Running Like a Girl (13 page)

We met at Blackheath station, where Julia presented me with a huge HEMMO badge to sew on the front of my running top.
Many close friends had used the nickname since I was in my twenties. With the advent of Twitter (and my use of “@hemmo” as my handle) and my renewed enthusiasm for running, it had become more than a nickname. It was a persona, a sportsman's moniker, a superhero identity. I was Hemmo when I was at my most “me,” and Julia knew that.

As at the start of all public races, there was little space for dignity, so I whipped out the needle and thread I'd brought along and stitched the badge onto my top before asking Julia to create a temporary tent with the baggy old hoodie I was wearing and I whipped my top on beneath it. Once in Greenwich Park, we checked our bags at the luggage trucks, and I watched the dismay flicker across Julia's face as she realized that we had to surrender our valuables to a total stranger.

We took our positions in the penultimate enclosure and waited for the start to be announced. All around us, the hubbub of runners, costumes, supporters, and the incessant PA system playing “inspiring” eighties music created a carnival. We surrendered and joined in, whooping and clapping. The countdown began, and the crowd burst into cheers. We were off. It took a good ten minutes to cross the starting line, going at barely more than a shuffle, but as we did, Julia shrieked, “We're running the bloody London Marathon!”

“We so are! We so bloody are!” I shrieked back.

As with all big races, there are a few minutes, maybe half an hour, when you run along, almost in a trance, semi-hypnotized by the unfamiliar sound of hundreds of other runners. The thud of running shoes, the whispers of breath, the feeling that you can't stop because you're moving as a pack and no one's getting left behind. I tried not to talk for a bit, hoping that Julia would absorb and enjoy the moment, letting confidence and
pride seep in. We ran in silence before I cracked and let out the first of many hollers on seeing our friends Jon and Dave standing at the side of the road. Arms crossed, feet hip-width apart and eyes glazed, they had led the charge with teasing us about training over the last few months. Now they were there for us. Up early on a Sunday, as steadfast and honorable as I'd always suspected they were.

“GUYS!” I shouted, and their blank gazes broke into goofy grins and big lollopy waves. They shouted back and carried on cheering until we were long gone. I felt a lump in my throat: The first of many supporters had seen us making a go of it. Julia was glowing at the sheer exhilaration of being cheered in the streets.

The bands, the crowds, the children with their little pots of jelly beans: The atmosphere alone kept us going for the first few miles. Soon we were approaching Tower Bridge and the halfway mark. The heat was rising. The unpredictable weather had settled on “blazing summer day.” I kept encouraging Julia to drink water and was barely without a bottle in my hand myself. It seemed prudent to walk for a portion of each mile, rather than to overheat before the end. Even the spectators looked roasting.

As we got to the bridge, I told Julia we should run. “You don't want to wake up tomorrow and say that you walked over Tower Bridge,” I insisted.

“I'm not sure how well I'm doing,” she replied.

“It doesn't matter! We're not going for a time! It's an experience you'll never repeat!”

“I don't know . . .”

“Please! For me! Why don't you run ahead a bit, and I'll take a picture!”

Julia was persuaded. The photograph I took is one of my favorites, with her looking over one shoulder and an image of
Jerome on the back of her T-shirt. We held hands aloft over the second half of the bridge, screaming with delight.

Not long after the halfway mark, the heat and the exhaustion started to take their toll. The sunshine was merciless; there didn't seem to be enough water on earth to keep us cool. I tried pouring it down the back of Julia's neck, and we took turns squealing through the showers at the side of the road.

When you're running, heat doesn't just make you feel hot—it chips away at your reality, slowly but surely. It makes your feet feel as if you're wearing someone else's oversize shoes. It makes your tongue feel as if you have woken up with the worst hangover of your life. Worst of all, it can confuse you. Distances start to lose perspective, limbs feel heavy, and words begin to jumble.

During a marathon, perfectly normal, reasonable physiological responses to heat suddenly feel like emotional Armageddon. While I knew that the third quarter of a marathon felt like hell, I knew that it didn't last forever. Julia did not. To watch her slump was heartrending. The longer a run is, the less it becomes about running. The challenge is dealing with the waves of emotion, keeping the mind from collapsing. As anyone who has started from scratch knows, emotions carried around for several miles can feel heavier than hell itself.

Throughout training, I'd seen Julia find threads of confidence and hope in running, to retrieve her pre-baby body and feel stronger than ever. That Julia was fading in front of me. Her shoulders slumped, her feet struggled to lift in the heat, and the face that had earlier been alert and positive, looking out at the spectacle, was now downcast. Where she was waving brightly at strangers, she was now avoiding their gaze. Where our shared sense of humor had seemed so infallible, my cajoling now met her ears as goading.

Our pace slowed and our faces reddened. I felt utterly helpless, seeing Julia losing every last scrap of self-belief. To say that she was convinced we wouldn't finish would be an understatement—she seemed almost affronted that I had the temerity to suggest otherwise. Every “You
can
do this, I know you can!” was met with an even sharper “No, I
can't
! Why don't you
understand
?”

Ever grateful that I had been down this dark road and slugged it out with my dad's support, I tried to let her protestations ride over me. They still stung, as the exhaustion was far from easy for me. I channeled my father's unwavering faith and kept talking, kept encouraging, kept distracting. At times I was so hot that I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating. Words upon words came spilling out of my mouth until I no longer really knew what my latest profundity was. A quote from Eleanor Roosevelt? Or perhaps something from
Dawson's Creek
. No matter, as long as we kept going forward, forward.

Toward the end of the race, I felt Julia was truly at her darkest, almost physically exfoliating herself of layer upon layer of grief. Her emotional pain was mirrored by considerable physical pain. I encouraged her to let it all out. If she could cry here on the street, maybe there would be less sadness when she got home, I reasoned.

Slowly, eventually, we turned onto the Embankment and saw more familiar faces. I had been talking up the “last-mile high” since we started. Julia was struggling. For months I had been telling her that this moment would be worth it. And then we were there. But even as we turned onto the Mall, she was expressing doubt that she would make it.

“I can carry you from here!” I yelled, sure that her spirits would rally soon.

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

“What?”

“I can see the finish line!” A huge grin cracked her face. Finally, she knew she could do it.

As we ran toward the finish line, I took her hand. We heard people shouting our names. I couldn't work out where the voices were coming from. As we approached the gallery of press seats at the finish line, I saw my parents: my father in his seat, grinning and waving wildly, and my mother, shrieking and clambering down from the seats and onto the side of the track. She scuttled toward us as the sound of her voice cut over the music and cheering. “GO GO GO ALEX AND JULIA YOU ARE THE BEST YOU MUST KEEP GOING EVERYONE IS SO PROUD OF YOU, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW PROUD WE ALL ARE AND NOW IT IS THE FINISH JUST ENJOY IT I HAVE BEEN SITTING HERE ALL DAY AND SEEN SO MUCH BORING SPORT AND NOW YOU ARE FINALLY HERE OH THANK GOD GO GO GO GO ALEX AND JULIA . . .”

She was off the seating area and running alongside us, my father behind her in the stands, taking photographs. She continued to run along with us, screaming, until we ran our final steps. We crossed the finish line, grinning, crying, holding hands.

We had done it.

We collected our medals and bags and headed to the crowd of friends and family waiting for us with hugs, food, and congratulations. A friend's little boy paraded around wearing my medal, convinced he had won the marathon. My mother cried and stroked my hair. Julia hugged her son, who was wearing her medal.

We had done it.

I lay facedown on a massage table the next day, staring at the masseuse's feet: a moment of stillness after the shouting, heaving, and weeping of the previous day. I watched the feet shuffle gently out of view and realized that something had shifted in me. While you, and only you, can move your legs from start to finish, no one runs a marathon alone. Though I had supported Julia, I had received great support myself. My friends and family knew how hard I'd found it, and they had been wonderful. But what I had really learned was that running could no longer be about me and my personal goals. To go that far, to feel that pain, to endure that depth of despair, it had to be about more than my own self-worth; it had to have a purpose beyond me. I couldn't continue running around in circles.

As soon as I could, I opened my laptop and bought places for several races over the course of the next year: the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon; the White Night Half Marathon; the Brighton Half Marathon; and the Brighton Marathon.

I had to reach further. I had to reach beyond myself.

Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow . . .

—Henry David Thoreau

M
y ambition in the first few days after my second London Marathon was at an all-time high. Without Julia to coax, I was sure that I would be able to touch the outer limits of my ability. I had given myself two months to rest before training for two half marathons, which were to take place in October and February, followed by the Brighton Marathon in April. These would be my real runs, my masterworks! I would discover the truth about myself on those courses and then head to Edinburgh to conquer Arthur's Seat. And I had my heart set on securing a place in the Women's Marathon in San Francisco, a city I'd long fantasized about, that October.

A week later, I was on holiday in Rome, hobbling around the Forum on still-tired feet and burying my face in pasta at every available opportunity. Six months later, the fire I once had in my belly seemed to have dimmed. Running was less a series of
exciting adventures than a habit. It had slotted into the routine of my life, a pleasant enough pastime, though I had the nagging feeling that I was putting a little more into it than I was getting out. Still, it had been a sunny summer, and I remained uninjured, so I had stuck with the program, more or less, and looked forward to the gentle goal of the Royal Parks Half Marathon in October.

That September I went to the cinema in London to watch Ryan Gosling in
Drive
. It's great, I recommend it, but remember: I saw him first. It is hard for me to be distracted when I am in the beam of The Gosling, so when my phone vibrated as I entered the cinema, I answered only because it was my sister's due date for her first baby and I could see that it was my mother calling. Instead of being told that my sister had been admitted to the hospital, I was told that her husband, a healthy, active thirty-five-year-old, was lying in a ward. His heart rate was dangerously elevated, and no one knew why. My mother told me to go into the film, as there was nothing any of us could do until he had seen a specialist, but she asked me to keep my mobile on in case my sister needed me. I entered the cinema in a semi-trance, my blood icy in my veins.

I sat with my phone in my hand, hypnotized by Gosling, yet aware of a constant ticker tape of anxiety scrolling across my mind. What was happening in the hospital a few miles away? I didn't understand. I texted my father throughout the film to see if there were any updates: no news yet. I left the cinema and telephoned St. George's Hospital. I knew that the situation was not good when I was put directly through to my sister within seconds. She was in tears and asked me to come immediately.