Call the Midlife (21 page)

Hence that New Year’s Day run.

‘Dad, what shall we do?’ asked Noah.

‘Come on, boys, we’re going out.’

EXTERIOR: Guildford Town Centre

New Year’s Day, 10 a.m.

It’s dead, and I mean really dead, but all the shops are open. What happened to the January sales? I know the answer. The same as pub opening hours. They got too loose for their own good. Too
many pre-January sales. Another example of a short-term high, long-term low marketing ploy. But with zero strategy. I see it all the time nowadays. Note to self: Don’t get me started. (I’m becoming more grumpy, not necessarily a bad thing – we’ll get on to that later. How we become the old curmudgeon kids can never understand.) Anyway, the huge positive of the fucked-up high streets of Great Britain’s strategy is that Noah, Eli and I basically have the whole of Guildford to ourselves.

We select parking for two hours, which should be plenty of time. We only intend visiting four outlets: one toy shop, Argos, a coffee shop and the Cornish Pasty Company. We spend half an hour in the aisles of the toy shop and approximately the same flicking through the myriad pages of the toy and games pages of the Argos catalogue. We then take fifteen minutes’ thinking time to consider what to purchase over hot chocolates and croissants in Caffè Nero, two minutes picking up a ‘traditional Cornish’, and then back to the toy shop, which wins.

It’s Lego again. The world’s No.1-selling toy. Back from the dead. No fucked-up strategy for the Danes. Get those guys to run our high streets.

The boys cannot believe they have a bonus present after Christmas. They are beyond happy in the back of the car, beaming. As is Mummy when they arrive home. Tash couldn’t be more grateful for her extra hours in bed. Straightaway I wade in. It’s the only way, when it comes to brownie points – spend them quickly before they expire.

‘OK if I go for a run?’

‘Sure, baby.’ Behind her the kids are already ripping open their boxes, the fire in the living room flickering away. ‘We’ll build, you shuffle.’

Perfect.

It was 2.31 when I left the house and by the time I returned I would have orbited the lake non-stop twice. It was as simple as that, like
waiting to see the headmaster at school: regardless how it ended, this was definitely going to happen one way or another. A fail-safe thought process that I employ on a regular basis, usually in situations where I would otherwise get sick with nerves or my brain would go into meltdown over what I might be about to get spectacularly wrong.

The 4.7-mile loop around Virginia Water is glorious indeed. The gloriousness helps; it’s absolutely beautiful out there. From that first ever shuffle I always set off anti-clockwise, turning right from the café at the gates towards the totem pole and Guards Polo Club, up to the top, over the bridge and then back down the other side parallel with London Road, the link between Wentworth Golf Club on the A30 and Ascot village. This way round, it’s the rough before the smooth, the first half gently undulating and winding, and over twice as long as the flatter, straighter home leg.

My legs felt good, much better than I expected them to. My breathing was steady and my focus/concentration, which was my biggest concern, was OK too. This was what had bothered me most about the prospect of doing a marathon: could I just keep going mentally? How does one cope with the fact that after running 6 miles, there’s still 20 miles and 385 yards to go? But ‘No problem,’ I thought, halfway round the first loop. As usual, it was about breaking it down. Like a big fat juicy steak. Bit by bit, bite by bite.

I approached the end of the first circuit, the last corner by the waterfall where there are always smiling couples and giddy families posing for photos. A few seconds later, I reached the point where I used to pull up in my one-lap days and treat myself to walking the last hundred yards while looking back at the vast body of water stretched out like a huge mirror in front of me, disappearing into the trees that kiss the horizon. But there would be no pulling up today, or at least that was the plan.

Again, quietly, calmly, I gently shuffled on past where the main path breaks into two, the outer loop and the inner loop, my loop, and off I went again. Just that moment alone was worth the journey.

Another running first.

Real joy.

This was something I had been thinking about for weeks, months even. Like I used to when I was a kid. When we had time to contemplate and really think about the things we wanted to do. By hook or by crook, by the time I finished, in the dark, I was determined this would be the longest run of my life thus far.

I did it.

I bloody did it.

I creaked out of the gate after affording myself a walk for the last couple of hundred yards.

I could barely lower myself into the car but I didn’t care.

I arrived home still creaking, and by now simultaneously seizing up, but I was delirious.

‘So far, so good,’ I said to Tash, before explaining what I’d done.

‘You did what? Wow! How?’

I felt amazing. But how else did I feel? How was it supposed to feel? I purposefully hadn’t read up on anything to do with long-distance running. Prep, execution, aftermath – nothing. I didn’t want to be Textbook Johnny. Never have done.

I have a friend who insists on forever telling me a quicker route whenever we’re going anywhere in the car, even when we’re not late, going somewhere nice and it’s a beautiful day. Why? What’s the point? Who cares? What are we going to do with the extra five minutes we save when we do finally arrive anyway? He’ll probably spend it checking emails that don’t matter. I’ve never asked him but I bet he’s Textbook Johnny.

It may also be because I don’t like being told what to do, of course.

‘But surely,’ I thought to myself, ‘of all things, when it comes to something as basic as running, we should just run, like we just read, to ourselves and for ourselves. Figuring out how it works for us as we go.’

There are countless books on running, thousands no doubt – not that I’ve checked, but there must be, just as there are now specialized running shops. Yet surely 99.9 per cent of what we need to run we already have.

Body? Check.

Two legs, two arms? Check.

Eyes, ears, mouth? Check.

Lungs and all other major internal organs? Check.

Of course, I was entirely wrong. If I’d read about how to cool down, for example, I’d know that what I was about to do next was the opposite of what was good for me.

‘OK if I nip up for a bath?’

‘I think you deserve one,’ replied Tash.

Morning after my heroic two laps of the lake the day before.

I wake up, peaceful, rested. Mmm but there’s something else. My whole right side below the waist has acquired a pulse all of its own. A dull ache from my hip down to my ankle. But no matter, something has to give; I am forty-eight years old and have never done anything close to this before. If this is as bad as it is going to get, I can cope – as long as I take things steady from here on in.

Then I get out of bed.

My knees have never felt like this before – I don’t even know what this feeling is. The closest I can think of is a combination of ice cream brain freeze and when the school bully bent your fingers back in the playground at break time. Except multiplied by ten.

There will be no running today. Not even a three-mile recovery run. (I later discovered there is no such thing as a recovery run, by the way – huge myth.) It’s now that I start to wonder about those dreaded textbooks. ‘They’re bound to be crammed with dilemmas and experiences of this nature,’ I think out loud.

Even closer to hand, of course, the ever-present YouTube with its millions of ‘how to?’ posts. I have to admit to a hefty slice of hypocrisy where these are concerned. There’s nothing like a You-Tube ‘how to . . . ?’ session. Although I must confess to often confusing merely watching how to do something with then convincing myself this almost means I’ve actually done it.

‘Still, I must resist,’ I tell myself. ‘It’s my way or the highway.’

Double idiot.

It was at this precise moment I first began to feel ever so slightly like an ass in running denial.

Saturday, 3 January 2015

Twenty-four hours later, I wake up and my right hip feels like it’s on fire. Even more than last time, my red-hot poker moment.

Oh dear.

Doctor!

All right, I capitulated, or panicked, or both – more likely both. I confess I turned to Google. I decided to allow myself just one search to start with. I figured this would make me focus on what I really wanted to know, as opposed to scatter-gunning for anything and everything.

After thinking long and hard, this is what I typed:

What does Paula Radcliffe eat?

It turns out that Paula likes breakfast cereal and snacking on bananas and dark chocolate.

Oh joy!

I love bananas and dark chocolate!

I want some now.

I wonder if melting the chocolate over the banana makes any difference to its health benefits.

Quickly, I checked.

Answer: absolutely none.

Brilliant.

Chocolate with a minimum content that is 70 percent dark can protect against heart disease, high bloodpressure and many other well-known and feared health hazards. Plus it has essential trace elements such as iron, calcium and potassium, is full of lots of
friendly vitamins and tastes gorgeous. This was all almost too good to be true. But it is true.

Back to Paula briefly. Firstly another ‘Oh joy’ moment – she and her husband Gary REGULARLY LIKE TO EAT STIR FRIES.

Hallelujah. She also loves a post-race bowl of chips or cheese sandwich swilled down with a glass of wine. I’m actually hearing angels now.

I read on. The woman is amazing. My new immediate hero. Do you know that she continued training right up until the DAY BEFORE she gave birth to her daughter Isla?

OK, calling all fatties, that’s the end of all your lardy excuses to stay on the sofa, right there.

And that was it. From that moment on I read anything and everything I could get my hands on about the running greats and their individual regimes and idiosyncrasies.

All the reading in the world, however, was not going to stop me from falling apart, which was looking increasingly more likely with every fresh shuffle. It was time to seek the help of yet more professionals – first stop, the local chiropractor.

‘Yes, someone can see you,’ said the nice lady on the other end of the telephone. ‘But not until Monday, 11 a.m.’

Monday, 11 a.m. it was then.