Call the Midlife (27 page)

I make it back to the boat with 0.2 of a mile still to go. I run past our berth on down the pontoon until my watch buzzes fifteen zero zero. Finally.

Again, I contemplate what I always do after a long run: whether if I absolutely had to, could I carry on and somehow and run an additional 10 miles. The answer is an emphatic no. Besides, it would have to be 11 additional miles. That’s how tired I am: I can’t even subtract 15 from 26. I know that millions of people run marathons
all over the world, all of the time, but I’m trying to run mine and frankly it’s proving a lot more difficult than I ever thought it would be.

Duration: 2 hours 58 minutes.

Distance: 15 miles.

Saturday, 18 April

8 DAYS TO GO

Many Clouds won Saturday’s Grand National back in England but looked as though he might keel over at any moment after he crossed the finishing line.

‘He’s OK, he’s OK,’ murmured a stable of obviously nervy television commentators, somewhat unconvincingly.

‘Er, no he’s not,’ shouted back millions of us watching the poor beast live on telly all over the world. He looked dead on his feet, poor thing. Talk about wobbly, this poor chap looked like his muscles had been replaced by whatever that stuff is they put in a lava lamp.

But that’s not the bit of the post-race drama that most piqued my interest. I was most focused on what Oliver Sherwood, the trainer of Many Clouds, said in his post-win interview: ‘The horse didn’t do anything after the Gold Cup, barely anything.’

Well, eureka, that was it. There was the answer to my marathon dilemma right there.

That’s what I would do. I would become the human equivalent of Many Clouds. For the next fourteen days and nights I would do hardly any exercise whatsoever, other than to keep myself flexible and ‘tickle’ my muscles awake every now and again, something else Paula advised me to do a couple of weeks back. Weight gain might be an issue, especially without the incentive of having to run the next day, but that’s a bridge I will cross when the bathroom scales call for it.

Sunday, 19 April

1 WEEK TO GO

Haven’t been this nervous about anything since I was a kid. Here I am, still with seven days to go, it’s 6 a.m. and I am downstairs on my own, like a child on Christmas Day wondering whether or not he should open his presents before the rest of the family awake from their slumber. I am just so out of my comfort zone.

A week of total rest, the first since I began my shuffling/running adventure at the end of last year. Not one hour has passed by in the last one hundred and sixty-eight that I haven’t thought about my knee or my Achilles or my ever-troublesome hamstrings. And there’s no doubt I felt fitter a few weeks ago than I do now. And lighter. My belly’s back, my diet’s not what it has been and my sleep patterns are all over the place.

I’m up early today in the hope that I can knock off a few miles to get things going again. It’s not what I said I was going to do: rest completely until the marathon, but I just don’t feel that’s the right thing to do anymore. I know every pound I put on will have some sort of effect on my ability to get round as efficiently as possible, plus I need to give the muscles that are working at least some chance of retaining their momentum. And then there’s the wind issue. When I run, I am far less bloated; at times this week I’ve felt like an over-inflated party balloon. I really need to fart, a lot.

I had a quick look at a few training plans last night to remind myself of where I should be with a week to go. Most of them advise something along the lines of an 8–10-mile run this weekend, followed by two or three easy runs ahead of next Sunday. There’s no doubt about it, my regime has gone way off-piste over the last three weeks. Those two days of supposed miraculous pose running while I was in France really messed me up.

Nothing wrong with the pose technique per se, just stupid of me to try it out with so little time to go and messing my knees and calves up. Still, I am where I am, so it’s no use wondering where I would be if I’d got on another train.

Over my self-imposed last week of non-activity, I have more than tried to compensate by reading a few more books about running.
Born to Run
by Christopher McDougall,
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami and my favourite,
Run or Die
by Kilian Jornet, one of the most committed and successful extreme runners the world has ever seen.

He even talks about when he was so tired attempting to break one of his own many records, he actually fell asleep while running, like an exhausted driver might at the wheel of a car. When he came to, he was still running but a hundred yards to the left of where he needed to be. Incredible. He also talks of days when he has been so stiff in bed that he can barely move one locked leg in front of the other to get to the toilet, even though he’s due to run 50 miles half an hour later. Then there was the time he took the wrong turn after running all day when it was already dark, and he didn’t know whether to stop and ask for shelter or carry on as he still had 30 miles go before he reached the camp where his team was waiting for him. Go online to see footage of him flying down snowy mountain ranges and skipping along deathly ridges thousands of feet above sea level like a kid playing hopscotch in a playground. Incredible stuff, incredible guy.

On the other hand, and I know this is going to sound pathetic, at no point does he talk about a pulled muscle or feeling a bit of extra timber around the old waistline. One man’s exploding heart and blood curdling at the back of his throat (something he references on more than one occasion) is another man’s fifty-year-old frame trying to hold up for dear life.

Anyway, whatever, I can’t put this off any longer. My lake is waiting for me and if I don’t get out there soon, Tash and the kids will be up wanting Dad for general Sunday-morning fun and mayhem and that will be that.

Now, talking of Tash, with only a week to go and my marathon-eve hotel room booked, I think I’d better tell her what I’m up to.

Gulp.

Monday, 20 April

6 DAYS TO GO

A good night’s sleep makes the world seem a whole lot more reasonable place to be, don’t you think?

My 67-year-old Indian accountant, Kirit, who’s been with me through thick and thin, both good times and bad, when I’ve been wedged up in the black or teetering on falling into the abyss on the wrong side of the red, loves sleep. What is more he’s really, really good at it. If he finds himself with a spare half-hour with nothing to do, regardless of whether he’s particularly tired or not, he will just fall unconscious.

‘I adore sleeping, I do it whenever I can.’

Not that he’s lazy, or apathetic, or obese; he’s as skinny as a rake, plays golf twice a week and works as hard as anyone I’ve ever met.

‘The other night, I looked at the clock and it was 8.15 p.m., there was nothing on the telly so I said to my wife, Kamud, “I’m off to bed.” I enjoyed the most excellent ten hours you could imagine.’

And I believe him. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve witnessed this great sleeping guru in action. On the way back from our Boys’ Trip to France in April this year, I saw him fall asleep while actually reading the paper. One minute he was studying the
Telegraph
Business Section, the next he was dead to the world, the newspaper slowly slipping through his fingers into the footwell below.

He must have so little on his conscience. Surely this is the key to restful unconsciousness. Or maybe it’s because he’s an accountant of fifty years’ standing and his whole life has been based around order and organization. He looks so peaceful when he’s asleep. I remember being so envious of him on the plane that day, a portrait of calm, contentment and tranquillity.

I, on the other hand, have been told on more than one occasion that I sleep with a furrowed brow and a frown. As if I have voluntarily invited the troubles of the world to spend the night with me. That’s when I get to sleep at all. For someone whose life revolves
around getting up so early, before I encountered Dr Guy, my new sleep mentor, I was a disaster when it came to tryongg to drop off.

Was it my mind that was my enemy? Was it my fat neck and the fact that (apparently) I snore like a grumpy elephant? Was it the hours that I keep? The food that I eat? My drinking habits? My ever-weakening bladder? Our bedroom that’s more like a greenhouse than an igloo? Whatever.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

The thing. The thing. The thing.

Tuesday, 21 April

5 DAYS TO GO

Fuck. Why haven’t I done this before now? Obviously that’s a rhetorical question to myself. Like everything in life, we never do things until it’s time to do them. Frustrating, but true. I remember when I first moved to London, I spent ages procrastinating on whether or not to buy a Kenwood stack system hi-fi. At £600, it was the most money I’d ever considered spending on anything other than the house I owned back in Warrington. Eventually, the evening after I’d closed my eyes and gone for it, back at home, I spent well into the early hours beating myself up for not doing it weeks before. The sound was sublime, the best company I could ever have wished for. I feel the same way today about this running malarkey.

Sure, it’s good to know I can now nip out for a leisurely 5- or 10-mile jog without considering much else other than if I have the time, but more than that, it’s the feeling currently consuming my very being. I am so looking forward to Sunday. I can barely wait. Every minute of every day is visited by thoughts of the start, or the finish, or whatever lies in between. Of what’s going to hurt and what’s not, and what it’s like to be surrounded by thousands of other people all running in the same direction, trying not to injure each other in the process. Of where Tash and the kids will be and if I’ll get to see them. Of the other two-million-plus spectators who
will be vying for the best vantage point to spot their loved ones. Of whether or not I take a gel before the race, like my friend Vicki says she does, or whether not to take any gels at all ‘because they are the devil’s work’, as another friend of mine, Jonathan, says.

It’s all too much.

In a good way.

Sensory overload of the most stimulating kind for grown-ups but without any illegal substances, alcohol or cigarettes. The ultimate natural high. Christ, even if something happens between now and Sunday that means I can’t run at all for some reason, like World War III for example, I’ve already had as good a time as I can remember. You know that feeling when you are so excited all you want to do is go to sleep and wake up and it’s time? That’s exactly how I feel. I am bursting at the seams, buzzing like a bee, crazy like a fox. I can only imagine what it must be like for proper athletes the week before a big race.

In the meantime, more protein!

I’m gonna start on the carbs tomorrow or Thursday. There are infinite opinions on when and what you should be eating and drinking. I’m going for carb starve/protein fill Sunday to Wednesday. Carb fill/protein starve Thursday to Sunday.

Oh yes, and I still, really really now, need to tell Tash what I’m up to.

Double gulp.

Thursday, 23 April

3 DAYS TO GO

No more running, decision made. I went to see Phil my chiro last night. He said he’s never seen ITBs so tight. ‘Mate, they are solid.’ He got to work immediately with his acupuncture needles. ‘You’ll not be able to get very far if they stay like this.’ Seconds later, in went the needles, two in each calf, two in each quad and two in my lower back. Sure they hurt, especially when, after leaving me to ‘cook’ for half a minute, he returns to give them a little ‘tweak’ deeper, but I don’t mind, I don’t care. I know
they’re doing me good. I’ll take anything now that helps get me through Sunday.

‘Can you come see me again on Friday or Saturday? We need to go again with these.’

‘I can’t. I’m back to London tonight and then that’s me done with Berkshire till next week.’

‘Well, you’re going to have to do some serious damage to yourself with a foam roller then. Heat your legs up first any way you can – a hot-water bottle is best – and then roll until it hurts. All the best methods are on YouTube.’

Today is my first day of the infamous carb-loading process. There are so many theories about this, the method I have plumped for being protein only for the first half of the week and then carbs only for the second half. Starve, feed, store is the basic theory. As long as I do something it will be more than I’ve ever done in the past. Being careful most of all not to mistake the ‘loading’ aspect of the process for an excuse to gorge. All carb-loading should really mean is substituting normal-size meals of one thing for similar normal-size bowls of pasta. It’s actually an extremely misleading description of what one needs to do.

Now here’s the thing: I love pasta, I mean really love it, but it’s fascinating how being told you ‘have to’ do something changes one’s relationship with whatever that something is. After the first mouthful of my official pre-marathon weekend carbfest, pasta had never tasted so viscous and sticky. It was all I could do to chew it enough to swallow.

Bizarre.

I was hungry. Damn I was hungry. I’d been hungry all week. More hungry than I could remember, even though I was eating six (small-to-medium) meals each day. Was this evidence of the power of suggestion? Was I hungry now because I was projecting how hungry I might be during the race on Sunday?

Oh and by the way, don’t even think about trying to get a bowl of porridge from any of the healthier takeaway stores in London’s West End any time after 10 a.m. in marathon week.

No chance.

Sold out.

Thank heaven for the BBC canteen.

Friday, 24 April

48 HOURS TO GO

Telling Tash

‘I knew it! I knew it! I bloody well knew it!’ she screamed. Then she was off. And that was only the beginning.

‘I knew it all along.’

‘Why would you be doing these crazy long runs just for fun?’

‘No one does that. No one.’

‘Although, when I say I
knew
it, I mean I didn’t know it for certain. Because you and the word marathon don’t make sense. That was the missing link. But then again, I know when you put your mind to something then you’re not going to let it go unless you absolutely have to.’