So I started to walk, very slowly, on mostly flat ground, and whenever I became breathless or felt giddy, I lay down on the ground until I felt better. Sometimes, if I tripped on uneven ground, my chest hurt where the rib-cage had been slit open and it felt as though the wire ties had torn.
I took a mobile phone on each outing and kept calling or being called by Ginny. After a while she agreed that I was approaching things in a slower, more controlled manner than she had thought possible and did not seem worried by the marathon plan which, unlike most previous projects with Mike, would only last a week. Our charity, which we chose ourselves this time, was the British Heart Foundation, who support the placement of out-of-hospital defibrillators, like the one that saved me. Mike also decided, with Ginny’s enthusiastic approval, to take one with us on each run.
My recovery programme, also carefully planned with Ginny’s approval, stated:
3 weeks after op: walk for 5 minutes with stops, lie down when giddy
8 weeks after op: walk for 30 minutes, no stops
12 weeks after op: jog for 60 minutes, no stops
13 weeks after op: jog for 120 minutes, no stops
15 weeks after op: jog gentle (7 hour) marathon
16 weeks after op: start the 7x7x7
A total of 294 kilometres in seven days. The seven marathons would not be at fast race pace but they would not be gentle runs either. We would need to complete each within six hours, including airport customs and security (in and out). Since none of the scheduled jumbo flights could be expected to delay take off by even one minute if we were late, I tried to foresee potential airport security problems by writing to airlines in advance, warning them of Mike’s metal detector-alarming medical hand baggage and the defibrillator.
Only eight weeks before departure Mike called me. Bad news. He had been going for a run near his home in Hampshire when his left hip began to complain. He was forced to call his wife Thea to collect him by car to take him home. In a few hours a grapefruit-sized swelling appeared which became a massive, blue-black bruise tracking down his thigh. He had an ultrasound check which showed that a small muscle running from the hip to beyond the knee had torn through. The ripped ends were swimming in a pool of blood. Mike’s orthopaedic and sports medicine colleagues’ advice was gloomy: he would not be running anywhere for several months, let alone doing a marathon.
Mike said he was not sure he agreed with their negative prognosis and would hope to get training again after a short rest. In fact, he took only twelve days’ rest, lots of aspirins, some physio and then a test half-hour outing. His hip was sore, he self-diagnosed, but workable.
Our sponsor Land Rover decided not to announce the event at all unless we could prove we were fit to run at least two full marathons before departure. Mike chose the Cardiff event a fortnight before our start date and a small marathon near Winchester a week later. Land Rover stressed that we must tell nobody at all about the project until after both trial runs were successfully done. So I was extremely worried when the Cardiff organisers sent me my running number to stick on my vest a week before their event. The number was 777! They had obviously found out about our main plan. I called Mike, but he assured me he had not told anyone, and it transpired that the number had been chosen entirely at random. We took this as a good omen.
The Cardiff course turned out to be flat, and Mike, who set the pace, went fast by my standards, finishing in around four hours. I felt drained at the end, but Mike wrote:
In contrast to me, Ran looked pretty fresh at the end . . . despite the ten years’ age difference and his enforced, slow training schedule. It was easy to see that he was by far the more natural athlete. But he too had a problem. For many years, his back had been the source of much discomfort, causing considerable grief when he was pulling heavy sledges during some of our polar trips. Sadly, running also made it worse and if one marathon exacerbated the pain, how would it react to the hammering it was going to receive? We were both aware that, determined or not, enough pain could defeat us. I made a mental note to add more pain-killers to the medical kit.
The next marathon, seven days later, took us from Winchester to Salisbury and Mike slowed the pace slightly. We finished in 4 hours 22 minutes. I had taken Ibuprofen tablets and aspirins and felt better than in Cardiff. The Big Seven, we agreed, was at least worth having a go at. We left Heathrow on schedule on 21 October, heading for South America. Land Rover had announced the overall plan of the Challenge the day we left Britain with a simplified summary:
The team will run their first marathon in Antarctica and the 7-day clock will tick from the moment they start. A twin-engine plane will immediately fly them back to Santiago to run the South American marathon (Number 2). From there to Sydney, Singapore, London, Cairo and finally New York. But they will lose a whole day when they cross the international date line and will have to make this up by running two marathons within one 24-hour period, a morning run in London and another that night in Cairo. If they succeed, the two runners will complete the seven runs in less than 7 × 24 hours and will see only six whole days in terms of sunrises and sunsets.
Put like that it all sounded straightforward enough. We intended to run our first leg, the Antarctic marathon, on the sub-Antarctic King George Island, part of the South Shetlands once administered by the British Antarctic Survey, but now a Chilean airbase. On 25 October we left Punta Arenas and flew over the glaciers and mountains of Tierra del Fuego for two hours. Then our pilot had to turn back due to bad weather. On 26 October, the forecast being better, we again taxied hopefully along the Punta Arenas runway. Rob Hall, our BBC reporter and by now good friend, announced, ‘Nothing can stop us now.’ A minute later, on sod’s cue, the starboard engine coughed, the pilot confirmed engine failure, and our last chance of making the South Shetlands on time was lost.
A rapid conference at the Punta Arenas Airport followed. From long experience I have always believed that if Plan A fails you get going with Plan B. Our Plan B was that we would run our South American leg immediately and here in Punta rather than in Santiago as originally planned. And while we were doing it, our local organiser would try to find another aircraft to take us to another ex-British Antarctic Survey islands group, the Falklands, for the Antarctic leg.
That afternoon we all drove out of town to a long pebble-strewn beach beside the Magellan Strait. At 6.00 p.m. a whistle from a member of our Chilean support team served as our starting gun and off we loped along the coast before, ten miles later, we turned inland and crossed barren moorland where we flushed out startled groups of rhea who galloped off very much faster than we could. I managed to stay close behind Mike’s shoulder all the way and our first marathon clocked in at 3 hours 45 minutes. Back in Punta Arenas we were greeted with the news that a twin-engine jet was on hand to take us to the Falklands.
The question has been asked whether the Falklands are genuinely part of the Antarctic continent or not. Well, they aren’t part of South America and the Antarctic Dictionary assures me Antarctica comprises the continent and its surroundings seas and islands. Support came from quite another direction with the illustrious nineteenth-century botanist Sir Joseph Hooker writing about the flora of the Falklands and South Shetlands in his Flora Antarctica. It was good enough for me.
‘Look left, Ran.’ Mike woke me from sleep on our executive jet and pointed out of one of the portholes. An RAF Jaguar fighter plane cruised a few metres from our starboard wing: the pilot’s thumbs-up was clearly visible. We landed at Mount Pleasant Military Base. A giant map of the Falklands hung in the airbase commander’s office and we agreed to follow a marathon route he and other officers suggested that led from close to the base to the cathedral in the islands’ capital, Port Stanley. We set out with six hours to go before our jet would have to leave in order to connect with the next key flight. We had therefore to run this one in under five hours.
At first we were both painfully stiff. Army vehicles passed by every now and again, the drivers hooting and w
aving. Our progress was being reported on Falklands Radio. There were long climbs and the pebbly road was uneven. We passed by skull and crossbones signs, warning of twenty-one-year-old minefields beside the track. In dry areas dwarf shrubs known as diddle-dee spread like heather with red berries mixed with an overall dun-coloured grass, white plumed flowerheads and patches of low pig vine. Occasional rook-like birds plunged and soared over the moors. After three hours we passed below Mount Tumbledown, site of fierce fighting during the 1982 conflict, where British paratroops assaulted Argentinian infantry dug into its upper slopes. Mike wrote:
My legs began to demand remission. On the uphills as we climbed hundreds of feet, they begged me to stop. I had reached ‘the wall’ and the time for gritted teeth . . . Fatigue was not my only concern. As Port Stanley grew closer, I kept getting twinges of cramp. These occurred every time we climbed a hill, and this could be serious. You can choose not to listen when muscles cry ‘enough’ which is just a matter of exhaustion, but the body does have other means of making you stop. Cramp in both legs can’t be ignored: it simply takes you down . . . My legs were lead when we crossed the finish line after four and a half hours to be met by Stanley’s children, half of the adult population and the Governor of the Islands.
The Governor had laid on tea and sandwiches for us at Government House but there was, unfortunately, no time to observe the diplomatic civilities as an army Land Rover rushed us back to Mount Pleasant and hasty goodbyes to the commandant. We made it to Santiago Airport in the nick of time to catch the scheduled BA flight to Sydney with two marathons under our belt and not yet down and out, just tired and aching all over. Before we left Chile we had pared our luggage down to a single item of hand baggage. As the schedule became tighter, we would have no time to wait for baggage carousels at airports.
We reached Sydney on the morning of 29 October, raced through the airport formalities to face a barrage of questions from a curious but sympathetic media, Australians being keen on any form of sporting activity. Then we changed speedily into our running gear. Land Rover Australia had thoughtfully arranged for members of the Sydney Striders running club to run with us in a pack, which was a big help. They included the Australian Iron Man champion who made sure we did not get lost. The route began near the Opera House, transited the Botanic Gardens and climbed up and then down the impressive Harbour Bridge, a near nine-mile course that we were to repeat three times, thus ascending and descending the bridge’s 104 steps six times. Marathons are meant to be flat. So far none of ours had been. I remember feeling drained.
But Mike was feeling much worse. It had started for him in the previous race but now his legs were becoming tighter and stiffer in a way he could not at first understand, and the competitive edge which we used to spur each other on had not kicked in for him this time. The first signs that Mike’s problems were not just fatigue appeared before we left Sydney. His urine was mixed with blood and he suffered persistent diarrhoea. This in turn led to the likelihood of dehydration. But when he weighed himself, anticipating severe weight loss, he was shocked to find that he weighed six kilos more than in Patagonia three days earlier. This explained to him that the tightness in his legs was because of the build up of fluid in his muscles caused by damage to the muscle cell membranes due to extreme mechanical overwork. What was going on in Mike’s body was the result of the abuse to which he was subjecting it, the actual breaking down of his muscles. Not a happy state of affairs given the fact that he had only run three out of the seven marathons and the worst part of the schedule lay immediately ahead. The hottest, most humid run would be in Singapore. And then two marathons within twenty-four hours and ever increasing jet lag.
We arrived half-asleep and confused at Singapore Airport, and were whisked by our hosts, the Singapore Heart Foundation, to a hotel for one hour’s sleep before the press conference they had fixed for 4.00 a.m. We awoke like zombies, stiff as boards all over. I really did not feel like getting up or walking to the bathroom, never mind trying to run somewhere. Failure, I now perceived, was eminently likely. However, a cold shower, a cup of black coffee and a well-attended press conference, at which we were reminded that we represented the UK, made me realise that withdrawal from the nightmare, at least at this stage, was not an option.
So, to the hooting of horns and the cheering of the sixty Singapore runners who were to accompany us, we set out at dawn to thread our tortured way for the next six hours through the parks and skyscrapers of Singapore. The sun rose all too quickly, as did the roar of the rush-hour traffic.
Singapore was a marathon too far for poor Mike. He was peeing blood and reduced to walking the last third on jellied legs. His diary recorded:
Within an hour of starting the Singapore run I realised that this was the marathon too far. I felt sick and my legs, although still painless, had become utterly useless as the first few miles flew by. The heat was stupefying . . . We had managed little more than a quarter of the course before I drew up beside Ran and told him of my predicament. However much I wanted to go on, it was not within my capability and I explained that for me there was no choice but to give in. I urged him to go on running every step if he possibly could. Feeling pretty dismal I cut back and watched as he and most of our accompanying runners drew slowly away.
I was not much better. After four hours I felt faint, nauseous and could not run in a straight line. A Singaporean Army major from their Special Forces clung to my running vest to steer me. Another runner kept dousing me with water and shouting constant encouragement. He must have said ‘Nearly there’ a hundred times. But we never were.
My back ached. My neck was shot through with sharp pain from the weight of my hung head. I drank copiously from my camelback container of Science-in-Sport drink. I fought against the ever increasing desire to stop running. I counted my steps. One to a hundred. One to a hundred. Again and again and again. I tried to think of home and Ginny, of the Dhofar war, of Charlie Burton, Ollie Shepard and Anton Bowring on the bridge of the Benjamin Bowring in a South Atlantic storm. Of anything that could even briefly take my mind away from the torture of Singapore that morning.
Mike’s diary:
Towards the end of our run, the course made a short loop of about three miles with outward and backward paths along the same sector of road. Struggling along, I suddenly realised that Ran was coming the other way. He crossed over and as we approached one another we both raised our hands, which met in passing as the briefest of high-fives. It was a privilege to witness this supreme performance by a man ten years my senior, a man whom so many had recently written off.
Ran went on to finish having run every single step, although he still took five hours and twenty-four minutes. I ended up running about two-thirds of the course and walking the remainder, coming in more than half an hour behind him at just over six hours. I was disappointed, but at least I had done the job.
When the end finally came (on the parade ground where Lord Mountbatten had received the Japanese surrender fifty-eight years before), I simply fell over under the FINISH banner. The time was over five hours, but the time was immaterial. (The results of all seven marathons are in Appendix 3) Paramedics supported me to an ambulance, shoved needles into me and gave me various drinks. A BBC Singapore man with a tape recorder came in and sat on the ambulance bunk. ‘Are you giving up?’ he asked. He looked blurred to me. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘It would be stupid for me to carry on. But Mike will keep going. I know he will. If one of us can do it, that will be enough.’
Mike said that run was the hardest thing he had ever done. ‘I felt like shit from the word go. The prospect of doing this again in London tomorrow is really appalling.’
Three hours later and just before our next intercontinental British Airways flight, we were feted at a Singapore Heart Foundation dinner. A doctor gave Mike the report on our body checks, done at the end of the run. Mike believed we were suffering from something called rhabdomyolysis, which simple tests would confirm by measuring the level
in our blood of creatine kinase (CK), which plays an important role in fuelling muscle function. The Singapore report showed that my CK level was fifty times above the norm. I was suffering from significant muscle damage. My disappointment in learning this was soon overshadowed by Mike’s exclamation as he studied the report. His own CK level was nigh on 500 times the norm, surpassing by far anything he had feared and indicating massive muscle loss. Mike was still up and running through sheer mental willpower alone.
His reaction to the news was typical.
Boarding the plane from Singapore, I seriously considered giving up. If things got much worse, I would be in real danger. The blood test results offered me a get-out, a chance to listen to my body’s injuries with little loss of face. But I knew inside that there was another way. The risks were manageable if I had further tests with each subsequent race. Giving up is fine if you really have no choice. But if I stopped when I could have done better, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
We flew on to our next continent, Europe, where London, or rather Heathrow’s immediate surroundings, had been the only choice for our fifth run if we were to fit Africa and North America into our remaining forty-eight hours. Even this thought was stressful, and I had been warned ‘not to get stressed’.
Our main marathon organiser, Steven Seaton, also our Eco-Challenge companion in years gone by, had arranged for some fifty runners to accompany us on the European leg and our race leader was Hugh Jones, one of the best marathon runners Britain has ever produced and a previous London Marathon winner. He had researched for us the exact route of the original 1908 London Olympics marathon, which began at Windsor Castle and ended at the White City Stadium. Things had changed since 1908 and the morning rush-hour traffic was in full tortoise-like flow when we set out from the castle gates at 7.30 a.m. My thoughts as my back, hips, neck and legs creaked into action were centred around the ghastly proposition that, if we managed to complete this run, we would need to begin our next marathon in Africa that same night.
Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know Page 27
