So much of life is about division. The London Marathon is a glorious antidote to all that
ICANNOT lay claim to any athletic prowess for my part in running the TCS London Marathon on Sunday.
It took me until narrow Street, in Limehouse, more than 15 miles into the run, to catch up with a man carrying a fridge on his back and when I got to the finish, I noticed I had been beaten to the line by a couple who had spent the entire race bent double in a camel costume.
I thought about taking some pride in a time that was a couple of minutes quicker than Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s new personal best but then I remembered that Sir Jim is 14 years my senior. He also went straight from the finish to Wembley to watch an Fa cup semi-final. I went straight from the finish to my hotel bed and did not move for several hours.
I still felt lucky when I woke up yesterday morning, though. Partly because I felt proud of myself for running 26.2 miles without stopping and, partly because I felt as if I had conquered a small encounter with what laughingly counts as physical adversity in a life where I have not had much of it to endure.
But most of all I felt lucky because running the London Marathon might make old knees creak and legs cramp and the brain protest but it also gives you the equivalent of the best seat in the house for one of the greatest and most life-affirming events you will ever witness.
I have run marathons — slowly — in new York, chicago and Berlin and even though they have all been wonderful in their own way, none of them got close to the atmosphere on the streets of our capital city on Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.
this is a sports fan talking, obviously, but I haven’t experienced an atmosphere in this country as positive and happy and exultant, an atmosphere of such togetherness, since the London olympics.
So much of modern life is about division and antipathy. the London Marathon is a glorious antidote to all that.
the level of support along the route, from Blackheath, down past the cutty Sark, through Southwark and the bedlam of the crowds on tower Bridge and round canary Wharf and home to the finish along the Embankment and through Parliament Square never seemed to drop.
the support that so many people give to so many strangers, the encouragement they shout, the Jelly Babies they hold out in the tupperware boxes they have brought from their homes, the orange segments they proffer and the signs that they hold — which often seem to centre on thinking of the beer you’ll be able to drink at the end — are incredibly uplifting.
Four hours running the London Marathon is the polar opposite of four hours spent on social media: It allows you to see the best of humanity. It’s four hours of watching people express their love for their friends and their families.
It’s four hours of seeing men and women paying tribute to people they have lost, to wives and daughters and fathers and sons and brothers and sisters and grandmothers and grandfathers.
to see people running to honour their memories and wanting to put themselves through an ordeal to cherish those memories is also incredibly uplifting.
I wasn’t short of support. Mainly because there was a guy called ollie, who seemed to know half of London, running a few yards behind me for a large part of the race and who had his name printed on his shirt.
It wasn’t quite on the same level as the support I thought I was getting the first year I took part in the Great north Run.
People screamed: ‘come on ollie’ at the top of their lungs for the first few miles and I remember feeling surprised that my football match reports had gained such an appreciative and enthusiastic audience in the north East.
It was only when we got past Gateshead that I turned around and saw pop star olly Murs plodding along a few metres behind me and waving to the crowds.
My mate, Paul, ran the first half of the race with me on Sunday, even though he could have gone much faster, and risked not making his target of four hours.
My elder daughter, who says London Marathon day is one her favourite days of the year because of all the joy she sees around her, had come to tower Bridge and, later, to the Embankment, to watch and so I got to hug her, which was my own highlight, obviously. almost every step I took, I saw spectators calling out to friends or relatives, screaming encouragement, runners running over to the side of the road, throwing their arms around their loved ones.
You’d need a heart of stone not to well up at some of the scenes of devotion that unfold in front of you.
My legs are still sore and my body still seems rather confused by the lasting effects of the battalions of salt tablets, sickly sweet gels, nurofen Plus pills, energy drinks and Jelly Babies that I shoved down my throat with increasing desperation in the second half of the race but that will pass.
not many passed Emile cairess, who became the second fastest British man ever to run the race, after Sir Mo Farah. a significant moment in an olympic year.
as one of the signs by the side of the road out on the Isle of Dogs, where the mind starts to whisper temptations of giving up, put it: ‘Pain is temporary, memories are forever.’