The Messenger
Broadcaster, author and serial marathon runner Vassos Alexander spreads the word on the magic of the marathon
Broadcaster Vassos Alexander on his deep love of marathons
Inspired by Pheidippides, the original marathon messenger, and enriched by his own marathon journey, the broadcaster believes everyone should taste the magic of what he describes as our sport’s holy grail. Alexander is well qualified to rhapsodise about the marathon’s life-changing power: though he came to running relatively late, he’s run the distance multiple times, is the proud owner of a marathon PB that starts with the number ‘2’ and, more importantly, he has savoured the transformative effects of going the distance. He may now sit at the more accomplished end of the finisher’s scale, but he believes that everyone has a marathon in them. He’s even written a book – How
to Run a Marathon – to help people find their way. We caught up with him to learn why a marathon start line is his favourite place in the world, fearing the Wall and the motivational power of not wearing underwear.
RUNNER’S WORLD Do you believe the marathon is an achievable goal for all?
VASSOS ALEXANDER ‘I can pretty much guarantee that everybody has got a marathon in them. It’s not easy –
I’m not saying that everyone’s got an easy marathon in them – but the fact of it being difficult is sort of the point of it. It’s such a lovely challenge.
‘There are almost no exceptions. If you’re already a runner, if you can get yourself round a parkrun – run, jog or run-walk – then you can, with some training, attempt and finish a marathon.
‘And it’s very egalitarian, isn’t it? You’d rather be a well-trained, poor student living in a bedsit on baked beans than a billionaire who hasn’t done the training. It’s quite simple: train hard enough and you will succeed in running the marathon.’
RW You’ve mentioned that your heritage played a part in the initial appeal of the marathon for you…
VA ‘I’m Greek, so above and beyond the fact that it is the
VASSOS ALEXANDER IS A MAN WITH A MESSAGE. AS THE WORLD OF RACING FINALLY LOOKS TO BE OPENING UP TO US AGAIN, HE FEELS ONE DISTANCE, ABOVE ALL OTHERS, DESERVES ITS PLACE IN YOUR DIARY.
holy grail of distance running, I’ve always had, perhaps, a little more of a hankering to do it than other runners. It’s because of the history of the marathon and Pheidippides making that desperate dash from the battle scene in Marathon back to Athens with his message for the Athenians.
‘We all know a bit of time pressure in races, but this was seriously urgent, because the invading Persians were probably going to win that battle and so the people back in Athens were going to abandon the city and head for the hills, as they definitely didn’t want to be under Persian rule. So Pheidippides needed to get the message back quickly and he did. It didn’t end well for him [he dropped dead after his final endeavour], but he’d had a bit of a week of it – he’d run 300 miles earlier to Sparta and back and probably fought in the battle, too – so don’t let that put you off!’
VA ‘My first one was Barcelona. I loved the atmosphere. I loved the start – that nervous energy on the start line. I loved the fact that after 18 miles my legs said, “No further!” And then we ran past the doorway of the hotel where my cousin and I were staying that weekend, and I was so desperate to just stop running and start running a bath and have a beer, but I carried on, and I loved the sense of achievement. The sense of achievement at the end of your first marathon is one of the great moments in life, I think. And the simple fact is this: when you’ve got a marathon finisher’s medal around your neck, then, from that moment and for the rest of your life, you are a marathon runner – you have run a marathon and that’s a massive thing to be able to pat yourself on the back for.’
VA ‘I think that some people believe everyone on the start line of a marathon is Mo Farah or Eliud Kipchoge, or Brigid Kosgei or Paula Radcliffe. And, of course, that’s absolutely not the case – there are all shapes and sizes and colours and creeds on a marathon start line, and it’s a really welcoming place. It’s not some exclusive club.
‘I remember having breakfast before that first marathon in Barcelona; I was looking around and I was so intimidated by everyone. Obviously, everyone there at 5am was there to run the marathon that day and I thought, “Oh my goodness, they’re all so fit and toned and athletic.” Then you start running and you realise that we’re all the same and it’s us against the distance, it’s not you against anyone else. So I would say that if the people – the other runners – are putting you off doing a marathon, then forget that, because it’s a really welcoming place. In fact, I think the start of a marathon is my favourite place in the world. The thing that I’m looking forward to most when this pandemic is finally over is just being in a start pen and getting that feeling of nervous excitement all around me, because you really feed off that energy.’ •
What do you think is people’s biggest
RW misconception about the marathon?
RW And were you hooked immediately?
RW Are you a pre-race chatterbox?
VA ‘Absolutely! If you see me anywhere near the start line, avoid me at all costs because I cannot shut up! Actually, avoid me for the first five to 10 miles…’
VA ‘I did the virtual London Marathon last October. It was on the South Downs on a stormy kind of day and very early in the morning because I wanted to end with the breakfast buffet at the hotel where we were staying. And it was kind of lovely because you knew that other people all over the country and all over the world were doing the same thing at the same time. But I missed them! I wanted to be with them, I wanted to be surrounded by them. I didn’t want the occasional car to toot its horn to show support – or possibly to tell me to get out of the road – I wanted five deep at the sides of the road on Embankment, like they are in London. I wanted those tidal waves of good wishes, I wanted all the silly costumes you get in Greenwich Park. I wanted the whole hoopla.
‘I fully respect what people have achieved in virtual marathons, though. My friend Brett, whose marathon PB is 3:05, did a marathon on his own, one Sunday morning just randomly round the streets where he lives, and he finished in 3:11. And I have a lot of respect for that because with no adrenaline, no aid stations, no cheering crowds, no nothing, to run something close to your best under those circumstances is enormously admirable, but I just don’t have that. To me, a virtual marathon is like sport without crowds – it’s a little bit vanilla. Well, it’s a lot vanilla.’
VA ‘Forget the idea that it’s easy. It’s definitely not. But it wouldn’t be worth doing if it was. On that start line in
While we’ve been unable to have those start-line
RW experiences in real life, have you found any magic in virtual races?
How would you answer those who say, ‘You make
RW it sound easy, but I’m not a real runner, I could never do a marathon’?
Barcelona I felt, “I’m not a real runner”, unlike everybody surrounding me with their GPS watches and their hi-tech shorts. I saw some people changing their shoes on the start line because they wouldn’t want to walk to the line in the same shoes they were running in, and that concept was so alien to me. I thought, “Oh my God, who are these people? What is this that I have stumbled into?”. I felt like the least deserving person of a bib number, but we are all “real runners”. Whether you can go a mile or three miles, or a half marathon, we are all on a journey. None of us are going to break world records or win gold medals, but that’s not the point. That’s not why we do it. We do it for the sheer joy. And for the fact that it is hard – but we come through it.’
RW How about the Wall? Anything to fear there?
VA ‘Oh yeah, fear the Wall. Definitely fear the Wall. The Wall has a capital W, doesn’t it?
‘I know the Wall well. In my first Ironman triathlon I hit it hard – I ran out of energy, I ran out of glycogen for my muscles and my head went – just before the start of the marathon. So the Wall for me that day was 26.2 miles long. It took me almost five and a half hours to run that marathon and, for a sub-three runner, that’s a serious slog, but I remember it rather fondly because I had to dig really deep to get through. It’s a little bit mental and a lot physical, or it’s a little bit physical and a lot mental. But I see it a bit like the muscle soreness – the DOMS – the day afterwards, when your quads are in agony; I sort of see it as a badge of honour.
‘The important thing to know is that if you hit the Wall in your first marathon, you will come through it. Maybe you’ll have to walk for a bit, maybe you’ll be slower than you wanted to be, but it doesn’t matter because you’ve come through and maybe the medal means a little bit more because of that.’
RW So do you think a bit of drama – the highs and the lows – is part of the true marathon experience?
VA ‘Absolutely. I was talking to a pal at my running club about this as I was writing my book. He’s an English teacher and a 2:30 marathon runner, and as we were jogging to Richmond Park together, we were talking about famous start lines in another sense – famous opening words to books. He came up with the opening to Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike”, so the implication is that the interesting things happen in unhappy families, and we sort of agreed that the same is true of marathons. All happy marathons – where everything clicks and the miles just sort of tick by, if not effortlessly, then certainly routinely – they are all the same. The real joy, the real interest, comes with what’s going to go wrong, and when, and coming through it.
‘Unless you break your PB, in which case you’ll take it any which way.’
PBs have been a big thing in your marathon
RW running. How important was going under three hours to you?
‘It was the holy grail. I was on 3:02:11 for a long time
VA and I couldn’t persuade my legs to go any quicker. But now, and maybe it’s because of Old Father Time and the fact that PBs are probably behind me, I frequently don’t run with GPS or even a stopwatch. I just run by how I feel – sometimes hard, sometimes not – just for
the enjoyment of the run. Just for the little dance between me and the distance rather than with my head buried in a Garmin, desperately trying to keep to 6:45 per mile.
‘It was a big motivating factor, though, and is still one of my proudest running achievements. And that ranks quite high on my list of life achievements, to be honest. Family and children aside, it’s the running stuff that I’m really proud of, and possibly persuading people to start running or restart running through my books or through whatever I say on the radio and on telly. Running is a huge part of my life and the sub-three marathon is a huge part of that, but honestly, I sort of feel like a little bit of me has grown out of it.’
Talking of time, any tips for those who say they
RW don’t have enough of it to train for a 26.2?
‘The best thing I ever did – and bear with me on this
VA – was to stop wearing underwear. I no longer wear underwear and haven’t for years now – instead of boxer shorts, I wear running shorts. For a bloke, it’s the same sort of thing anyway and it just takes one extra hurdle away from me going for a run. I don’t have to go upstairs, get naked, get running shorts on, find my running socks. I dress in them every morning, as I run pretty much every day, so I know that they’ll get used.
‘I’ve got running shorts under my jeans now and running socks on, too. So I just need to put a running top on and I’m ready to go. If you can just make it slightly easier for yourself to do what you want to do, you’ll get there. And wearing running shorts instead of underwear just makes it that much more easier for me to go for a run. What if I’ve only got half an hour? If 10 minutes of that goes on getting ready, then I’ve only got 20 minutes and then is it really worth it? Whereas, if I’m out the door in five seconds…boom!’
There’s been an extra stress for would-be
RW marathoners since Covid struck. What would say to people who worry all their training efforts could be for nothing if their race is cancelled?
‘Elite runners talk about process over results and I’m
VA on board with that. The pandemic hit just before some of the major spring marathons last year, and Boston and Tokyo were cancelled quite late on, when a lot of people had already done a lot of training, but I don’t think that anybody looking back would have resented doing the training because of the people training made them become. It gave them determination, it gave them grit. The marathon itself is the cherry on the icing on the cake – it’s a celebration of what sort of person you’ve become. I think the training and the way it shapes you is almost everything.’
And your book shows people how to make that
RW personal transformation happen?
‘The book is aimed at people who are yet to run a
VA marathon and perhaps think that the marathon is beyond them. Part one covers why everybody should, and part two is how everybody can.
‘It’s stories of my own marathons, like my first and when I did finally break three hours in London, and others that have gone spectacularly wrong, like a PB attempt in Amsterdam. My stories are interspersed with other wonderful people, like RW columnist Lisa Jackson, who is known as the woman who finishes last.
Clockwise from top left: running strong at the Manchester Marathon; looking forward to some postrace ‘rehydration’ at the Bacchus Marathon through Denbies
Wine Estate, Surrey; enjoying some scenic miles during the Athens Marathon
There’s Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run an official marathon, when they tried to haul her off the course in Boston, and who changed the way people think about woman and running marathons. There’s a blind runner who fell in love with his guide and now they run marathons together all over the world; and an amazing woman who was at the finishing line in Boston that horrible year when the bombs went off, and who then returned the next year to got married mid-course. Just lovely stories from wonderful people. Then the second half is the experts – the training, the nutrition and the mental side of it.’
And do you think that it’s in those personal,
RW inspirational stories that we find the true magic of the marathon?
‘Whenever I’m asked to give a talk, the way I always
VA start is with the words, “Let me tell you a story…” We all love stories. Whether it’s my six-year-old reading me
Mr Tall in the bath or hearing stories about marathons, we’re a species that loves a story. You can’t really tell people why or how to run a marathon by two plus two equals four. Tell them stories and, hopefully, that will inspire them because, honestly, if you’re reading this and you’re still thinking, “Should I run a marathon?”, the answer, 100 per cent, is yes.’