Greg Whyte OBE
Former Olympian, World and European Championship medallist. Now an acclaimed sports scientist who’s helped train celebrities to raise almost £20m for Comic Relief and Sports Relief through various extraordinary challenges.
I started off as a swimmer. As any swimmer will tell you, swimmers hate running and swimmers are no good at running. Ask a swimmer to run; it’s the funniest thing you’ll ever see. It’s classic.
So yes, I started off as a swimmer when I was six, and in those days you could compete when you were six. Even at that age I was doing county championships, and soon onto nationals. Then at the Olympic Games in 1976, when I was nine, there was a huge scandal involving modern pentathlon [swimming, shooting, equestrian, fencing and running]. A guy called Jim Fox was captain of the Great Britain team, and he caught a Russian, Boris Onishchenko, cheating in the fencing. Disonishchenko, as he was called in the papers, had modified his épée so he could register a hit without actually touching his opponent. The Soviets were thrown out and Britain went on to win gold. This was right at the height of the Cold War so it was a global story and pentathlon became a reasonably high-profile sport.
At that time, I began dabbling. That’s when I started running, really, because first it was biathlons, run–swim biathlons. Then you added shooting – triathlon – and then into tetrathlon with the fencing. The equestrian came last.
As a swimmer, my first run was misery, just misery. Think about it – swimmers have upper body strength, upper body power. And the lower body, the legs, you don’t really need them for swimming. You just don’t need any lower body. So running was always a struggle, and I mean mentally as much as physically. I was a great swimmer and I wasn’t a great runner, so the people I would mow down in the pool, I was unable to catch on the track.
At school I was one of those kids, I guess you’d expect, who was in every team, and that included cross country. Every kid, even the good runners, hated cross country because it was always in winter and it always seemed to be snowing or raining – and muddy. The enduring image I have from those races is thinking, ‘You know what? I am built for swimming.’ That’s why I spent such a long time, and a huge amount of work, on improving my running, trying to bring the run up to the level of the swim.
The reason I learned to love running, and still do, is because it is about me; it’s not necessarily about anybody else. And I’m running against myself. I’m not running against other people. Let’s say you do the London Marathon: there are 36,000 other people in the race. Unless you cross the line first in two hours, three minutes, you’re not going to win the race. So what that means is it’s almost like the pressure is off. You can just run your race and you’ve got a target time that is specific to you and nobody else.
I never listen to music. When I first started doing sport, the best that you could get was the Sony Walkman. If you can think back and remember, it was big and yellow and they claimed it was waterproof... Well, first of all the batteries used to run out really quickly, but also, when you’re running along, it used to jar the music so you couldn’t listen to anything. So I think I grew up and trained not listening to music and now I just can’t. If I’m in the gym doing a session and the music’s on, that’s fine.
But I just love to get out on the road, in the park; I love being in the mountains running. Just me, just me and the road, me and the grass, and I just run through the week in my mind, run through what’s going on, run through my plans. There’s almost a freedom to it. I can’t answer emails when I’m running. It’s brilliant.
And having just completed the Marathon des Sables, I’m now a swimmer who loves running.
25
Beyoncé, Run the World
‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 25
Grumpy emoji. I may be close enough to the finish, probably for the first time all day, to be able to practically guarantee that I’ll make it. But still, grumpy emoji. And if there is one, furious, steam coming out of non-existent ears emoji as well. Because I’ve just had a clear vision of the summer that lies ahead of me, and there’s not much running involved.
It’s been there as a constant, underlying concern throughout, the fact that I could well be doing myself some proper damage by continuing to run through this pain. But now that the finishing line is so close, that worry has crystallised into fact. Of course I’m giving myself an injury. Of course I won’t be able to run for a while. What have I been thinking?
As it turned out, I did get properly injured, my calf took weeks to recover and my knee never has. But the rest of the summer was surprisingly pleasant – I did lots of swimming, much of it in open water, which was (and is) completely ace. It was several months before I was able to run again. And even years later, that left knee still hurts most days, appallingly so if I twist or jar it. But I can usually now run on it – and that’s essentially all I ask of it.
So two miles to go, grumpy emoji, as well as the furious emoji with the steam. But yes, also happy emoji and relieved emoji with a great big grin because there are only two miles to go. Fifteen minutes or so. And as for any lasting injuries I’m self-inflicting – well, I’ll deal with them later.
Which is exactly what I did. And still am.
‘It’s like buying expensive speakers.’
I’m running slowly, carefully, contentedly, through a vast, undulating cornfield somewhere in Oxfordshire, Berkshire or Wiltshire (it’s a little hard to tell) and chatting amiably to somebody I’ve just met called Harry, a property developer and father of three from Camberwell in South London. The speaker analogy is his. I don’t understand it.
‘This ultra-marathon we’re running, and I’ve done a few before, it’s like buying expensive speakers. At low volume you can’t tell the difference. So if you want to find out about yourself, really see what you’re made of, you need it noisy. A short race is too quiet. But 100km is loud.’
Great analogy, I tell him.
‘You’re bound to hear better,’ replies Harry.
I tell him I seriously doubt it, though as it happens I do.
For the time being, however, I look forward to turning up the volume in a few hours’ time. In fact I’ve been looking forward to today, to my first ultra, for months. It’s the 100km Race to the Stones, 62 miles along the ancient Ridgeway, apparently the oldest path in Britain, ending at a 5,000-year-old stone circle in Avebury, just south of Swindon. The path wends its way from the Chilterns to the Wessex Downs through sun-speckled beech woods, abundant wildflower meadows and fields of swaying wheat. Chalky trails and woodland tracks pass Neolithic burial chambers, Bronze Age hill forts and the mammoth prehistoric figure of the White Horse, carved white into the lush green hill at Uffington. Traces of a hundred generations.
Super-coach Rory Coleman is also running and joins in the chat, warning Harry and me that we’re going too quickly and may pay for the pace later in the race. Caroline from Ireland wonders loudly what on earth she could have been thinking when she decided to enter. Somebody else pipes up that ‘the darkness’ as he calls it tends to descend somewhere between miles 30 and 35, and when it comes, lasts for about an hour before lifting. Remember that, he says, it does lift.
These are the early stages of my ultra-marathon debut, and I’m enjoying the fact that it all feels so relaxed. You’re not constantly under pressure like you are in a marathon; you’re not on your lactate threshold for the entire race, checking your watch, calculating your speed, fretting that miles are ticking by too slowly for you to achieve a PB. You can relax, breathe, look up, enjoy the scenery, chat, natter and make new friends. Unless, that is, you’re at the front trying to win the thing or break the course record – and I know a few who are. I dread to think what horrors they go through for such an extended period. It’s bad enough running whilst stressing for 26 miles and three hours. What must it be like for 62 miles and ten hours?
No such worries for me or my new buddies. There’s airy talk about the possibility of finishing in u
nder 12 hours, that apparently being a decent benchmark for this event. But it’s more a curiosity – I wonder if I’ll break 12 hours – than an actual target. So we plod onwards, at blissfully low intensity so nobody’s out of breath and chatting is easy. The mini-targets are the aid stations, strategically placed every six miles or so along the route, each offering a perfect array of sugary granola bars, deliciously salty crisps, chocolate, flapjacks, water, tea, coffee, flat cola and best of all, purple squash. I fall in love with the purple squash, especially with added salt. Later in the race, at aid station seven or eight when I’m ever so slightly delirious, I’ll loudly proclaim undying love to the purple squash and threaten to propose to it. I would have done so too, if I’d been physically able to get down on one knee after 50-odd miles of hilly running.
The company changes frequently as some runners linger for longer at the aid stations, or stop for random walking breaks; others pause to rummage in rucksacks and others still surge ahead. So as Rory pops to the loo, Caroline stops to stretch and Harry takes five to find some antacid tablets (his ‘secret weapons’), I find myself running on my own for the first time. It’s actually rather pleasant to find yourself almost 20 miles into a race, and not be hurting or struggling or gasping for breath. To be jogging along well within your comfort zone and simply enjoying the spectacular scenery. I pass through three villages each of which are utterly beautiful and I decide I must move there at once. In one, there’s a riverside pub looking so inviting and gorgeous it takes a surprisingly large amount of willpower to restrain myself from popping in for a pint.
The only nagging concern is that I’m running too slowly – it feels odd to be trundling along at this pace. But, as I keep reminding myself, my only concern is not a concern today: time is gloriously irrelevant.
Past full marathon distance, and I’m still feeling strong. I start chatting to someone who’s been running nearby for the past mile or two. It turns out he’s called Tim, lives in Winchester with his fiancée, and is also attempting his first ultra. We chat amiably for a few miles, and I’m impressed to discover that Tim has won, actually won, his local parkrun more often than he hasn’t (the best I’ve managed is fourth). He’s run five marathons before today but never as stand-alone races, always at the end of long triathlons. His best marathon time is 3:30, but extrapolating from his 5k PB, he’d probably manage around 2:45 if he ran 26.2 miles without swimming 2.4 and cycling 112 beforehand.
Tim and I are still chatting as we reach the extensive halfway area; we both refuse the hot pasta on offer in favour of a banana and more salty purple squash, and keep going. The halfway point is always a rewarding moment in an endurance event: it means you can stop counting up and start counting down to the finish. So says Tim anyway, repeatedly, as we find we’re still together as we jog towards the next aid station.
We don’t ever decide to run the rest of the race together, we don’t actually have that conversation, but over the course of the next few hours it becomes clear that we’re in this together. I’ve never previously attempted to complete a race with someone else before, and never thought I’d want to. But I soon discover that it works remarkably well. As the distance begins to bite, you’re not just inside your own head battling against those increasingly insistent negative thoughts. Instead, you’re part of a team with the common goal of reaching the same (prodigiously distant) finish. Through aid station six (of nine), and I’m feeling fantastic as Tim nips into the bushes for a wee whilst I slow to a walk and phone my wife. She’s busy with the kids but promises they’ll all come to see me at the finish. Tim looks in all sorts of pain when he tries to get going again, like he’s got cramp in both legs simultaneously, but somehow he pulls through.
I don’t struggle until after mile 50. But when the hurt hits, it hits hard. In my stomach, in my thighs, calves, ankles and feet. Every footstep becomes an achievement. But crucially, having learned my lesson during the marathon stage of the Outlaw triathlon, I do remember to eat. However little I may feel like doing so, I force myself to pile in to everything on offer at the aid stations: sweets, granola bars, crisps, chocolate and squash, lovely squash. Today, I’m determined not to ‘bonk’.
Bonking is what endurance athletes call running out of fuel. I bonked badly in Nottingham, quite apart from injuring my knee and calf. But not as dramatically as an Ironman triathlete called Chris Legh did, famously, in 1997. It was the World Championship in Hawaii and he was in fifth place just 50 yards from the finishing line. But suddenly he began staggering from side to side and try as he might, he simply couldn’t stay upright. He collapsed by the side of Ali’i Drive, unable even to crawl the final few feet to the finish. He was carried away, and had DNF next to his name in the results list. Did not finish. I’ve resolved that won’t happen to me.
So I eat, and eat. And eat. All day. And although my legs deteriorate badly in the final dozen miles or so, at least I still have some energy. By this time Tim seems to have got through the worst of his difficulties, so all I have to do is dig in and keep up. If I’d been on my own, I’d be tempted to walk a lot more than I do. But our agreement has always been to keep running, unless the gradient makes it counter-productive. At one point just after half way, we noticed we were barely gaining on another competitor who’d chosen to walk up a hill, but we were expending approximately double the energy by continuing to run. So when we see a steep enough slope, we walk. And we do find ourselves hoping, round every corner, for a sharp uphill. Because when you’re running beyond 40 or 50 miles, slowing to a walk is like stepping into a warm bath of loveliness. All the pain instantly drains from your legs and stomach, and it feels like you’re walking on air.
Starting to run again though, now that’s tough. Again, if I’d been alone, with only the blisters, fatigue, soreness, spasms and doubt for company, I’d have probably taken a lot longer to summon up the willpower to get going again each time.
We pass a guy called Rich who’s using this 62-mile race as his final training run for an upcoming 100-miler. That’s the gold standard of ultra running it seems, 100 miles, and in some races those who complete the distance in less than 24 hours earn themselves a commemorative belt buckle. Tim and I decide that our current torments are more than enough to be going on with, and the 100-mile brigade can frankly keep their belt buckles.
Through the final aid station where they’re offering the most delicious mini lemon tarts (yum, I’ll definitely have another one of those, please), and back onto the Ridgeway where suddenly the finishing line becomes tangible. No more aid stations blocking the way, just seven more miles of stony path, then an ancient stone circle and the blessed relief of being able to stop running and stay stopped.
I’d never seriously doubted that I would get to the end, so the only real questions were how well would I finish? And how quickly? This second question pops up a lot, despite the fact I’ve been absolutely insisting (and still am) that a hilly ultra-marathon is categorically not about time. But because we’re scheduled to finish a few minutes either side of the magical 12 hours, the barrier does seem to be occupying more and more conversation space the closer we get to the end. Tim has a support crew with him, in the shape of a pal he introduces to me as Big Foot (and who introduces himself to me as Marc). He’s following our progress by charting the position of Tim’s iPhone and driving to convenient points between aid stations to offer food, water and gels. I’ll tell you something: we could all do with a pal like Big Foot/Marc.
Anyway, as we trot out of the final aid station, Marc’s there too, warning that we’re unlikely to break 12 hours at the current rate of progress.
Good, I think, at least that’s one less thing to worry about.
Not good, says Tim, and speeds up.
So having spent 56 painful miles trying not to stress about time – indeed, having chosen a whole new type of running, having stepped up from road marathons to off-road ultras with the specific intention of Not Stressing About Time – I spend the entire final hour stressing
about time. And love it.
For the entire final section we barely slow from the brisk pace Tim’s setting and with two miles to go, we finally know we’ve cracked it. We’re definitely going to finish inside 12 hours. I call for a final, ceremonial walk up a short, mild hill to celebrate and Tim agrees. I suspect he knows the real reason I’m asking is that I simply can’t keep up without a quick rest. Then the dreadful sensation, for the final time, of starting to run again – and before long we’ve arrived at the ancient Avebury stone circle (which frankly we’re both too tired to appreciate), around a field, and then a long straight path to the blessed finishing line.
I remember back to London Marathon a few months earlier, when people were encouraged to cross the line holding hands in honour of Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen, joint winners of the inaugural race in 1981. I suggest to Tim that we do the same. Running nine hours with the same person does tend to make you go a bit sentimental. And it was either that, or race.
We finish in 64th, which in a total field of over 2,000 feels great for a first effort. Then a hot dinner which never tasted so good. And in the car home, despite the vociferous protestations of wife and children, removing my shoes, which was definitely the best feeling of all. Because in my rush to get to the start, in my usual flurry of last-minute organisation, I’d made two extremely basic errors. First, it was only the night before when I realised the race was run east to west, away from London. I’d previously believed we were running towards the capital, and arranged to be picked up accordingly. Getting to Swindon was a much bigger logistical challenge for my family (as well as proving a much harder race for the runners, into a robust prevailing wind for fully 60 miles).
But the big mistake came as I rushed out of the front door early that morning. I forgot to bring my running shoes. Two pairs to choose from, but both the new trail running shoes and the lavishly cushioned road runners sat uselessly in the cupboard under the stairs as I stared out of the window of a bus on the M40 muttering furiously to myself. I was going to have to run in what I was wearing: a pair of tatty, long-ago retired trainers which were no longer even good enough to wear to the bottom of the garden. They were so old, the soles were coming loose, so battered they were about as cushioned as a pair of brogues, and so worn, they no longer felt like they ever might have fit. I get through a lot of trainers, and I’d only kept these because they were black, and look better than the usual light grey when worn under jeans.
Don't Stop Me Now Page 21
