roads of stone

There’s a brick building at the end of the street where I grew up. I run past it every time I’m in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Today, it’s just an empty shell.

After more than seventy years, a new Royal Shakespeare Theatre is being built inside the framework of the old one.

It’s a constraining decision, architecturally - which limits the capacity and design of the new theatre, whilst still destroying the marvellous art deco foyer within. Just think - for £110 mm we could have had a Sydney Opera House instead of a revamped old blockhouse with only 1,000 seats - a third fewer than before.

Looking across the river now, I can see empty space where the heart of the building should be.

And in a way, that’s just how it was in 1970 when I saw my first Shakespeare play here - Peter Brook’s famous ‘White Box’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, famously staged inside a chasm of blank white walls.
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It’s not even 9 on Sunday morning, and already I’m out of my depth.

Looking out of my new goggles and through a bubble-strewn maelstrom of churning waters, I can see the floor of the pool falling away far beneath me, and just for a moment, I consider drowning.

The truth is, I’m into new territory here. Way out of my comfort zone.

I’d thought it only in concentration camps that arrivals were routinely branded, until the ruthlessly efficient blonde by the desk had smilingly scrawled numbers onto my flesh.

And a few minutes later, fearfully lined up in numerical order beside the pool, we’d all edged nervously forwards towards our fate. This was something different. We weren’t just starting a race – we were being processed.
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A familiar sense of anticipation, and a race at last. The last few weeks of training have gone by in a flash, and it’ll be good to see how I fare on the road again. After weeks and weeks of running into the dusk, at last a bright and sunny morning. I’m feeling pretty good today as I open the curtains and look out. Spring seems to have arrived at last, and I can feel it in my step as I bound down the stairs for a big breakfast.

My mother makes me a mountain of toast and marmite, the sun streaming now through the kitchen window of my youth. It’s a perfect day, and time to get ready. I pull on my favourite racing kit and try to imagine the race, how it will feel. I focus on the good feelings - calm, cool running through the early miles, feeling the distance kick in, but staying with it. For as long as it takes.
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Three months to go, exactly. Time for some real action, some solid workouts. Routine five milers and run-walking twelves just won’t cut it now, won’t get me to The Embankment in April, let alone to the finish line on The Mall.

I’m back in Stratford-upon-Avon today, the town where I grew up. Scene of my most recent marathon tableau, a grateful and joyous homecoming for the local boy.

The meticulously planned, yet widely unexpected metamorphosis from boyhood wimpishness and utter athletic indistinction to the cool, calm and rakishly collected 3:59 marathon runner.

Well, it looked good on paper, and in my dream issue of the Stratford Herald too, but reality had kicked in somewhere amongst the mists of marathon’s dreaded mile 20. “Run a dream marathon for 20 miles, and suffer like hell for the next 6.2“, as Shakespeare himself would have put it, in describing probably 90% of all the marathons that have ever been run, anywhere, by anyone and everyone, except for Paula Radcliffe.
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“O, how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day” - Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Sc. 3
Picture a fine and blustery English spring day in Stratford-upon- Avon. I’ve returned from Guildford to my home town for this weekend of processions marking the Shakespeare Birthday celebrations.

An East End boy, I moved to Warwickshire at the age of 9, and these streets I know so well are today lined with flags from over a hundred nations, flying briskly in the breeze.

“Now go we in content…” - As You Like It, Act 1, Sc. 3
Lining up outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in warm sunshine, reflecting on London and Chicago behind me, I am instantly humbled when my neighbour tells me this is his 126th marathon. Just the third for me and the day’s long road is frankly unimaginable at this moment, but soon we start and it all begins.
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Today saw a very pleasant four miles along the River Wey towpath on a sunny Spring afternoon. That’s more or less how I started running, almost six years ago, and the perfect final outing before my third (and reputedly last) marathon.

London, Chicago… and er, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Well, it’s my home town, where I grew up, and I know those lanes like the back of my hand. It’s the perfect place for my farewell from international athletics.
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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.

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