Baby steps

26 Weeks to Go (21 October)

On Tuesday I received an email from Diabetes UK, confirming that I had a ‘Golden Bond' place in the marathon.  I couldn’t believe the ease with which a vague thought to enter had become reality: All it took was the completion of a short form and a pledge to give them thousands and thousands of pounds.

With a wealth of NHS middle management experience at my disposal, I took a few days to get myself prepared for a project as big as this.  I started a list of everything I’d need to do before the date of the marathon (Lesson two: Learn the date of the marathon) and produced a nice plan as to how I was going to do it.  I looked up famous celebrities who had run marathons (George Bush, Oprah, AC Slater from Saved by the Bell; and Eddie Izzard, who apparently does them compulsively whenever he eats a Twix) and read about some notable highs and lows.  Like Jade Goody: Easy to mock her for collapsing because she didn't know how far a mile was, but getting through 21 miles when you've only been training to run five is a pretty impressive feat.

I briefly researched the concept of the marathon and made a note of interesting facts: Like that the distance was extended to its current 26.2 miles so that the Royal Family could see the finish better from their Royal Box.

I’d done a lot on the theory, and as the week started drawing to a close it occurred to me that 26.2 miles actually sounded quite far.  Having enjoyed not knowing anything about the metric system when I arrived in Australia - $22/kilo of bananas sounded like a bargain, until we calculated it as about £3 each – I was surprised to find that I now thought in it for distances.  26k isn’t that much, not when we used to go on 40k cycles before work; but 26 miles is bloody enormous.   It's Newcastle to Darlington.  It's the width of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge.  It’s the English Channel plus a file-mile warm down, for God's sake.

End of the happy theory; beginning of the terror.  Was I going to be able to do this?  The only serious involvement I’ve had with runs was after a dodgy kebab on holiday in Faliraki.  I started to get nervous, particularly when I Googled training regimes and learned that with 24 weeks to go I should be running a minimum of 40 minutes each day.

Time to put myself to the test. 

On Thursday evening we had tickets to see Stewart Francis at Hammersmith Apollo, and as it didn’t start until 9 I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to squeeze in my inaugural run.  I had three hours spare after work: Surely enough time for a lengthy run to see what I’d got in the tank, a shower, some food and a couple of pre-show pints.

More than enough time, as it happened.  I turned right out of Charing Cross Hospital, carried on as far as the Broadway Shopping Centre, crossed over Hammersmith Bridge Road, doubled back under the flyover, round Frank Banfield Park and then all the way down Fulham Palace Road back to where I’d started.  Or, in the immortal words of Ab Fab, end of the road and back.   

I only managed to run for four songs, which would have been reasonable for a first run if they weren’t by the Beach Boys.  Average length 1m 40s.  I was gone less than a quarter of an hour, including a sizable warm-up and some self-conscious stretching.

Shit.

Piling on the excuses (I was tired from football the night before, I didn’t have any spikes on my shoes, I wasn’t wearing a proper vest) I vowed to give it another go the following morning.  In slightly sluggish mood after the Pale Ale the night before, I nevertheless made it from work to the bottom of Praed Street where I made a startling discovery: I was in Hyde Park, a mere three minutes’ jog away from the office where I’ve been based for the past three years.  How the hell had I not stumbled across that before?

Thus buoyed, I set off jogging after work the following day for what seemed to be the beginning of a cheery routine.  It was actually all very pleasant: The sun was shining, I was happy, and bouncing along the pavement gave me good thinking time to mull over the finer points of life.  I came across three fat French exchange students studying a rubbish statue like it was Michelangelo’s David and, glad of company to share my good mood with, willingly agreed to take a photo of them.  I did it with my camera, which was probably a bit odd, but with my earphones in and Placebo blaring out at me I didn’t hang about long to listen to their reaction.

Part of my good mood was due to the evident improvement, even in three days.  This time it wasn’t my energy levels that ended my jogging but the need to be elsewhere to meet people, and as my first week came to a close I was starting to feel a bit more confident about my abilities.  I was still referring to myself merely as a ‘jogger’ in my mind, though, rather than someone in training for a marathon: The next step was to find out how far I was capable of jogging so as to assess whether or not I stood any chance of doing it.

But that could wait for next week, and so can you.

Limbering up

We are gathered here today...

After a year’s sabbatical spent on the beach in Brisbane, Australia, I returned to my desk at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust with a heavy heart.  England was cold.  England was dark.  In the wake of the Olympic and Paralympic triumphs, England was – dare I say it – depressing.

Always one to wallow in misery, September was spent Bridget Jones-style curled up on my sofa listening to power ballads and flicking through our anthology of photos, pining for my former life.  My girlfriend valiantly concocted projects to distract me, gamely suggesting I whittled our photos down to a manageable selection for friends and family and take up baking.  We drew up a list of the places we’d missed in the capital and set about ticking them off, a whirlwind tourist trail that renewed my love affair with London and my hatred of its weather.  “Don’t you think Big Ben’s more atmospheric in the fog and rain?”, we’d muse optimistically, trying not to recall the sensation of staring out over Sydney Harbour in 35 degree heat.

I tried, too.  I had lived a very simple life in Australia, at one with myself and the world, and I had a duty to recreate that in the UK.


I added a morning swim to my daily routine, which worked for a spell.  Then I caught myself pretending that the nonagenarian gaining on me in Seymour Leisure Centre was actually a Great White and realised it was probably not the best form of escapism.  Next up was a light box, and having pored over the reviews of thousands of happy customers on Amazon I was surprised to discover on its arrival that it was just, well, a light box.  Its principle method of curing Seasonal Affected Disorder seemed to be replacing it with the sort of blinding headache that comes from sitting a ruler’s distance away from an object designed to replicate the retina-burning glare of the sun.  Not today, thanks.

September drew to a close, the temperature dropped seemingly forty degrees and with it my petulance.  I was sick of it.  Sick of the weather, sick of the grey, but mainly sick of myself – I’d survived 90% of my life in this country happily enough, after all.  It was time to stop trying to replicate Australia from the confines of our Brixton bedsit and instead seize everything that living in London Town has to offer.

Thus motivated I switched off the light box, threw off the boardshorts and crammed the last remaining packet of Tim Tams into a pantry now brimming with the products of my over-zealous baking.  I blew the dust off my old phone book and looked up a friend from a charity I used to work with, arranged a time and place to meet and set off confidently into my London future. 

I was going to enroll in the London Marathon.

(But first I had to pop back to the flat to drop the photo album off.  Maybe a ‘top 10,000’ wasn’t quite ambitious enough whittling.  Lesson one: You can’t run the marathon with a hernia.)