‘TO PUT IT SIMPLY, I NEEDED A RACE IN THE DIARY, A BIG ONE’ O
ne of the many challenges of running is that if you don’t keep a handle on it, you’ll find it can run away from you.
The other week, for instance, I merrily rocked up to Hampstead Heath for my first cross-country race of the season. My expectations were high. After a recent 10K PB, I was hopeful of a decent run. But, looking back, a reckoning was on the cards – work had relegated running to the edges of my mind and alarm bells were ringing. Hangover Mondays had made a comeback and the bathroom scales told a sorry tale. Despite all that evidence, my optimistic nature pointed to a PB – I was due a good run, I told myself. I would propel myself onwards with gusto. And so, like a lamb to the slaughter, I sprinted uphill for the first corner. For a while I held on to some kind of pace and then, slowly, inexorably, I didn’t. Waves of runners began to pass me, runners I might normally be expected to beat surged by. My legs felt hollow, and my breath was coming in short, hot bursts. I was a dead man running. It felt like I could be beaten by anybody who had the inclination to do so, and after a while it felt as if I wasn’t in the race at all. It was becoming clear that you can still have the odd run that is a living hell, a disintegration of both mind and body, a churning descent into misery and self-pity.
This was it, then – rock bottom. And yet it was, perhaps, the place I had to reach to put London behind me, because the truth is I had been coasting after my sub-three marathon back in April last year. Saying I was running for fun when, really, I was kidding myself. The real fun is preparing for a big event – your training targeted towards a goal and the transformation that occurs as a result. To have a big race in the diary is to be the hero in your own story. When aiming at a distant goal, each run becomes a building block. Scale is irrelevant – it might be a couch-to-5k, a marathon or a round-the-world epic – but without that structure it’s easy to feel adrift.
It’s no coincidence that this period of drift has coincided with my training diary reaching its end. A year mostly focused on training, lovingly collating the journey from 3:09 to 2:59 marathoner. But a new year gives us the opportunity to begin again. To put it simply, I needed a race in the diary, a big one.
The question is, of course, which one? It’s slightly complicated this year because I am part of the RW Pace Team in the London Marathon. I’ll be holding the four and-a-halfhour flag and am looking forward to leading, helping and, possibly, hindering those around me. I’m also aware that it’s going to be hard work. The last thing I want is to cramp up at the 22-mile mark and have to implore people to ‘Go on without me!’ This got me thinking, maybe there’s a window for an ultra after London, an event I could roll into off the back of all that marathon training.
Last week, at a gig, I was chatting to a female comedian whose partner was looking for a mate to do an ultra with in May. A couple of emails later and it’s in the diary – 48 miles of undulating coastal path. Instead of disembodied experiences, the long runs, intervals and races become pieces of a jigsaw I aim to finish at a certain date, in a certain place and within a certain time limit. The experience will change me, I will grow through it, in the training and on the day itself. It will give me that gloriously simple return that running gives, based purely on the effort I put in. Two days later, my new training diary arrives and I turn the page on a new chapter in my running life. Happy New Year, everyone, may you have many adventures this year. May your story be bold!