Don't Stop Me Now

by Vassos Alexander

  Occasionally, however, he’d advise me to take a complete rest from running, which of course was my least favourite course of treatment, and advice I sometimes chose to ignore. But it’s amazing how quickly a small problem can become a big problem if you continue running on it. And it’s equally amazing how quickly the body can cure itself when it’s not under continual stress. Whenever I followed Scott’s recommendations, I’d almost always be back on the roads within a week.

  Mind you, those weeks did feel like months whilst in the thick of them. Cross-training in the gym, swimming, rowing on the ergo, even cycling – for me, all are satisfying supplements to running, but poor substitutes. If the running bug bites as hard as it did me, you do pretty much anything to avoid prolonged periods without lacing up your trainers.

  Eccentric exercises for instance. (That’s not eccentric meaning odd, but eccentric the opposite of concentric, the working muscle lengthening rather than shortening.) Recovery from one recurrent pain in the front of my knee involved going to the gym every other day, somehow manufacturing a downslope of about 30 degrees using two perpendicular exercise steppers and slowly lowering myself on alternate legs for half an hour. Come to think of it, perhaps the exercises were both eccentric (opposite of concentric) and eccentric (odd) – certainly if the looks I received from the other gym users were anything to go by.

  I’ve also taken it upon myself to try core-strengthening exercises of every conceivable description and difficulty. I’ve worked on my posture. I’ve tried to correct an instinctive, constant lean to the left, borne of being blind in one eye. And I’ve instigated several regimes of varying lunacy to try to improve my stability – once, every evening for a month, I cleaned my teeth standing on one leg with my eyes closed. All in a bid to lessen the chances of sustaining a running injury, and having to take time off.

  Only twice have I seriously doubted Scott’s diagnosis. Both times wrongly as it happens, but both times I simply didn’t like what I was hearing and went to a sports doctor for a second opinion. Because I was hearing from Scott that I would have to stop running for weeks, maybe months. And by then, that was unthinkable.

  Sally Gunnell OBE

  Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 400m hurdles champion, and world record holder. The only female British athlete to have achieved that feat.

  The day I first realised that I could run fast, I was still very young, still at primary school. We were playing kiss chase in the school playground. There was some boy that I didn’t really fancy and I found I could run away from him. I just really remember thinking ‘wow, I’m quite fast’.

  Meanwhile, probably around the same sort of age, there was my first experience of sports day. I won this bright orange bowl and I remember so vividly running down the straight and thinking ‘wow, I’ve won!’ And it was such a lovely feeling to feel free and be doing something that you loved and were actually good at. I don’t think there was much else that I was good at, at that age.

  When I was around 12, I joined a club and in fact I started off as a long jumper. It was okay. Then it was heptathlon, and again I was all right at it. After that came the 100m hurdles, and I was bit better still... It took me a long time to find what I really was good at, what I was going to excel at. But all through those early days, I just loved being part of the club. I enjoyed getting on the bus at the weekend, going to an athletics meet. I loved the banter on the bus and my best friends were on that bus. I met them all through the running club.

  It was a completely social thing – and in fact I would say that a lot of my career was based around relishing the social side of it. Yes, of course I also wanted to be the best that I could be and I wanted to see how fast I could run. And I guess it got serious towards the end, but there was always the simple love of it. I appreciated that feeling of understanding yourself as a person.

  When I’m actually running, when I’m out there and I’m in full flight, I love the thinking time that it allows me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are days when I run and I really don’t want to be doing it, but the bit I still love is the feeling afterwards. So there might be days where I think I should really go out for a half-hour run now, and even though I can’t be bothered I still do, and that feeling when I finish – that is why I do it.

  And then there’s that satisfaction when you think ‘yeah, I’ve done some exercise today and now I can eat cake!’

  8

  Snow Patrol, Run

  ‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 8

  I’m over-thinking this. With every step, the only thing that crosses my mind is how much I’m dreading the next step, and the 50,000 after that. Which, incidentally, is one of the pieces of information I wish I could unlearn – that a marathon is around 50,000 footsteps. It’s not something I tend to think about as I go about my day-to-day life, but put me on a marathon start line and within the first mile, that QI fact will pop unbidden into my head, and do its best to sabotage my spirits. Today more than ever. Fifty. Thousand. Steps.

  I try to work out approximately how many of the 50,000 I have left. The answer is just under 35,000, which is fairly simple mental arithmetic but it takes an agreeably disproportionate amount of time to work out. Anyone who’s ever run so much as a 10k knows how slowly the brain works when the body’s under duress. That, and I can’t multi-task at the best of times. So I’ve found that trying to solve a mathematical conundrum is a terrific way of not focusing on just how long a long run is. Indeed it takes much of mile eight just to realise that, forget the footsteps, I now have fewer than twenty miles left to run.

  Whenever that thought occurs mid-marathon, it’s always accompanied by a stab of happiness. However, it’s followed today by another mental intruder in the form of an old running truism, ‘If you reach mile 20 of a marathon and you’re struggling, that’s normal. If you reach half way and you’re struggling, you’re in trouble. And if you’re struggling with 20 miles to go, you’re for it.’

  Well, I was struggling with the entire marathon ahead of me. Worse, I began struggling with 100 miles to go on the bike. In fact the last time I wasn’t struggling, I still had wet hair from the swim.

  Prognosis: alarming.

  A Sunday morning alone at home with the children. Unfortunate that it coincides with one of the increasingly rare instances when I wake up in a blind panic. Nothing I can do to stop them. During my teens and twenties it would happen quite frequently, and I’d simply swallow down the darkness and force myself into the day. I’m thankful it’s now once in a blue moon, but it still feels pretty rotten when it strikes. Like I’m already losing before the day has even started. Everybody has their gremlins, and these are mine. I don’t think I’m particularly unusual, but the gremlins do need putting back in their box. People try loads of different things, some go to psychotherapists, others suffer from anger or addiction. But in my humble opinion, the quickest, surest, easiest way to improve your sense of self-worth is to go for a run.

  Just starting out on the road to fitness automatically makes you feel better about yourself. Impossible not to, when you’re doing yourself some good, doing yourself a favour. And of all the fitness recipes available, I’m convinced that running has the edge. Running outside, that is.

  Here’s why.

  If you’re in the gym, whatever you’re doing, whether you’re on a cross-trainer, or rowing, stepping, static cycling, weight training, even on the treadmill, you’re involved in a machine, or a thing, which inherently draws your focus. Part of you is concentrating on how long is left, how fast you’re going, how many calories you’re burning, how many reps, how many revs and so on. Your subconscious mind is much less free to do its thing. Plus, crucially, you’re indoors – there are walls, which act like mental barriers. Swimming in a pool has much the same effect: your mind has little time to wander before you reach the side and have to start over. Cycling outside, if you’re not concentrating on the cars, you’re in trouble.

  And what about team sports? Well, yes, f
antastic – indeed I’m such a fan, I’ve spent half a lifetime paying to watch them and the other half being paid to. And it doesn’t have to be the top-level stuff. I’ve also been lucky enough to see at first hand how team sports can transform the lives of underprivileged kids: they’re wonderful moments these, watching disadvantaged young people unite into a cohesive team. As Sir Keith Mills, who helped stage the London Olympics and Paralympics and now runs the charity Sported, said to me just before we went live on air for an interview: ‘Sport is just brilliant!’ This was on the first morning of the first-ever Invictus Games (a sporting event for wounded, injured and sick Servicemen and women), and never did his words feel more appropriate. Sport is just brilliant. Team sports will get you fit and give you a sense of belonging and purpose. Same with the gym and same with swimming lengths. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

  But the thing with running outside, the real added value and USP, is that it does all of the above whilst also giving you thinking space. And frequently, your conscious mind isn’t even the part of your brain doing the thinking – you don’t even know it’s happening. Your brain could be filled with the music that’s playing in your earphones, or enjoying the scenery, looking forward to a night out, or complaining that the blister on your left foot has begun to hurt again despite those expensive plasters you bought... anything really. Meantime, your subconscious mind seems to reset itself, to perform a mid-exercise ctrl-alt-del, and whether you’re aware it’s happening or not, when you’ve finished your run, you simply feel better about life. Other exercise does the same job, running outside just does it better.

  So on that Sunday morning when I woke up in a panic, my first priority was to get myself outside and running. Didn’t matter that it was the last thing I felt like doing, didn’t matter that it was raining and I had the kids in tow. I simply bribed them onto their bikes, laced up my trainers, braved the elements, and got out there.

  And of course it worked, as I knew it would. A terrible morning in prospect became really rather lovely. It was just another rainy weekend and we didn’t do anything unusual, but I remember the day because it was the first time I felt acutely grateful for having discovered running. Exhilarated by our rain-sodden early exercise, we joyfully dried ourselves off whilst enjoying the marshmallows in hot chocolate I’d used earlier as a bribe. We unsuccessfully attempted to bake a healthy cake, we built silly things with Lego, played a board game, went to the pub for lunch, all of us happy, all of us light-hearted, all of us laughing – and all because of a 30-minute easy run round an unknowing bend in the River Thames.

  So yes. Running outdoors, especially off-road and, curious as it may seem, in bad weather, truly seems to heal the soul.

  Which brings me on to the thorny issue of running in the rain. I’m really not sure how I feel about it. Do I enjoy it? Do I pretend to enjoy it? Do I force myself to enjoy it? Or actually, if I’m honest, do I kind of dislike it?

  I’m writing these words on a late winter’s Wednesday afternoon. I was tired a few hours ago, and debated whether to nip upstairs for a nap, or head outside in the driving rain for a run. It’s the age-old question whenever you’re after a quick pick-me-up: sleep or run? And the answer is simple, however difficult and counterintuitive it may seem: run, every time.

  So summoning up some willpower, I decided on my favourite hour-long, eight-mile easy loop to the park and back. The dog looked unusually sceptical as we set off.

  Ten minutes later, I understood why. The rain that had been heavy as we started was now at monsoon levels. By the time we were three miles and 20-odd minutes away from home, it was raining like the end of the world. In the distance, I imagined all different kinds of animals heading two by two into an enormous ark.

  It was becoming difficult to see. The wind had picked up and as the water hit my face, it almost hurt. Massive raindrops were exploding onto the pavement, ominous puddles appearing by the side of the road. Almost at once a passing lorry drove through a big one right beside me.

  But by now I was so wet I was beyond caring. In fact I realised I was almost delighting in how wet I was, and how little it mattered. It felt liberating to be this wet. Like Andie MacDowell at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hugh Grant sees her in the church and calls off his imminent wedding. Outside, it’s pouring as they kiss, both of them wet through. ‘Let’s get out of this rain,’ says Hugh. ‘Is it raining?’ Andie asks. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’ And I understood exactly how she felt. I was also feeling so euphoric, I no longer noticed how soaking I was.

  No question, there’s a certain perverse pleasure to be running – to be choosing to be outside and running as opposed to inside and sitting – through ridiculous rainstorms. The start is nasty, uncomfortable, but you soon get used to it. Running kit sticks to the body in odd, strangely agreeable places. And the downpour adds a certain intensity to the whole experience, in the same way as it can when you’re watching live football through driving rain.

  Also, you feel kind of hard. And I don’t get many chances. I’ve only been involved in three fights in my life, and of those, I only won one. It was in Lithuania in the mid-90s, and an aggressive drunk was harassing some of my university friends. He took a wild swing at me when I told him to stop, and I instinctively punched him back. And that, surprisingly, was all it took to end it. Now of course fighting’s not right and kids – Emily, Matthew, Mary – if you’re reading this any of you, then you should know that Daddy’s not proud of punching someone. You should also know that it genuinely hurts your fist when it connects at pace with a jaw. But actually, between you and me, whisper it quietly and definitely don’t tell your mother, Daddy secretly is proud of that night in Vilnius. Not only did he stand up for his friends, but he had the brawn to back it up when attacked.

  And I undeniably look back on that incident with much fonder memories than my other two brushes with any sort of street violence – once in South Africa when I was mugged and beaten up a bit, and once in Hammersmith when some youths pulled a knife but I managed to wriggle free and run away across the bridge. They did follow for a bit, the four young men in hoodies who’d rudely demanded my wallet and phone, but it’s amazing what blind panic does to your speed. If I could hire them to stand behind me on the start line of my next 5k, I would absolutely obliterate my PB.

  Oh, and now I think about it, there was recently some argy-bargy with a fellow cyclist one evening in central London. I admonished him for stupidly going through a red light, he vehemently took exception and came back to tell me about it. But just as the verbals escalated into pushing and shoving, two things happened simultaneously which allowed us both to go our separate ways with pride intact – just barely, in my case. (1) A double decker appeared in the bus lane we were blocking and hooted impatiently for us to move, and (2) I suddenly remembered that in my haste to get home from the TV studios where I’d just been presenting a sports show, I’d forgotten to remove my make-up. So whilst Mr Redlightjumper paused to consider the bus, and I paused to consider whether anyone would have noticed in the dark that I was wearing foundation (and also whether that should matter either way), the sting was taken out of the situation and we both harrumphed our separate ways.

  So basically, in forty years of enjoying a middle-class existence in one of the safest countries on earth, opportunities to feel hard have been few and far between. That’s why when I was out running today in just shorts and a T-shirt and it was properly soaking and utterly freezing, I liked how it was undeniably robust and rugged.

  Then of course I arrived home dripping water and mud all over the clean carpet. And as I write, the smell of wet dog has permeated the whole house, my sodden kit lies in a sad, deflated pile in the corner and it’ll take days for my shoes to dry properly. And I’ll probably get a cold. But then again, there’s nothing quite like that post-rain, post-run shower…

  All very confusing and the jury’s still out on running in the rain. But I’ll tell you something: I’m definitely pleased I didn’t have a nap
instead.

  Noel Thatcher MBE

  Six-time Paralympian, and five times Paralympic gold medallist. World record holder. Now a leading physiotherapist.

  I was born with a visual impairment, a degenerative condition of the optic nerve and retinal cells, but up until the age of 10 I went through regular mainstream education. I had some issues at primary school and couldn’t really find anything I could succeed at, but I just thought that was because I was poor at sport and uncoordinated.

  When I was 10 my parents made the decision to send me to a school for the blind and visually impaired in Coventry. This was run by a headmaster who’d had extensive military experience and ran it accordingly. And as part of the ‘character building’ ethos of the school, he had all the boys in the four houses go out and do house runs – three times a week, summer and winter. So every other day we’d have to go out and run two or three miles, whatever the weather, and I bloody hated it. With a passion.

  In fact I hated running so much I did everything in my power to get out of it. We used to do three laps of the road round the school, and I’d jump into the hedge on the first lap and only join in again for the last lap. Or I’d feign illness. Or injury. Anything! But it very rarely got me out of it, and I continued to hate running until I was 12, and that was when I fell under the influence of a mate who suggested we go off and have a mid-run fag. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘no one will notice.’

  So we headed off to a disused railway siding where I smoked my first and only cigarette. But it took us almost 90 minutes to do a two-mile run, and the housemaster was understandably concerned when he caught up with us. He smelled our breath, realised what had happened, and the punishment he meted out was daily runs. Five miles a night for a month, with the housemaster following in his car, or hiding behind hedges, and every time we showed signs of slowing down he’d leap out and shout and scream. In fact he was a great guy, but it was an interesting model of education!