Keep on Running

by Phil Hewitt

  In the early days, all the emphasis had been on drinking and drinking, never allowing yourself to dehydrate. But it was clear that some people had overdone it. It never occurred to me that it was just as dangerous to go the other way until I stood at the start of the New York Marathon. There, all the announcements – despite the hot day – were geared towards the dangers of overdrinking rather than not drinking enough. It seemed reckless, given how hot New York was on that November morning. But clearly it was an issue, and in the intervening years it had become increasingly recognised as a marathon peril. And it was very much in the back of my mind as I tried – and failed – to force myself to drink as I shivered on Berlin's streets.

  Everything felt wrong. The sweat was making me shake; I was feeling colder and colder. And yet I wasn't feeling any less full. Normal bodily processes were suspended, and a glimmering awareness of my foolishness started to descend. I was mad to be out there.

  All of which meant – given that I wasn't going to give up – that I needed some help from the route. I wanted to be inspired, lifted and launched forward. Seven or eight kilometres in, it was clear that this was not going to happen.

  Berlin has got some fascinating areas and many beautiful areas, but the marathon route was essentially through huge, wide streets – the nondescript cityscape of could-be-anywhere Middle Europe. There were flutters of excitement at recognised street names and squares, but one kilometre was undistinguishable from the next in an unending, slowly passing succession of grand buildings, imposing but grey, with nothing about them capable of raising flagging spirits.

  Support along the route was sketchy, to say the least, and from just a few kilometres in, I can remember almost nothing of the course. I wasn't motivated later to pour my thoughts into a post-marathon diary, and few lasting impressions took root at the time, save for the overriding impression of the relentless big-city anonymity of it all, undifferentiated Alleen and Straßen merging one into the next in a panorama so unchanging as to be almost disorientating. But perhaps that was the fever taking over, exactly as it was always going to.

  Disaster struck somewhere between 25 and 30 km. I can't remember the preliminary. I can't remember the event itself. All I know is that all of a sudden I was half-sitting at the side of the road. I couldn't remember being sick, but evidently I had been. I must have blacked out very briefly. There wasn't any question of anyone having to bring me round. I came round naturally and swiftly, but somewhere a few moments had been lost, not least the one in which I decorated my very own little section of Berlin gutter.

  The spectators were sympathetic, remarkably so in the circumstances. After all, it can't have been terribly pleasant to have a sweaty Englishman lurch towards them and vomit. However, they were solicitousness itself as they eased me to my feet again and gave me the once-over.

  I remember feeling quietly pleased with myself as I remembered that the German for 'to be sick' was irregular in the past tense. I conjugated it perfectly as I apologised for my antisocial behaviour. Perhaps they took my spot-on grammar as proof that I had recovered. They asked me if I could continue. Maybe they just didn't want me to linger. I assured them I was fine, and I felt it. Throwing up was the best possible thing I could have done.

  Cough, cold and too much fluid had reached the point of return, and return they did – in spectacular fashion. Purged, I pushed on and started to feel much better. I felt a general weakness and a slight wobbliness, but this was infinitely preferable to sickness and confusion. Far better to feel fragile than to feel nauseated, and as I ploughed on, I became increasingly conscious that the nausea, now lifting, had been with me for several kilometres. I now noticed its absence much more than I had ever noticed its presence. It had been part of a general discomfort which was now evaporating.

  The ability to think started to return, and I remember thinking how strangely easy it was not to notice things when you're tired. I have finished several marathons with a sock full of blood. Once I stopped, my toes did indeed hurt, and so they must have hurt while I was running, but the pain hadn't differentiated itself from the general fatigue at the time. You really do enter a strange realm when you hit the marathon route.

  But now, on the streets of Berlin, a different problem set in – that depressing Amsterdam feeling that my time had gone. My pit-stop puke had been the culmination of progressive slowing over several kilometres. By the time I was back in the land of the living and pushing on, my target time was well adrift. As ridiculous as it may sound in the circumstances, I'd been hoping to equal or beat my 3:20 in London earlier that year. But by the time I'd recovered a degree of control, I was clearly looking at 3:40 plus. And, as ever, as soon as you know your goal has slipped away, it slips away all the quicker.

  But I soldiered on and started to recognise the area we'd walked through on the way to our hotel the day before. The end wasn't so very far away now, just a couple of kilometres at the end of a stretch I'd been particularly looking forward to – Unter den Linden.

  I'd found it surprising just how many of the well-known Berlin landmarks were in the former East Berlin. It was as if the former West Berlin hadn't really had too much to offer. We were in the east for most of the final part of the race, and it seemed that here was the historic heart of the city. Best of all was Unter den Linden, Berlin's most impressive boulevard with its lines of lime trees standing proud in front of the city's most elegant, most classical architecture. The day before, it had felt like the city's cultural centre. Much more importantly on marathon day, it was the home straight.

  On the Saturday we'd seen the barriers being erected in readiness for the race's showpiece finale, and this was what I was trying to picture, hoping it would give me the lift I sorely needed. Sadly – no fault of Unter den Linden – it simply seemed long, stretching on forever towards the Brandenburg Gate, just beyond which lay the finish. It was a huge struggle. Light-headedness was taking over, and I just didn't have the strength to force my pace. This wasn't so much fatigue as weakness. I was more debilitated than knackered.

  As it so often is, it was simply a case of keeping on keeping on and trusting to the fact that if I did, then eventually, however slowly, I would get there. Almost imperceptibly, the historic Gate was growing larger; we'd very nearly come full circle. Pass through it and you get your first glimpse of the finish, just 400 metres away. It would have been a gorgeous sight on any other day, but today it left me feeling deflated. I was spent. There was nothing left. I had started to sweat again far too much over the final 4 or 5 kilometres; stupidly, I couldn't even find the energy to drink. It was too late anyway. I tried to push forward, but no acceleration came, just an increasingly ragged and lopsided hobble as I inched towards the line and all but tumbled over it.

  I had been one of 40,215 runners taking part. I came in 11,018th in a time of 3:51:42. I did the first half in just a fraction under 1:40 and the second half in an awful 2:11. My time was 12 minutes worse than Amsterdam, more than half an hour slower than the London I'd completed so happily six months before. The great god Marathon had slapped me down in all my presumptuousness. Part of me must have thought, Yeah, I'll knock this one off. Marathon smiled wryly and watched me suffer. My presumption was in starting at all.

  I was back in the realms of the 3:50s – a time zone I'd hoped never to see again in a flat, big-city marathon. But at least I'd done it. I'd finished, and I'd done so with a monumental stubbornness which started to make me feel just a little bit better. I was just outside the top 25 per cent, but there were still very nearly 30,000 runners behind me, so the run couldn't, I told myself, be regarded as a total failure. But I knew I was guilty of sophistry. As soon as you start talking about your position overall, you're conceding that your time wasn't good; you know you are searching for consolation.

  The very best marathons you sum up with a time, absolute and unqualified. London 2007 was 3:20. With the very best, the time speaks for itself.

  However I computed it, I wasn't happy. Maybe I co
uld take out five minutes for the puking, perhaps another ten for the pre-puke nausea and post-puke wobbliness. But none of it added up to the half an hour I'd added to my marathon time since April. I finished the damned thing with a monumental 'Huh!', voiced with disdain and dejection.

  Fortunately two other runners were about to come to the rescue; two runners – sharply contrasting in their finishing times – who would save the day for me: Haile Gebrselassie and my father-in-law. And it's not very often that the two of them get mentioned in the same sentence.

  One of the greatest pleasures of marathon running is that you really do get to race with the big boys. However far behind they leave you, they're still running the same race as you, and I felt immeasurably proud to have been there that day as I did my bit towards a men's world record marathon time. There was an hour and three-quarters and 11,016 other runners between us, but I can still look back and say I ran the race in which the astonishing Gebrselassie fulfilled his dream.

  The Ethiopian runner ran a phenomenal time of 2:04:26, beating the world record 2:04:55 set by Paul Tergat on the same course four years earlier – times we mere mortals can only marvel at. Gebrselassie was running at very nearly 13 miles an hour for two hours plus – a mind-boggling feat of pace, stamina and skill, a wonderful achievement by one of sport's greatest ambassadors. How superb it was to have been there – even if the record has since been beaten, not least by Gebrselassie himself on the same Berlin course the following year. On that same course again, on 25 September 2011, the Kenyan Patrick Makau ran a staggering 2:03:38, the current world record.

  According to the news reports, Gebrselassie cried out to all the other runners on his world-record day: 'You were my tailwind and are all record-breaking runners, too!' I can't say I heard him. But thanks, Haile, I appreciate the sentiment.

  The reception he received must have been incredible. So too, at the other end of the day, was the welcome accorded my father-in-law, who came in more than four hours later. After my travails on the course, I did my usual routine of suddenly feeling a genuine, sentimental bond with everyone else out there. Rob found me near the finish. We went back to the hotel where I freshened up and rested a little before heading back out in search of Michael. I found him close to the turn into Unter den Linden and accompanied him to the finish, keeping a respectful distance behind him, which gave me a chance to take some good finishing photographs of him. And what a finish he had.

  The crowds, mostly patchy throughout, had been great the length of that final 400 metres, once you have passed through the Brandenburg Gate, and there were still plenty of people there when Michael made it through. Throughout the whole weekend we were repeatedly impressed with the friendliness of the native Berliners, and for Michael's final stretch, the crowds were at their magnificent, generous best. It helped that a presenter-type chap, microphone in hand, dashed onto the course for a quick word with Michael, who initially couldn't hear the German that was being shouted into his ear. I stepped up, translated, told the guy to speak in English and then peeled away to become a delighted spectator at the scene which unfolded.

  The chap relayed to the crowd that Michael was English and 75 years old. The crowd roared – a fantastic moment that even now gives me a lovely tingling sensation as I think about it. Great times, great courses, they've got their place, but it's that human element which completes the picture. It was a moment to cherish. The response from the spectators was tremendous, and as Michael acknowledged it, so it grew. He waved to his fans, and the fans cheered as one – a surreal scene. He milked it, and good for him. He deserved every second of it.

  It made me feel a total also-ran, but in the best possible and happiest way. I was two hours too slow to get the Gebrselassie treatment, two hours too quick to get the welcome Michael was getting. More than four hours after the record had been set, Michael was being treated as if he'd won the whole damned thing. Which of course, by Gebrselassie's reckoning, he had.

  It was a fantastic, uplifting couple of minutes – minutes which transformed my own perception of the day, underlining one of the great truisms of marathon running. You hammer yourself as you go round, but the basic fact remains: we're all in it together. Some marathons turn out to be stinkers, and this one did for me, but it's that togetherness, at times genuinely spiritual, which lifts you up and keeps you coming back.

  Afterwards we lingered, lapping up the atmosphere which was still strong. We phoned home and sat on a wall for a few minutes before heading to a cafe where we revelled in one of the most enjoyable times we have ever spent together. Neither of us could stop smiling at the reception which had greeted Michael. After all the selfishness and self-obsession of my run, it was lovely to rediscover a few of the pleasures of selflessness. I couldn't possibly have been more pleased for Michael, and he was chuffed too.

  There was something surreal about it at the time, something bizarre – but not when you step back to consider the true nature of Michael's achievement. As I have always told him, speed shouldn't be the only thing we judge a marathon by when the runner is advanced in years. Far more relevant – it's worth saying again and again – is endurance. And the same applies to anyone running with a disability of any kind. It's not about your speed; it's about what you are up against, be it age or infirmity. It's about your ability to overcome.

  Running less than four hours that day had been an effort so very nearly beyond my capability, but Michael had run four hours and then two hours more. For sheer stamina, strength and grim determination, it was gold-medal running of the very highest order. He wouldn't see it that way. Not remotely. But I felt humbled, weak-willed and lily-livered in his shadow as the crowds roared him home. Humbled but also inspired. I guess it takes a marathon runner to say it, but there are times when I can't help feeling that bloody-mindedness is the highest of human qualities. Friedrich Nietzsche got pretty hung up on the notion of human will; really all he needed were some running shoes, Lycra and a place in the Berlin Marathon.

  Chapter Fourteen: 'Little by Little'

  Country Roads – Clarendon Way 2008, New Forest 2009

  Six months on from the horrors of Berlin 2007, I kicked off 2008 with a return to London, again using a press place, notching up a time of 3:32:05, finishing 4,570th out of 23,680 finishers on a day remarkable for just one thing as far as I was concerned, one of my worst-ever moments on a marathon course.

  I'd been listening to Status Quo from the start. They're a great band – not remotely in The Stones or Beatles category, but as a running aid, they are second to none, their chugging rhythm just perfect for running. Up to a point. Perhaps the volume was too loud. Perhaps I'd had too much of a good thing. But at about 23 miles I had the closest thing to a panic attack I have ever had in my life. Status Quo had got inside my head, inside my brain, inside my whole existence; I was tired and probably dehydrated; across several miles, the Docklands had channelled and echoed the noise of the crowd; and then, abruptly, at the start of the long straight road parallel with the Thames, the noise of the crowd rose several notches more.

  Suddenly it was all too much for me. Panic took hold. I ripped off my headphones and felt dizzy – dizzy at the roar of the crowd, dizzy at Status Quo who continued to chug inside my head even though the earpieces were out. It was a frightening moment. I stood there and swayed, thinking that any moment I was going to keel over. Noise, emotion and knackered-ness had reached unbearable proportions. It was a monumental sensory overload, and for maybe 30 seconds it threatened to derail me, until I found the strength of mind to stagger to the side and lean against a railing. The poor spectators I nearly tumbled against were lovely, sweet and concerned, and it was almost certainly that human contact which got me back on track again.

  It had been the strangest feeling, one of being utterly overwhelmed. I craved darkness. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide. I wanted to get away from the noise. I felt awful. But fortunately the tide of human kindness turned me round and I carried on, not significantly the worse for
wear.

  The end result was a good enough time on a good day. Part of the problem, though, was that this was London number six, and it was all starting to seem just a touch déjà vu. Fiona came up to support me and we were joined by Alistair and his girlfriend – now wife – Jo afterwards, going for a lovely pizza to round off the day. But the point was that London was becoming rather routine. Even I wouldn't have baked myself a celebratory cake after this one – even if there was plenty of satisfaction to be had from the fact that, just as in La Rochelle, I had seriously wobbled but then pulled it back.

  Far more interesting in 2008 was my return to the kind of cross-country marathon I'd slogged through in Chichester and Steyning a few years earlier – a marathon which answered the need for something different. This time my self-flagellation of choice was the Clarendon Way Marathon, a marathon which will always rank among my most memorable.