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The long and winding road - April 23, 2007
Well I’ll say this straight up, running with Weiro should come with a health warning – and running with Mal should be for candidates for the funny farm only... What a pair!
Anyway let me take it from the top of this intoxicating day. First up the London Marathon organizers need to look again at how they transport the runners to the start. We are treated pretty disgustingly and the problems are far worse than they were at my last run at London in ’04. I left home at 7.15am thinking this was a reasonable time frame, but I didn’t arrive at the athletes village till 9.10am a soaking, stinking wreck. It makes sense to take the train from Charing Cross since at least you’ll be getting on an empty train… but my goodness the bunfight to get on those trains: the queues which start right in the bowels of the tube station. I fought and cajoled and managed to get on a train (albeit for the wrong start) and we were squashed like sardines for a full 20 minutes before we even left. And I was desperate for a wee… Finally we took off and I prayed that since we were “chocka” the train would have the sense to bypass Waterloo and London Bridge. Not a bit of it. We stopped at Waterloo, (platforms completely rammed), and the ‘sardines’ were even squasheder. Another 10 minute wait. Temps inside the carriage over 90 degrees. Same palaver at London Bridge. Finally make it to Greenwich and the long 35min trek up some very steep streets to Blackheath. Ok Ok, so perhaps I shoulda left at 0645hrs, but Mal had very similar problems. I’m sure London can do this bit of the day better – Boston and New York do it brilliantly.
What a journey
I knew we were in for a rough day, as the forecast cloud cover didn’t materialise. Through the first mile in 250th place. Andy Weir in sight though – latch on to that consummate pacing artist and you’re doing something right. So I did… for the next 21.5 miles. And what a journey: starts out easy, light-hearted with a touch of vaudeville in the air. Weiro full of the joys of spring, endlessly jabbering to his Thames chum, acknowledging his supporters and weaving across the street to do high-fives with little girls. “For goodness sake Andy! Stop messing about, settle down, and start taking this seriously,” I scolded. By 15k he started to settle, by 18 he was fully settled, and by 20k he was well and truly bedded down and I was wanting, à la James Bond in Moonraker, to “release the chicken switch so the power could be cut off”. But Andy had intentions of an opposite nature, even though runners were already coming back to us in droves. Inside the top 150 now…
Are you sure you know what you're doing old son?
There are just a handful of athletes who accelerated from 20-30k in the race: the ones who had blinders like Ryan Hall, Dan Robinson and Darran Bilton, and I suspect several hundred Serpies who are really into that sort of thing. But upon looking at Hall and Robinson et al., their ‘speed-ups’ were around 6-8 seconds for this split. Weiro’s acceleration?: 51 seconds. Whaaaah. It was like being on a roller-coaster that was making you sick, but you had no option to jump off. I kept wanting to ask: “are you sure you know what you’re doing, old son?” But I knew what the response would be: “yes thanks, quite sure, if you don’t like it you can lump it.” Interestingly though, on this day of all days, Andy did get things very slightly off as we paid with sharp decelerations in the fourth quarter. (In his last three Londons, Andy has slowed down by an average of less than 20 secs in kms 30-40; yesterday it was 1:38.)
There’s a whoooooole lot of suffering up ahead
But what a thrilling ride. Although I was knee deep in manure throughout, I knew I’d be waist deep if I let him go, just like the poor, wretched souls we’d steam past at a rate of a couple every 300 yards. “Come on Kev, jump on the bus,” Weiro sung out to Kevin Quinn at 14 miles – not perhaps what the lad wanted to hear. Andy Lea-Gerrard kept popping up (does the maniac have a tardis or something?): “There’s a whoooooole lot of suffering up ahead,” he gleefully crowed at 18 miles. “A lot of suffering here too,” Weiro dryly replied (referring, I suspect, to me.) Jonesy hove into view about this time – I had seen him briefly at five miles before he shot off down the road. And then the sight that every runner delights in seeing: Malachi. Yeah! Let’s have him! He was only a pinprick in the distance but after a couple of miles we arrived by his side. How nice to finally beat him after a winter of trying. I noticed that Mal’s stride looked a lot better than the final mile of the National 12-stage, and that he wasn’t buckling anything like the other runners. But he had been caught, and that was that. He needed to accept he had stepped in the Cockerpillar’s slime when it mattered most.
Club spirit out the window
A mile later and Mal was grimly hanging on. A little tiresome quite frankly – all club spirit out the window – never once did I encourage him, or he me. Hate filled the air, “just sod off, will you?” was all I could think. At 22 miles just as my legs were really starting to go, Mal finally took his leave, but he had the temerity, outlandishness and sheer balls to leave not from the back door, but from the front. The nerve! I thought… The élan! The class… As he scuttled off into the distance with the cruellest of surges, taking a pea-green Weiro with him. I was finally alone, and now had to grind it out with nobody to hold my hand. Cling on I did, and that last mile was a beauty as nearly 10 men, operating at survival shuffle, came back.
As for Mal – a fantastic display of guts and nerve. His training loads at the weekends have been severe: 23 miles in the morning and another 10 at night, or simply, a 50km run. Disgust registered on his face when I reported a longest run of 22m. He reports: “when you and Andy arrived it woke me up – I was startled!” Seeing it was me, a man he knew he was fitter than, inspired him to dig deeper into the well – and all those long, lonely training runs paid off. A reception is due for him today at the Ugandan Embassy where he shall hobnob with the Ambassador and other VIPs.
Leeds took us out by just 19 seconds
A classic duel then, between Belgrave and Leeds as both teams struggled to reach the medals. They took us out by just 19 seconds; but Mal, me and Warren can have no regrets as we squeezed every second out of the course. Our respective splits for the final 2.2 k were: 7:57, 7:59 and a remarkable 8:00 for Warren – comfortably placing us all in the speediest 25 runners for that stretch of macadam.
All in all a day to remember. I recall my first marathon thirteen long years ago when I popped at 3:12 in Boston. It’s great to be back after the ghoulishness of Frankfurt ‘04, and perhaps there’s mustard in the ole legs yet. Farewell from Skipper’s Corner as it signs off for the summer, perhaps to return again some day… but maybe the Bels might like to freshen things up with a new leader?! I have a couple of candidates in mind – and they have both taken ownership of a healthy chunk of bronze in recent hours.
