Don't Stop Me Now

by Vassos Alexander

  After I signed the agreement to do it, I ran ten minutes from my parents’ place, and I was nearly sick. My mum and dad said, ‘Is this a good idea? Do you really want to do this?’

  And I replied, ‘Well, I’ve said I’m going to do it now. I’m not going to go back into work and back out, so I have to do it.’

  When I went to training events, everybody was telling me that it takes years to train for an ultra-marathon. ‘Oh, you’re a girl, and you’re five foot three. You’ll never finish that.’ Just really patronising. But to be honest, the doubters are what got me through. Also, the logistics people had bets on when I would drop out, and didn’t even include the possibility that I might finish. When I found that out, that was a really good motivation for me. That was the best thing they could have done.

  People think that in Tellyland, it’s all a bit fake and you don’t really do it, don’t they? They think you get a lift or something. Well we do really do it, and when I got to the finish I was totally done. I was so dehydrated I was hallucinating.

  Nowadays when I run, I love the feeling afterwards. For me, going for a run, as you close in on the home stretch, that’s just like the first drink on a hot sunny day – it’s the best feeling ever. That’s why I run.

  In fact nowadays I run a lot more, especially when I’m away with work, because I like to see where we are. I like to see what’s around the hotel, to get an idea of the lie of the land. And also, I think generally I like running because it lets me enjoy my food more.

  18

  Flo Rida, Run

  ‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 18

  I’m about to see my family again, decision time is approaching, and it’s bringing out my inner drama queen.

  Why don’t I just pack this in? Seriously, it’s becoming stupid. I’m clearly injuring myself by continuing. Stopping is both easy and sensible.

  So what’s it to be?

  Into my mind pops a New Year run in the South Downs and another mid-run poser. Within an hour of setting off, astonishingly quickly and completely without warning, it became very foggy indeed. One minute I was lost in the scenery and solitude of a crisp January afternoon, the next I was just plain lost. I began to become melodramatic. The solitude became oppressive, the scenery irrelevant: I couldn’t see any of it. I had no idea which way to turn, or how far I was from the random lay-by where I’d left the car. My in-run sense of direction is usually pretty reliable, but not, apparently, in fog. Anxiety soon became trepidation, fear, alarm, dread. It was going to get dark soon, and then I’d truly be in trouble. So what to do? Continue in the direction I was going, in the hope I would eventually arrive somewhere helpful, or turn back and try to retrace my steps to the car? Forward felt foolish, as I was pretty sure I was still running away from the lay-by. But it seemed equally silly to turn back towards 60 minutes of what I knew to be deserted countryside, in the slim hope that despite severely limited visibility, I might somehow recognise somewhere I’d already been.

  Before I could decide, my overactive imagination kicked in and I couldn’t help envisioning the worst-case scenario. I was lost in over a thousand square miles of national park. In my head, I would continue running, backwards or forwards it didn’t matter, and would end up tripping over an unseen rock or hole. I would fall awkwardly, breaking an ankle, maybe both, in the process, and render myself immobile. Wearing – as I was – just a T-shirt and shorts, the sweat would turn to ice and I would soon begin to freeze. There was nobody out walking in this weather, so I probably wouldn’t be found until the following morning. I began to panic. Forwards? Backwards? Stop? Fall? Freeze?

  And that same panic began to grip me in Nottingham. Stop, but feel like a failure? Or continue, and possibly suffer a year-spoiling injury as a result?

  Curiously, in the South Downs that day, I decided on a fourth option. I continued running, but neither forwards nor backwards. I took the next trail which turned perpendicular to the way I had been going, and tried to imagine myself running in a large loop back to where I’d started from. It didn’t quite work out like that, and it was several hours and a few more moments of alarm before I eventually found my way back to the car. But now, as I continue to trudge alongside the River Trent, back towards the National Watersports Centre, towards my family and my big decision, it feels good to remember a positive outcome from a worrisome run.

  And if I’m looking for further positives, I am also able to state with total certainty that whatever I choose, I’m not going to freeze today.

  I’m on a boat, a beautiful wooden boat slicing through dark, calm waters. Around me sit several hundred cheerful souls also dressed in colourful kit. We’re being ferried across the breathless beauty of Derwentwater in Keswick to the start of a race. A half-marathon in the fells. My first official trail run. It proves to be a seminal morning.

  But by the way, how extremely cool is that? Meeting by the shores of a lake, on a glorious spring morning under blue skies, and being given your race briefing whilst scything serenely across the mirrored surface of one of England’s most delightful bodies of water. Derwentwater is three miles long, a mile wide, with several small islands in the centre and surrounded on all sides by glorious, wooded hills – or fells, as they’re known up here. It’s the Saturday morning of the annual Keswick Mountain Festival, and nobody can remember more pleasant weather to begin the weekend.

  Ironman world record holder Chrissie Wellington is also taking part in the race. We’re staying in the same hotel in fact, I saw her at breakfast this morning and I’ll also see her for an interview on the stage of the lakeside theatre later that afternoon. But now, as we’re dropped on the opposite shore and told how to follow the route markers on the 13.1-mile run back to the festival, I know I’m unlikely to see much of her during the race itself.

  And so it proves. Chrissie gallops off at the start and very few can keep pace. She’s one of only two runners not wearing bespoke trail running shoes (I’m the other) – and I do briefly wonder if I’m making a serious, kit-related error. I also find myself pondering, as we run anti-clockwise around the enticing waters, what I’ve let myself in for. For instance, when the seasoned fell runners on the boat talked about the ‘long, steep hills’ to come, what exactly did they mean? How much longer are they, and how much steeper, than my favourite, grassy slope up to Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park? And when they chatted about descents with a knowing look in their eye, what was that about? Also why were they forever casting surreptitious, disapproving glances at my road running shoes? And most of all, exactly how much longer than a flat half-marathon will this thing take?

  I’ve told my family to meet me at the finish in just over an hour and a half, allowing an extra five or ten minutes for the slopes. But from what people have been saying, I get the feeling I’m being optimistic. The only thing I know for sure, as the long column of runners turns away from the shore, crosses a stream and begins to climb a fell for the first time, is that none of us will be able to keep up with the other runner in road shoes. And in that at least, I am spot on.

  Chrissie did finish first – but to give you some idea of how hard and hilly the course was, her finishing time was around two hours. That’s from somebody who, after a 2.4-mile swim and a hard 112-mile bike ride, can run an entire marathon, double the distance, in 2:44. I ended up crossing the line in seventh place overall, the fourth male finisher, in about 2:15. And they were two and a quarter of the most demanding yet delightful hours I have ever experienced.

  I’ll admit the initial hill came as a shock. The idea that we’d be doing anything other than running for the entire race had never even crossed my mind. Then we reached the first steep section of the first of many fells, and I realised that walking was the only option. And not just walking. Having slowed to a walk, I was among the overwhelming majority who climbed the severest inclines whilst awkwardly leaning forwards, with hands pushing down on knees in a bid to force the legs to straighten against the gravity of the slope. It can feel a li
ttle dispiriting at first. There are no trees at the top. It’s too high.

  But when you crest the hill and begin jogging again, and you lift your gaze from the ground, suddenly the sublime radiance of the Lake District unfolds before your eyes. All of England seems to lie below, and you forget about your aching thighs, and you simply sniff the unpolluted air and listen to your breathing, you enjoy the sensation of soft earth or hard rocks under your (inappropriate) shoes – and all your senses seem alive, alert, and you realise that right now, in this moment, there’s nowhere else you’d rather be, and nothing else you’d rather be doing. The Dalai Lama might call it mindfulness.

  A short, dark-haired woman reaches the top of that first fell alongside me, and listens for a moment as I start eulogising about how perfect it all is. She cuts me short. ‘You’ll need to concentrate on the way down,’ she warns sternly. And then simply shoots off. She skips down the slope at startling speed. Arms wide apart, legs a blur of movement but her head stock still, eyes fixed permanently on a point about five metres ahead of her, she surges downwards, cascading over rocks and boulders as if they weren’t there. I myself am on the absolute limit of control, hurtling far too fast, almost falling, but by the time I’ve covered a hundred metres, she’s at least two hundred ahead of me. It’s extraordinary. Not particularly graceful, but purposeful, resolute – and thrilling to watch. I’ve since heard the fell runners’ mantra for descending, ‘Brakes off, brain off,’ and that’s exactly what I’m watching disappear into the distance.

  But at that moment, as she charges heroically downwards and I descend more haltingly, I become a complete convert to the trails. It’s a month after the London Marathon, and I’d been idly wondering, as I frequently did, whether to recommence my quest to dip under three hours for the distance, or whether, in the words of that slightly annoying song from the film Frozen, to Let It Go.

  Well, I decided as I almost tripped over a jagged bit of stone, what’s two minutes and 12 seconds between friends? Not even between friends. Between myself – and myself. On the one hand, it shouldn’t be too tricky to find 132 seconds over 26.2 miles. But on the other, who cares? It’s not like it’s the mythical two-hour barrier at stake here, the last great frontier yet to be crossed in athletics (some experts claim it can’t humanly be achieved, while others suggest it might take another half a century to lower the current world record by the necessary few minutes). But as for me, I’m just a bloke who runs for pleasure, and the stress of trying for a marathon PB, not to mention the pressure of race day itself, would risk taking all the fun out of my running again.

  So on top of that fell on that sublime spring Saturday morning, I come to a conclusion. From now on, I tell myself, forget the clock and think of yourself as a trail runner.

  Rory Coleman

  Running and life coach, and veteran of some 1,000 marathons and hundreds of ultras. Since starting running in 1994, he’s set nine world records and once ran all 1,275 miles from London to Lisbon to watch England at Euro2004. Only to see them promptly lose on penalties.

  I remember the day, the time, everything about my first run. It was the 5th of January 1994 and that was my Road to Damascus moment. I’d been thinking about that day for around six months, I just didn’t know exactly when it would be. I’d had really bad flu at Christmas and then a big blowout in the New Year on the booze. And on January 5th I just thought, right, I’m going to stop drinking, stop smoking, and I wanted to lose weight because I looked in the mirror, looked at this person staring back at me who was really overweight, and I just hated myself.

  I thought runners as a rule were slim and looked athletic and healthy, so I thought, well I’ll stand on the scales, and I was 15 stone, and I thought, I’ll go for a run. I did literally 100 paces, made all the classic mistakes, set off too quick, collapsed on the pavement with exhaustion, but I felt euphoric because I’d found my salvation. It was a real salvation story.

  When I came back and stood on the scales again, I was still 15 stone, but it didn’t matter because I knew that the next day, I’d do 200 steps, in the dark so no one could see me, in my work clothes, leather shoes, no specialist running gear, and the day after that, 400, and that it would just grow and grow. At the end of the month, I’d lost 3 stone and I could run 10 miles. In another two months’ time, I did a half-marathon. And I’d definitely found my thing.

  Nowadays I coach lots of other people to run marathons; I even get paid to run marathons.

  Yesterday for instance I did a race, 26.2 miles; I plugged in my music and I just went to a thousand different places, just trying to line up the dominoes of life. Life’s like a series of dominoes and when I run I’m trying to get things in order. Here are some of the things I was thinking about yesterday: one of my sons bought me a track day for Christmas and I remembered I hadn’t done anything with it, and it’s May already and I’m worried he’ll think I’m awful, so that came to mind and I decided I would buy him a track day too and then we’ll go and do it together. I was also thinking about baby Jack at home, a few months old, and wondering whether maybe I should be feeling guilty that I’m away and doing this run.

  But actually, this is what I do and this is my salvation. If I ever stopped doing it, maybe I’d go back to the person I was before. It’s almost like a barometer of where you are. Running is also very positive. I love that about it, rather than the hell-raising aspects of the so-and-so that I was before.

  The toughest race I’ve ever done was 145 miles along the Grand Union Canal from Birmingham to London. The bottom of my foot came off after 70 miles. Literally. It rained, I got trench-foot and it just flapped. I didn’t know much about endurance running back then and every step, it was just pain. It was just – what am I going to do? Should I finish or should I give up? As it happens I came third. I’ve never failed to finish any of the marathons I’ve ever set out to run. I’m a starter-completer.

  The thing about it is that I want to do it. Nobody’s forcing me to do it. The marathon I did yesterday, in Stratford, the Shakespeare Marathon, used to come past the house where I lived as a teenager and then into my twenties. I used to stand there with a pint of lager, smoking a B&H cigarette and watch the runners go by. In the early days of marathon running, they used to pass out on the lawn outside at 17 miles. We used to laugh at them. I’ve done that marathon ten times now and I love it.

  Physically, we’re absolutely designed to run, but it can help clear your head too. Lots of research has been done on this, but basically, what you do is you park things up. You park all your problems, your life, your mortgage, your overdraft, your wife, girlfriend, whatever it might be, and you put them in one place, and then for however long you’re running, all you’re thinking about is the next step. Literally. You’re not thinking about the ones that have gone before, so if you’re running a marathon at mile 10, you’re not thinking about what it was like at mile 5, you’re just thinking what’s happening next, you’re coming up to 11 miles. You’re living in that moment. And in that particular moment, everything’s fine. I’ve got to the stage now where I can just start knocking these marathons out and then I’m looking for the bigger fix, because I get longer in my own state. Things like running down a canal, 150 miles down a canal, where you get a day and a half to be in that state and actually you can’t remember what it was like before you were running that race. The time’s gone. All you’ve done, all you think about, is just being in this race.

  We all have a different interpretation of it. My wife doesn’t see anything when she’s running, apart from what’s ahead of her and the finish line. Me, I look around, I think about where I am, I run down the canal and I do some reading and find out how many litres of water there are in the locks. I go and research, I look at the tunnels and wow, 3,250 feet, that’s a long tunnel. All those things become important to me. I don’t know if anybody else gets what I get, but it doesn’t matter because for me, it’s about what I get. Running is a really personal, selfish journey that you’re on. Runni
ng 100 kilometres over the Ridgeway. Fantastic, because you can’t buy it. Now, if I’ve got endless pots of money, I can go and buy two Aston Martin DB5s. But actually I wouldn’t swap my run yesterday for five Aston Martins.

  19

  The Doors, Runnin’ Blue

  ‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 19

  ‘How’s Andy Murray getting on?’

  I’m back at Holme Pierpoint by now, back at the National Water Sports Centre where the crowds continue to enjoy the sunshine and where I’m about to make my judgement call – whether to carry on, or fall on my increasingly injured sword. Just as soon as I reach my family. And find out the latest from Wimbledon.

  ‘He’s serving for the title!’ I’m told by an excitable woman in a floral dress who’s watching the Centre Court drama unfold on her smartphone.

  I’m sorely tempted to stop and watch over her shoulder. After all, how often do you get a chance to see a Brit winning Wimbledon? This could be History with a capital H – in as little time as it takes to fire down four aces, Murray could become the first British man since Fred Perry in 1937 to win the singles title at Wimbledon. However, if I do pause now, I know I’ll never get started again, so I reluctantly turn away from the tennis and plod onwards.

  Towards the family.

  Towards the big decision.

  Scanning the crowds on my left, I notice a large multi-coloured Go Daddy! banner lovingly crafted out of several huge sheets of cardboard and drawn by my wonderful children. I’m surprised I hadn’t spotted it before, but as I look at it now it gives me an almighty boost. My kids grab a hand each and squeeze repeatedly in the accepted family code meaning ‘I love you’. And then Caroline charmingly starts trotting alongside me in her high wedge heels and suggests she completes the race instead of me. Please, she implores, I’ll do it, really! Even in heels! Or bare feet! Please stop running.