Call the Midlife (26 page)

And it’s true. How could I not be? I’ll be spending the day surrounded by my three children, my grandson, my daughter’s mum and her husband and my own wonderwoman, my wife Natasha.

Later, over dinner, I go into a quiet paranoid cold sweat as the thought hits me: ‘Oh my goodness, what if everyone around the table thinks this was planned as a “Happy birthday – how great am I! Come stay on my big boat in France so I can show you!” week? Aaaarrrrggghhh.’

We only booked this week ’cos it’s the first week of the kids’ Easter holidays. The fact that my birthday falls on the fifth day of our vacation is pure coincidence. Due to Easter being its usual movable feast from one year to the next.

Healthy paranoia? No such thing.

It turns out to be quite a weird night. After we watch
The Game
, starring Michael Douglas – somewhat far-fetched, but entertaining nevertheless.

As a child, Douglas’s character witnessed his father commit suicide on his forty-eighth birthday. To help him come to terms with this as he celebrates his own forty-eighth birthday, his younger brother, played by Sean Penn, commissions a special event company to stage a bizarre game which ends with Douglas – SPOILER ALERT – unknowingly replicating his late dad’s death plunge. This involves him jumping off a building and crashing through the glass roof of a banqueting hall into his own party.

Incredulous and still alive, it ends with him chinking glasses with his little bro at the bar as Sean picks up the tab for the whole shenanigans.

Told you it was a little far-fetched.

But Michael Douglas playing a forty-eight-year-old? You know how you first start to realize you are getting on when policemen look like teenagers in fancy dress and the Prime Minister is
younger than you? Well, watching Michael Douglas celebrate his forty-eighth birthday on the eve of my forty-ninth took that feeling to a whole new dimension.

After Tash and I turn in, I lie in bed in our cabin having a quiet moment wondering what I think now there’s under half an hour to go before the onset of my fiftieth year on the planet.

Age doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. I truly believe we are as old, or hopefully as young, as we feel, but it is a fantastic yardstick to help us judge how we’re doing. That’s its most useful purpose. I suppose that’s why I have become obsessed with countdowns, simply because they are a way of compartmentalizing our minutes, hours and days into units of gold that need to be spent wisely.

This holiday has been part of a huge countdown. From the first day I started back at work this year, I made a mental note: ‘Sixty radio shows to go till our family holiday on the boat.’ Sixty shows back to back is by far the longest run I’ve ever done. And even though I love my job, the first thought every morning as I stumbled into the shower was, ‘Another day to cross off on the countdown to France.’

Wednesday, 1 April – 49th birthday

25 DAYS TO GO

‘The night is darkest before the dawn,’ declared Christian Bale’s Batman, by far the best Batman of all time. And so came April the first, the date this demi-centenarian began his march into the second half of the only century he was ever going to get to play at being a human being.

I’m about to get up to dutifully record my thoughts on this very subject when I’m grabbed by the wrist. My wife is extraordinarily strong for her size, with a vice-like grip which can be both reassuring and menacing in equal measure.

‘You can’t get up, the kids are doing something special for you,’ she whispers through threatening gritted teeth. I get the point immediately. Moments later, as if on cue, in come the boys wearing
matching striped pyjamas and brandishing four presents, a card and a balloon.

More gold.

More ‘I love my life.’

The four presents include a new edition of Plato’s
Symposium
, to replace the one I lost last year, and a first edition of
The Complete Book of Running
by James F. Fixx. This is a legendary book about running written way before the culture of weekend supplement fads. Jim Fixx, although he unfortunately met his demise while out running one day, is renowned and credited with observing and then stating many things about running that had never been put into words before. I couldn’t wait to read it – the perfect holiday read with less than a month to go to my secret marathon. It’s almost as if my wife knows what I’m up to.

Mmm.

‘Perhaps all wives do, all the time, whether they choose to admit it or not,’ I wonder.

All day I receive a steady stream of best wishes and many happy returns via, text, email and Twitter, but something else that has been catching my eye lately are the tweets suggesting I try the pose method of running to help avoid the various aches and pains I’ve been bleating on about.

After lunchtime I find myself with a quiet hour or two of unexpected me-time while the rest of the gang wander off into town on various missions involving papers, ice cream and sun-block. Contemplating how to spend this priceless window of opportunity, I plump for researching the pose running method and decide to save my Fixx book for my second week away – a decision that will turn out to be a huge mistake as I will not read this excerpt until it’s too late: ‘Never change your routine at the last minute before embarking upon something you know for sure your old routine will get you through.’

The Pose Method

Within seconds of opening my Internet browser I was presented with countless articles and videos on pose running. There I was gripped by what I was seeing on the screen of my Samsung tablet. If these testimonies were true, this could revolutionize my marathon experience.

Basically the pose method makes use of gravity to aid the muscles when running. It’s described as a controlled falling, based on picking up your feet underneath you as opposed to stretching out your legs in front of you. Effectively this means that your body leads while your stride takes place behind, merely to stop you hitting the ground. It claims minimum effort, stress and strain on all the joints and muscles that normally come under fire when subjected to excessive mile-munching.

I couldn’t wait to try it out to see if it lived up to the hype, which also included a significant increase in speed, even for a beginner.

Having only used approximately half of my designated me-time, I figured I could sneak in a quick 5 miles playing with my new wonder method. Within minutes I had got the gist and was experiencing the sensation of some invisible force pushing me along with their palm gently resting in the small of my back. Hinging at the knee, drawing my foot up underneath via my hamstring really did feel a lot easier than reaching out one foot in front of the other.

Another key to successful pose running is to have a strong back, with a very slight forward incline, looking straight ahead all the time. It feels weird at first but quickly becomes comfortable, at which point one really does start to experience this mystical sensation of grace and lightness its exponents talk about.

I let myself settle for a while before having a look at my watch to see what pace I was at. Bearing in mind my usual target pace for a mile is 11:00, can you imagine my surprise when I looked down to see the figures – 9:40!!! What? I couldn’t believe it. Now and again these satellite running watches do experience the odd malfunction, so I left it for half a mile before checking the display again. This
time my pace had dropped to 9:30. OH – MY – GOD, this was incredible!

And the sudden increase in pace wasn’t the only benefit. When I arrived back at the boat 4.7 miles later, I had barely broken sweat. For the rest of the day I felt like I’d won the lottery but wasn’t allowed to tell anyone until my ticket had been officially checked.

I couldn’t wait to run again the next day.

Meanwhile Jim’s legendary book remained on my bedside table untouched. Oh, how I wish I’d opted to read his received wisdom instead of clamouring for some 21st-century woo-woo wonder method.

Thursday, 2 April

24 DAYS TO GO

Tash comes running with me, same route as yesterday: turn right off the back of the boat down to the sea wall back through the famous tunnel – the opposite way to that which the cars go in the Grand Prix. Then up past Jimmy’s Bar, heading towards Italy, before turning left at Monte Carlo beach to run back towards Casino Square, down with the port on our left-hand side, and back to the boat.

Again, 4.7 miles, again, super-quick (for me, that is) and again, almost completely effortless. And we’d even stuck a sprint finish in along the swimming pool section!

But oh dear. The morning after the two pose runs the couple of days before, my right Achilles feels like it has a dagger sticking out of it. Whatever the pose method is good for, I must have been doing something wrong and this is the result. I struggle to make it up the four stairs to breakfast and don’t go anywhere near my running shoes for the rest of the day.

Friday, 3 April

22 DAYS TO GO

Everything I have been told about the marathon is coming true. Especially the injury bit. The razor-like right Achilles issue is just the latest in my continuing journey on the discovery of running pain. But a very wise lady I once met told me, ‘We humans have an uncanny knack of finding exactly what we need, exactly when we most need it, if we have our eyes and ears open to see it and hear it, that is.’

These are words I often think about when I’m stuck in a corner from which I can’t see any obvious or immediate way out. And with her wise counsel still resonating in my ears, sure enough help appears on the horizon in the form of one of my few true and trusted friends in the world: Jen.

She and her husband, Big Kev, have arrived to join us for a few days of our holiday, swapping with my daughter and her gang, who flew back to the UK on Good Friday.

Now, the rather fortuitous thing about Jen is that not only is she a qualified personal instructor but also a veteran of several marathons and half-marathons. After a brief doctor/patient consultation Jen sets to work, going crazy with her thumbs up and down my shin bones for about ten minutes. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, but nothing compared to the second session she was about to dish out.

‘Your calves are like rocks even when you’re just standing up – that’s not normal,’ she announces. ‘I’m going to have to resort to the ice-cold Coke-can makeshift roller method. Please resist the urge to punch me, regardless of how much you might want to in the next fifteen minutes.’

There follows an intense period of deep-tissue massage the likes of which I had no idea existed, during which I scream like a banshee from beginning to end. It’s a strange pain, the strangest I’ve ever experienced. Even though I find it generally unbearable, I don’t want her to stop because I know it’s doing me good.

Saturday, 4 April

22 DAYS TO GO

Whatever Jen did, it’s enough for me to at least attempt my 15-mile penultimate pre-marathon long run on schedule. With three weeks to go, I should be doing 18 miles this weekend and 20 next, but that’s just not going to happen. So I’m going for 15 today and then a final 20 in seven days’ time. And then nothing whatsoever until race day itself. It’s a high-risk strategy, and one you won’t find in any marathon training plan anywhere in the world, but I just don’t think my body can cope any other way.

My alarm wakes me at 6.30 a.m. French time. I rub Votarol cream into any parts of my legs that are prone to pain (basically all of them). I then take two Ibuprofen. I make a double espresso, down half a litre of water and go for an insurance comfort break just in case. I check my socks and shoes for sand, stones and grit, and I’m on the road at almost exactly 7 a.m.

There are twinges of potential muscle and joint breakdown in several places below my waist. Real or imaginary, I simply don’t know any more. After 2 or 3 miles my suspect right Achilles starts to tighten so I begin to roll it out while I’m running. This feels as though it will get me through what I need to do. My pace is the slowest it’s ever been, hovering around the twelve-minute mile mark. I could probably walk faster but I don’t care as long as I can bank the 15 miles one way or another.

My Achilles remains on the edge the whole time, my left leg the hero of the piece doing everything within its power to drag the right leg through. After 9 miles this over-compensation begins to take its toll and my left knee collapses in a howl of protest. I have to pull up immediately. I get my elbow in there straight away, the Paula Radcliffe method. It’s a useful little slice of masochistic emergency therapy she shared with me when we met at the radio show a few weeks ago.

It’s 8.55 a.m. and I’m leaning against the sea wall somewhere between Cannes and Antibes, digging my own elbow as hard as I
can into the skin directly above my left kneecap as far as it will go and as much as I can bear. Twenty seconds later and I’m back pacing, placing one foot in front of the other as gingerly as I possibly can. Still rolling my right foot from in to out with every ground strike while simultaneously running with my left knee pointing outwards and my left foot side striking the tarmac. I am a running mess. I believe this is referred to as crisis running. I have to get to 15 miles this weekend otherwise what is already becoming an ever slimmer chance of completing the marathon will begin to vanish irretrievably.

I get back to the port, where I stowed a bottle of water and Ibuprofen on the way out. After 11 miles, I stop and down the water plus two pills. But the moment I come to a halt, anything that’s vulnerable begins to either seize up or sear with pain – in some cases both. Sharp pain, dull pain – you name it, my legs have become survival specialists. A month ago, had I felt even close to this I would have stopped and hobbled for home, but this is a must-finish situation. I have to get going again as quickly as possible. The only risk now would be not to take the risk. The calendar is against me.

By this time the rest of Cannes is awake, the bright young things of the new generation out jogging, interval training and stretching on the beach. They look like works of art peeled from the glossy pages of
Vogue
,
Cosmo
or
Men’s Health
. I know I look pitiful by comparison but I have just run a very quiet, very private, very painful, very slow half-marathon and I still have 2 miles to go to reach my 15-mile target. So, with the greatest of respect, fuck them. I need to get this done.