and it’s the first other London club I’ve seen all day, so I decide that this calls for a quick chat. I draw level, and see that the East London Runner is actually the same guy I sat opposite on the train from Euston yesterday, when we managed a brief word after we realised that we were both runners and probably heading for the same race. He sees my Eagles shirt. “So you probably know Mike and Angela Duff? I was Best Man at their wedding…”. Small world indeed. I press on.
I’m now well over half a minute ahead of where I need to be at the mile markers, and through 30K at 2:07:31 (2:59:22 pace). The limbs have felt loose, the weather has been kind. And yet, somewhere over the next couple of K, I’m aware that it’s starting to hurt. Slowly at first, and not in a way to cause too much concern, but it’s no longer as easy as it was.
I tell myself it’s OK - my watch tells me I’m still on 4:14 per K, the pacers are well behind me and I haven’t seen them for miles - but I’m suddenly contemplating another 50 minutes, which feels to me like a long time. And here is the 20 mile marker, and with it the reminder in my head of the old saying: it’s a 20 mile warm-up, followed by a 10K race. Do I feel ready for a 10K race? No. I feel tired, irritable and... am I actually in pain? Yes.
Around mile 21, just after we reach another contraflow with runners from one of the day’s other races coming towards us, it goes from bad to worse. I haven’t thought about the pacers for miles, but there’s a huge jolt when someone running towards me cheers “Yes pacers!” and I realise they are now literally right behind me. Am I slowing? I must be slowing. I try not to panic; I grit my teeth and push on, aiming to stick with the now much smaller pack still clinging to the pacers.
The last time I smile for the next 30 minutes is when I pass an old man with the biggest placard I’ve seen all day, encouraging me to join the Chester branch of the Flat Earth Society. The smile doesn’t last for long, because right on 22 miles - ironic really, given the sign I’ve just seen - we hit a hill. It’s long, long, long and it completely knocks the stuffing out of me. Any sense now that I was hanging in goes out of the window and the pacers are no longer at my shoulder but at least ten seconds ahead. Don’t panic, don’t panic. Just push on.
Less than half an hour to go but I can’t really focus on anything now, other than the general exhaustion and the pain, which has decided to localise around my left calf, and requires me to haul my left leg forward each time like a deadweight. Amazingly, and almost like something from a dream because I am genuinely a bit disoriented at this point, I pass supportive Eagles - Luke parked up with his bike, Stuart with his camera - but I’m hardly able to muster the energy even for an acknowledgement. It’s raining hard now. The road is straight, suburban, and dull.
Somehow it’s 24 miles down now, and then 24 and a half. 15 minutes to go but then disaster, another hill - a killer, even worse than the last one. It feels like I’m almost at walking pace. I can hear a sound and it’s my breathing, rasping, asthmatic almost and I remember thinking that I have never in all my years of running heard myself breathe like this. The pacers are ruthless and metronomic and any sense I have of keeping them in vague touch is completely out of the window as they press on ahead, now out of sight at the next corner, at least 30 seconds in front, maybe a whole minute.
I focus on just somehow getting to the top of the hill, with the promise of the slightest respite. But there’s no such luck; the road may be flat but we’re now running against traffic on the adjacent lane, and every time I gasp for breath I can smell and taste petrol and exhaust fumes. I’m suddenly aware that I can’t really see very well and my peripheral vision is shot. On top of that. the sun is now out but the road is still soaking wet and so the glare of the reflected sun makes it impossible to focus on the road ahead.
Having stuck almost exactly until now to the required pace of 6:49 per mile, running it tight, I complete the 25th mile in 7:07. I need to make up time; I have nothing left in the tank, there’s still over a mile to go and I am in agony. It might be all over. Four months of early mornings and brutally hard work and yet… Is this how it ends?
The last mile. We enter Grosvenor Park, a nasty few hundred metres of the course which features a number of 90 degree turns on wet paths strewn with autumn leaves. I’m running on my own, I can’t make out the line of the course, and I don’t know whether I’m turning right or left at each turn until I’m right on top of each marshal and they literally point the way. The shock and sheer effort of each sharp turn courses through my body and I hurt.
I exit the park and I’m on the home straight though I don’t know it. I’m beyond looking out for distance markers; by complete chance I see the “400m to go” sign but I can’t see the finish, the course is now running on a slow bend tight against the high city walls and I CAN’T SEE THE FINISH. I look at my watch and whilst I simply can’t do the sums I know it’s horribly horribly tight. I’m in a panic, throwing myself forward.
The last minute is like something from a slow-motion film. The crowds are close on both sides now on the finishing straight and I realise for the first time that I am completely alone. The pack has long since split. Those who are comfortably sub-3:00 are well ahead of the pacers and me; those who fell away did so at mile 20, 22, 23… As for those clinging on by their fingernails, there is just me, and no-one behind me for at least half a minute.
All eyes are on me, and on the name on my bib. Every man, woman and child in the crowd is screaming for me. And out of nowhere, the finish line is there.
I’m over the line and after two short steps I stop dead. When I crossed under it, the clock above was on 3:00:11 but I know, I know I’ve stopped my watch, and I know it’s on 2:59:51, and I know, I know that I’ve somehow done it.
I’m on my haunches. I give an uncontrollable dry heave, and another. Four in total. One hand on my right, another on my left, each with a fluorescent cuff and belonging to a St John’s Ambulance volunteer. A kind voice asking if I want to go to the emergency tent. After maybe 30 seconds I stand up, somehow, leaning heavily on a shoulder to get me away from the finish line.
Post-race
Like some sort of bad joke, it’s a walk of literally over half a mile to get back to the bag drop. I make it there eventually, only now realising that I underestimated the amount of vaseline my inner thighs required. I pick up my bag, I update Strava, I call my wife, I have a small cry. Somehow I make it back to the hotel for my suitcase, and then over to the other side of town to meet a friend in Wetherspoon’s. The ham, egg and chips is possibly one of the best meals of my life.
Postscript
Reading this again, even after six months, I don’t really have anything to offer by way of grand reflections.
I guess there is something here about the fickle nature of perceived achievement. I tell people I made sub-3:00, and those who know running give me a solemn nod of respect, or a “Wow” of approval. What if I’d been say 20 seconds slower? A difference of less than 0.2%? Would that make it a substantially different achievement? It would certainly feel far less of one, but it shouldn’t. Round numbers are strange things.
I also know that injuries happen, and are part of the story. Running 50-odd miles a week when you’re in your mid-40s is no joke, and even an experienced half marathon runner can and will have problems when stepping up to a marathon, as I found out when I entered Brighton. But on reflection, I don’t think I would have run as good a race as I did in Chester had I not had that first aborted ten weeks of training in the bag as a base on which to build. There are no shortcuts and it takes time. And you need a slice of luck just in order to get to the start line.
But if you feel like giving it a go, then give it a go. Marathons aren’t just for other people. If you can devote enough time to it, if you can stick to a plan even when you’re getting bored of 20-mile runs, and if you surround yourself with good advice, there’s no reason why you can’t achieve your goal. But there’s no way of rehearsing for the day itself, when you will push yourself beyond anything you’ve ever done before, both physically and mentally. You might find that you have more reserves than you realise. You might even surprise yourself. I know I did.
