roads of stone » 2001-2002

115. A postcard from Greenwich Park

Roads — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:10:48 +0000

My winter’s journey of 18 weeks and 499 miles is over. Only four more days and 26 miles to go.

From the bleak beginnings of a frozen, snowy Christmastime in Scotland, through fifty Crawley lunchtimes and Guildford nightfalls I’ve wandered.

Along pretty Surrey towpaths and under pitch-black Houston skies, I waved those winter months goodbye.

I’ve seen the North Downs slopes from every side, gasped breathless in the Alps, and loped lazily down last weekend’s Warwickshire lanes and the Avon riverbank, too.

It’s been a long way, this year.

I’ve felt no real promise, honest aspiration, or even false pretence of quicker feet or swifter legs, this time.

Just run through winter, until you reach the spring, I said.

So I just got through it. And now I’m here.

I’d like to say I’ll run a fast race, this Sunday. But I won’t do that.

And yet – there’s so much more to take, from all of this. Because I know.

I know how that spring in my step will feel, along the early morning Camden pavement. I’ll share the tube with a score of lonely, anxious runners. I’ll smile and shiver on that overcrowded train, and tingle through the whole of that frightened hour in Greenwich. I’ll test myself, just by starting. I’ll do my best, through South London’s streets, and beam with joy, on Tower Bridge. I’ll despair through the depths of Docklands, and face those forty kilometres of unforgiving tarmac to crawl, somehow, atop The Embankment, if I can. And from there – I know I’ll struggle to make it home, in whatever style it takes.

It’s just one word – Endeavour. That’s what it’s all about, for me.

I’ve come this far. I’m glad I’ve made it.

There’s nothing more to ask, or say, not here. And nothing else that counts about my winter’s journey, not now.

Just run.

10. My best run of the year

Roads — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 18:04:46 +0000

Best run was the Bath Half Marathon in March. On laughably low training of around 12 miles per week and with just one 10 miler behind me, my plan was to start way too fast and try to hang on. Fresh undertrained legs made this strategy work and gave me a PR of 1:51:25.

My best training run was an Edinburgh 7 miler in early November sunshine.

My best running moment by far was taking in the view whilst crossing the Chicago River at Mile 11 on 13th October, out in front of the legendary ‘Bunny Ears’ 4:00 pace group. Soon to be followed by my worst running moment as those Bunny Ears disappeared into the distance at Mile 21 that same morning. No surprise then that my second best, and certainly my most thankful, running moment was a very thankful cruise down Columbus Drive some 50 eternally long minutes later….

9. Year end mileage – 2002 training distance

Roads — Tue, 31 Dec 2002 18:00:29 +0000

1 191 miles.

That’s the same as London to Rome, Italy (1 165 miles),
plus 26 miles in Chicago.

8. Lakeshore reflections – Chicago Marathon review

Roads — Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:54:08 +0000

Dear Andy
A marathon is such a huge experience. Afterwards, it is very hard to capture how you felt at the time, but it is so important to try. If someone asked you in a year’s time, you’d say, well it was great, or, it was fine, my knee got sore for a while but I made it.

But there is so much more to it than that, so many more moments which go to make up the marathon tapestry. You don’t want to forget them. Ever.

Chicago (sorry, “Shick-aggo”) has taken a long time to settle down for me. I don’t think it will, finally, for a long time. But in a way, it still continues. More than anything, the thought I share with you is that the marathon is a journey. It’s one I am so glad I made.

I can’t quite pin down the day that the idea of running Chicago came to me. The plan had always had NYC written on it. Partly my own apathy in not registering for the ballot in time, wanting to avoid the hassle, and being reluctant to run for charity this time after it had formed such a huge part of my London effort.

Where Chicago came from, though, I’m not exactly sure. Maybe somewhere amongst all that indiscriminate marathon reading I had read about a fast, flat course. At the time of London this year, I was still wavering. Chicago had seemed a bit of a substitute, perhaps a second best. But by the time I bought “Marathon” at the end of May, I was definitely en route to Chicago. Then after the Commonwealth Games, when I heard that Paula was running, I knew it was going to become the race of a lifetime. I was going to run in a world record marathon.

Chicago’s journey took me from a gentle spring into a long summer of soggy, and then gradually dustier towpath and downland runs. Hell, I ran from Guildford to Sunbury three weekends out of five. I found a lot of new paths around my home. Somewhere in the middle, I turned a relaxing Mediterranean holiday into the toughest of torturing training camps. It was all worth it. As you say, the balance in the end was perfectly matched.

It’s hard to think of a more emotional experience in putting yourself to the test amidst thirty thousand others, whilst being cheered on by a million people amidst one of the truly great cities of the world. Chicago the city was so much more than I had expected. The people were more friendly and the place more relaxed – so much less in your face than New York was when I visited twenty years ago. But I didn’t run then, of course, and the anticipation, as well as the community of the race and of runners made a big difference.

It was a marvellously fresh and sunny blue morning, but even then I could write an entire volume about those last six miles in Chicago. The end of a four month marathon journey, 518 training miles, and 4 000 more from home. I’d come so far and there were just six short miles to the finish.

Yet that hour was one of the longest I have ever lived. A blurred yet razor-sharp turmoil of pain, anguish, determination, guts, disappointment, sheer will, bloody-mindedness, mental and physical weakness, and yet still somehow elation and triumph at the end of it all.

“If you want to run, then run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon”. Emil Zatopek’s famous quote hit it right on. It’s like a whole life compressed into a few hours. It’s the human condition writ large.

I said ‘Never again’, over and over. I meant it, I really meant it. Yet even as I denied it, deep down I knew that somewhere, some place, some time, I would probably prove myself wrong. And that’s why, in a little over five months from today, in Stratford-upon-Avon, I’m going to do just that.

7. What started it all ?

Roads — Thu, 14 Nov 2002 18:47:25 +0000

Time.

My first wife died of breast cancer in 1997. The kids were very young, and I couldn’t find time to play golf for four hours any more. But I could find time for a half hour’s run at lunchtime.

I gradually increased my mileage and decided to run London in 2001 to mark my 40th birthday and to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. I raised £7,600, fourth highest in the UK.

6. Edinburgh – Scotland’s finest

Roads — Wed, 13 Nov 2002 18:39:00 +0000

This weekend saw me take an hour’s flight north from London to visit relatives in Edinburgh. After heavy rain on Saturday night, the streets were still wet and grey as I set off from Marchmont early the next morning. It was braw and briskly chilly in the Scottish capital for a soft southerner like me, but gradually I warmed up running on a leaf-strewn Jawbone Walk and Meadow Walk into the Old Town.

Some hardy tourists had ventured out onto the Royal Mile and I decided to follow them up Lawnmarket to reach Edinburgh Castle. The effort is rewarded by fantastic views across to Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat, the hill high above the city forever linked with Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell and the film ‘Chariots of Fire’.

Suitably inspired, I headed down The Mound and onto Princes Street. With the clouds lifting to reveal a cobalt blue sky, and the trees lit almost from beneath with that intensest of yellows you only see in a northern November, it wasn’t hard to see why this is famed as one of the most beautiful main streets in the world. The sound of bagpipes was emerging from Waverley Gardens as old Scots and old soldiers were beginning to assemble for Remembrance Sunday. The skirl faded slowly as I turned to run back along George Street and north onto Frederick Street.

Twenty minutes into the run and tearing along far faster than on any outing for a month, I zoomed past St Stephen’s Church down to Falshaw Bridge and The Colonies. These beautiful terraces of stone cottages are set in a bend of the Water of Leith, the fast flowing stream which rips through Edinburgh on its way to the Firth of Forth. A mile later along the slightly soggy riverside path and I turned slowly homewards.

The reason for that high energy burst became rapidly clear when Dundas Street forged out a tough, straight and solidly skyward mile – so much more time to admire the Georgian stone terraces travelling this way. ‘Hills are good for mental strength’ was Hal’s mystical mantra to accompany this, like many another of my uphill struggles. Panted up to Queen’s Street, which I now know as the one which looks like the top but isn’t quite. Waited for a red pedestrian light for a few shameful seconds, despite an abundant lack of traffic, and then back at last onto George Street, a fast flat and then downhill to the Walter Scott Memorial and the poppy display alongside.

The castle glowered greyly across at me again, and a short moment of madness later I was at the foot of Castle Hill and embarking on 200′ of zigzag path up the North Face. This time Hal’s mantra faded faster into a red mist somewhere well below the top, before I launched myself crazily across the summit square, past the tartan and fudge shops and down the treacherous Castle Wynd on the other side.

A far easier lope brought me back across The Meadows and into Marchmont again. Seventy minutes, must have been over seven miles and a couple of stomping hills in the midst of by far my longest run since Chicago.

As for that next marathon – well, naturally I’m almost convincing myself that this is part of a long, relaxed recovery. Naturally too, I’m tempted now to run a hilly Edinburgh on 15th June. Yet inside I already know for certain that 27th April will be busy in Stratford-upon-Avon …

5. La vida latina – from Houston to Mexico

Roads — Fri, 25 Oct 2002 18:52:01 +0000

It was a stiff and increasingly hungry flight which I took from O’Hare that evening after the Chicago Marathon. Elation and relief surrounded me all across the dark expanses and sparse city lights of the Mid West, as I peered down through ten kilometres of space at a blue-lit arch of St Louis far below.

And after the sensory and emotional overload of experiencing, and even participating in, one of the greatest sporting events of the world set against the brilliantly-lit backdrop of a Chicago autumn skyline, it was an exhausted and fretfully REM-riven night which I spent in the softest and deepest pillows of the Westinn Houston Galleria.

I spent three days there, shivering in frozen air-conditioned conference rooms, marvelling at the sanitised and completely artifical existence of the inhabitants in the fattest city on earth. A place where you could enjoy the cuisine of almost every nation of the world, although the restaurants supplying this thoughtul service offered only a theme-parked concoction of that nation’s essential characteristics, each of them sheltering behind a uniformly large and tedious Houston parking lot set beside a long and gaudy strip. The whimsical selection of different meals and countries involved an international trip lasting just a few seconds of gas-guzzling airconditioned driving in the SUV. Culinary cosmopolitanism set in a cultural vacuum.

From deepest Texas we departed on a field-trip to Mexico, just a one hour flight to Monterrey and yet a million miles away in every important aspect.

Our field trip organisers had ‘thoughtfully’ put us up in the airport Marriott, where we could be provided with the ‘essential comforts and sheltered from unnecessary risks’. It was far out of town and as un-Mexican as you can imagine. Before the unwelcome onset of a third evening of sterile poolside chickenwings, I led a breakaway group determined to see something of the city, suggesting rebelliously that having travelled a third of the way across the world to get there, we should make the effort to see something of Mexico’s third city whilst we were in the vicinity. ‘But there’s nothing to see in Monterrey’, came the reply. ‘It’s dangerous, and you won’t feel comfortable.’

A twenty minute taxi-ride later, we stepped out into the dusk of the largest square in Latin America. A beautiful white Carmelite cathedral was throwing open its doors to debouch a stream of elegantly dinner-jacketed and ball-gowned concert-goers just emerging from a Handel recital, whilst across the modernistic and almost communistic Gran Plaza, a rotating searchlight beam was lighting up the darkening sky atop a blackly scary 200′ high monolith.

We headed into the backstreets, needlessly wary at first, to find a largely deserted selection of sumptuous velvet-lined art bars and dubiously exciting night clubs. It was still far too early for the locals, so we whiled away our time eating tortillas in a tacky tacos joint frequented by tee-shirted and authentically moustachioed Mexican youths, before finding an atmospheric flamenco bar with heavenly live music and a heavily scented atmosphere. The cuba libres were más enormes que nunca, and it was clear that we were sampling life in one of its more exuberant moments, a life of vibrancy and raw reality encompassing cuatro cientos milliones (400 million people) of the Hispanic world, and yet ridiculously unsampled and ludicrously feared by the supposedly wealthier and more cultured neighbours just a few hundred kilometres to the north.

‘But there’s nothing to see in Monterrey’ became the ironic watchword for the rest of the trip.

Out in the field of the north Mexican semi-desert, we found simple hospitality in earth-floored village grocery stores and roadside truckstops, where entire families slept the night on blankets laid out in the back after sunset. In one bar, a beautiful teenage girl was smilingly serving Sol beer whilst playing joyfully with her toddler son and a new-born lamb, in a scene of the most abject poverty and yet the most manifest humanity.

Nearby, the famous climbing cliffs at Hidalgo soared greyly into the clouds with a grace and drama largely unnoticed by the locals and for ever unexperienced by the absent tourist hordes, whilst a few of the world’s most expert climbers laconically tested out their moves on the lower faces, waiting for the weather to lift.

Looking back, it was an incredibly invigorating and thought-provoking way to end that marathon journey, a passage which had started to unfold amongst familar pre-race apprehension and the anticipation of a descent over Lake Michigan just ten days or so before. It was difficult to say then, and yet so easy to identify now, just which part of the journey had affected me more.

4. GO British ! Chicago Marathon 2002

Roads — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:43:32 +0000

We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got
‘Cause it doesn’t make a difference
If we make it or not
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot
For love – we’ll give it a shot

Whooah, we’re half way there
Livin’ on a prayer
Take my hand and we’ll make it – I swear
Livin’ on a prayer
Bon Jovi – August 1986

“4:18 in London and trying to crack four hours in Chicago – it’ll be tough, but I’m going to have the fun of my life trying !” – so I wrote last month.

Fantastic trip from London. Fly in over Lake Michigan, which is so much bigger than I expected. Wake up on Friday morning in time for a stroll amidst the most spectacular, bluest of dawns lighting up the skyscrapers. Call friends and family from the Lakeshore Path. Two hours later and I’m still strolling, wandering across the river bridge on North Michigan Avenue, captivated by the downtown architecture.

Decide to find the start line and there I meet Steve Cram and a camera crew at the Buckingham Fountain. Steve is recording pre-race coverage for the BBC. I shake the hand of this Olympic silver medallist, World Champion, two time European Champion and world record holder at both the mile and 1500 metres – and I tell him my goal is 4 hours. He smiles, but strangely declines my offer of a free interview.

Two more hours and I’m still walking, past Burnham Harbour and looking for the infamous hill into Grant Park at 25.7 miles. It looks fine from here. Head back to the hotel to put my feet up, then to the Expo. The purple line is closed so I end up walking from East Ohio to 12th Street to pick up the ‘El. It’s way too far and I have walked about 12 miles today. Never do this two days before a marathon. Stroll around the exhibition, and on the bus home I meet a runner from the Ecuador national team.

I can still make Hal Higdon’s V-Team pre-race party, so I hail a taxi for the Hilton. But the driver tells me there are three Hiltons. At first I think I’ve got the wrong one, but eventually I find the runners. I’m introduced to a fellow Brit, who turns out to be the Chicago champion of 1996. Then I meet Barb, Scott, Nels, Dominique, Amanda, David, Phil, Carrie, Christian and many more. It’s turning into quite a memorable day.

On Saturday I stroll in Lincoln Park. I limit the walking to five miles today. The weather forecast looks brutal. As the sky turns black I join 10,000 other runners buying the last five pairs of gloves in Niketown. Eat great pasta just off East Ohio. Sleep very little.

Sunday morning and the breakfast buffet is closed. Pay $ 20 for two bowls of a la carte porage which will fuel me for the next 6 hours. I ask for a banana and the waiter refuses. I tell him it’s included in the $ 20.

Lock myself out of my hotel room at 6.40am. Nightmare come true, but luckily Security let me in. It’s cold so I take a fleece down to the start. Big mistake – just 35 minutes to go and the gear check queue is 30 minutes long, with the tent ludicrously sited right across the main path from city to start line. With one minute left and rising panic I make it into the start chute. Find the 4 hours team just after the gun.

It takes us 11 minutes to reach the line, but we jog promisingly from the start. The first corner is pure chaos, and by the second and third I realise that these streets are just too narrow for this many runners. In London I’d been chased through Greenwich by a guy in a rhino suit, but at least there they have three starts which merge after 3 miles – it works.

The crowds are fantastic. “Go, runners”, “Great job, marathoners” – these are words of encouragement which I will never forget. But by four miles we’re way off the pace. I remember now that slow runners only run in threes, and always line abreast. I try not to weave, but hey, there’s only three and a half hours left.

40 seconds to water a tree in Lincoln Park, and I see the 4:05 group go past. Catch the pace team Bunny Ears around Mile 8 but we’re still two minutes behind. Approaching downtown, suddenly it opens up in front of me as we pass a Radio Shack around mile 10, and I decide to take my one chance. Negative splits are too tough when you’re 6’3″.

I quickly find the flow, and my mood soars with the skyline. Approaching the river at Mile 11 and I’m only a minute down. There’s a great view of the city and from in the depths of me I hear a loud cry “Shick-aggo !” It feels so good that I shout it again.

I ease off just a little and pace-leaders Melissa and co. are with me again. At mile 13.1 there’s a rock band playing Bon Jovi – “Whoa, we’re halfway there, whoa whoa, we’re livin’ on a prayer”. Right enough, and by mile 14 we’re exactly on pace at last. We’re heading east again towards the deepest of concrete canyons, with the helicopters circling over Paula ahead, and I feel this dream is so close I can almost touch it now.

Someone gives me an orange slice at 15. The mile posts are getting further apart, I notice, and there’s a rough patch around #16. Try to relax, play the mind games and get back on track. 18 miles and there’s a gel stop crazily next to a corner. The field stops stone dead for ten seconds. I take a long drink and lose 20 seconds on the pace team. Grit hard and somehow I’m on their tail once more at mile 19.

I’ve a Union Jack flag on my tee-shirt. “GO, BRITISH !” screams a woman on the kerb at mile 20, which I reach just 15 seconds behind. 3:03 something, and suddenly I realise there’s still 57 minutes of this pain left. It’s really hurting, and as the energy drains I see the pace boards ease away, first 50 yards, then 100, then 200 and I’m in trouble. Keep grinding. I’ve worked too long and too hard to give up this dream without a fight. But I start to feel sick and realise there’s nowhere to go but backwards now.

Decide to walk a minute at mile 23. If I can regroup and rip three eight minute miles I can still get inside four hours. Yeah, right ! The tank is all empty, so I grimace and tear the 4:00 sheet from my back in disgust. The last three miles aren’t pretty. A blank and soulless freeway, then a truly miserable tunnel. At last a sign saying one mile to go. I can run that far, surely. Finally the 4:05 group go past, just as I’m climbing the Matterhorn which has become the ramp into Grant Park.

Then it’s a blur of grandstands, screaming crowds, a huge screen which somehow I can’t bear to watch, and the line rushes over me. 4:05:43. It’s close enough for this time. A girl gives me the medal. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world at this moment, and she’s quite surprised when I kiss her.

It’s a slow walk back to the hotel, and I have only five minutes to shower before check out. Sit in the lobby, writing my race postcards. Same message on each. “This is a great marathon in a great city, and like all of them it only really starts after 20 miles”.

Suddenly it’s 3pm and I have a flight at 6. I walk down East Ohio to Grand for the last time, catch the ‘El to O’Hare. The bag is heavy and I’m dog tired. There’s a lot more walking. But the medal is still round my neck and I don’t care. The flight is late and in the space of an hour I eat $40 of pizza and ice cream, and drink that first beer.

Ten days on business in Houston, Mexico, and Scotland and at last I’m home. Will there be a next marathon ? Maybe there will, and maybe somewhere smaller. Anyone fancy the Shakespeare Marathon in Stratford-upon-Avon one day ? At thirteen miles I want to be a minute ahead next time, and better still two minutes up at twenty.

So how was Chicago ? Yes, it was tough, and I had the fun of my life. GO, British !

3. Running in Shakespeare Country

Roads — Mon, 30 Sep 2002 18:00:29 +0000

I left my familiar tracks high on the Chalk of the Surrey Hills to find my 12 miler yesterday in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Started along the banks of the River Avon, then heading west into rural Warwickshire along The Greenway, following part of the route for the Shakespeare Marathon. We are having fabulous weather here in the UK – almost no rain for the whole of September – and the mist was still rising as I set out across the floodplain by Stratford racecourse. Views of the Cotswolds and Bredon Hill in the distance, with the leaves just showing a faint tinge of yellow.

Crossed the river again by The Four Alls pub in Welford-on-Avon before turning homeward in glorious autumn sunshine. Swans, canal boats and rowers were out in force alongside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre by the time I got back to town.

Spent a relaxing (nerve-wracked) afternoon with the golf coverage from The Belfry nearby. Back home in Guildford today to enjoy a very easy four miles along the River Wey towpath with friends whilst discussing the fine example set by both US and European teams. Truly a pinnacle of international sport. Sam Ryder himself was once captain of Stratford Golf Club and he would have been proud.

4:18 in London 2001 and just two weeks from trying to crack four hours in Chicago – it’ll be tough, but like an Azinger bunker shot or an Irish putt on the 18th, I’m going to have the fun of my life trying to make it happen !

2. My first marathon: London 2001

Roads — Thu, 08 Aug 2002 17:00:38 +0000

Why would I ever want to run a marathon ?

I had never really been a runner. At school, I had been a very poor athlete, always second-last on treks around the playing fields, although I did do cross-country for a season or two as a way of escaping the frozen rugby pitch. Strangely I was always happier running seven miles than four, but I never knew why. I just ran as slowly as I could, for as long as I could.

Tennis was my sport until the age of 12, and then I took up golf, playing at representative level right through my school and university years. For a short period as an undergraduate I found myself rowing in the College 2nd VIII, and I would reluctantly run down to the river with the rest of the crew. Once or twice I even went for a weekend run afterwards.As a postgraduate, I spent long periods doing fieldwork abroad, several times finding myself running hot desert roads in the South African Karoo, and again along dusty tracks on summer evenings in Northern Spain.

Soon after, I moved to Switzerland, and enjoyed some very occasional but happy runs along the banks of the River Aare in Bern, a tough four mile hilly run, with some walking involved up the stiff slope up to the Rosengarten above the Bear Pit. But running was still more of an aberration than a regular habit.

Into my thirties, and back in England, one autumn I decided I needed to get fit for winter ski-ing trips, and set myself to run around the sports field opposite my house on a frosty morning. In some ways it was a return to the adventures of my youth. But it was a very short-lived attempt at getting fit, since on the second outing I bruised my heel, and could hardly walk before heading for the snow, let alone train for it.

After the family arrived in 1994, there was even less time or inclination to go running. Any rare and precious spare moments simply had to be spent on the golf course. But life circumstances changed quickly, and suddenly even that was out of the question. I became very unfit, and very grumpy.

Suddenly, one gloriously sunny day in June 1997 saw me stuck in front of a computer screen on a training course for eight hours at a stretch, and I just had to get outdoors. I drove home and pulled on an old pair of trainers, headed back across that sports field and up Ottershaw’s Ether Hill beyond. Those fourteen minutes in the forest were a desperately breathless affair, probably the slowest mile and a quarter I have ever run. But they marked the realisation that I could run for survival and for pleasure, if that was what you could call it.

By the end of July, I was running three miles, up to three times a week. My strategy then was simply to run as slowly as I could, for as long as I could. Not much had changed after all, since my hopeless cross-country days at school – or had it ?

After such unpromising beginnings, my running did progress, ever so slowly. I had watched the first ever London Marathon on TV as a student in 1981. Chris Brasher had set it up after his visit to the New York race. I had read his report in the Sunday papers on his return, where he described a living stream of humanity and inspiration.

We all knew Chris Brasher – famous as a journalist and also as one of the pacemakers for Roger Bannister during his four minute mile in 1954. At one time I had lived close to the historic track in Oxford where that landmark was achieved, and I always was a keen follower of athletics. I dreamed, but never really imagined, that I might one day run a marathon.

Over the next three years, gradually I found myself able to run further. 8 miles could be achieved, without too many problems. The idea began to plant itself in my brain, to run a marathon to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, and to fulfill a life’s ambition at the same time. I secured a place in the 2001 London Marathon, and began training.

Nine miles through a dark, rainy Christmas Eve saw me well on my way. It took me three failed attempts before I finally broke the ten mile barrier. Running the same loop along the Thames towpath from Chertsey to Staines, I just kept falling apart at the same place. Eventually, now worryingly late on into February, I hit on the idea of reversing my route. It worked – since I was fresh at the usual point of exhaustion, and at the collapsing distance I was in a place where I was usually fresh. It was kidology of the highest order, but it worked. That March, I ran my first ever race. The Banbury 15 miles, through snow and hills of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. And I wasn’t (quite) last.

Two months later and I was ready, if apprehensive, as I came to the start line in Greenwich. My strategy for the day was simply to run as slowly as I could, for as long as I could. Nothing had really changed after all, even now. But I did complete that race, that wonderful event which had always been one of my favourite sporting spectacles, in 4:18:56. I would gladly have paid all of the money I raised for charity myself, just for the experience of completing the race. It was simply one of the proudest achievements of my life. I knew I would never want to, or need to, run another marathon again….

One hot evening in Greece later that summer, I ran with someone who told me about New York. “You’ve got to run a US marathon,” he said. I thought about it, long and hard. Too long. New York was full, when eventually I tried to register the following Spring. Somewhere I had read something about Chicago, and I had the thought that maybe it might be worth a try. I entered in May, booked a few days leave, and cashed in those air miles. I ran through a long hot summer in England, and up steep Cretan hills through tiring dawns and searing late afternoons.

Just a month before, I was told I was required in Houston on business that same marathon weekend, and then onto Mexico. It was almost a disaster, but American Airlines were sympathetic, and somehow I rigged the flights.

So, with a five-hundred mile summer behind us, and the excitement of another race ahead, let’s pick up the story in late 2002, as emerging British hopefuls roadsofstone and Paula Radcliffe are each preparing for their first assault on a major American marathon.

Chicago !