Call the Midlife (33 page)

And here I stand in the absolute knowledge that, unless I pass out or die on the spot, I can literally crawl to the line from where I am and still record something within the magical 5-hour window.

‘It’s not a proper marathon unless it’s under 5 hours.’

Harsh, but ten words that have stayed with me from the moment I heard them.

This was the moment not to fuck it up. This was the moment not to get greedy. This was the moment to slow the fuck down. This was
the moment to give thanks by doing what all amateur runners of any level must always remember to do:

ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY.

And I promise you, that’s exactly what I did. I’m almost certain I could have come in a minute or two quicker, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that to run at all is a wonderful thing but to run and complete the greatest fun run in the world was a total and utter honour and a privilege. To have sacrificed soaking up the last ten minutes of such a magical experience for anything, least of all a meaningless quicker time, would have been to render the whole learning process of self-discovery redundant.

A good life is about the journey. A marathon is the perfect metaphor for such a life. Life is not about how much you do or how fast you do it, but how well you do it and how much fun you can have along the way.

From now on whenever I sense any phase or major event in my life coming to an end, I shall remember that last mile of 26 April 2015 when I slowed up, looked around at tens of thousands of smiling faces and waving arms, and remembered to remember.

Once over the line I was grabbed by Matt, the nice man who I cried with and who checked me in on Saturday morning back at the Tower Hotel.

‘Chris, we need you for a quick pic.’

‘Sure, Matt, but I just need to keep moving for a few minutes otherwise my legs will turn to concrete and I won’t be able to walk for the rest of the week.’

Photos done, it was time to track down Tash and the boys who were waiting in the gardens of St James’s Palace. More tears, this time of joy, were cascading down Tash’s cheeks, the kids not entirely sure what all the fuss was about. They were vaguely aware that Dad had finally done something that Mum was mildly impressed by. Perhaps it was never having experienced this before that was confusing them. This was Tash’s kind of challenge, I was speaking her
language.

My feet were a mess. I didn’t care.

I felt weird generally. I didn’t care.

There was barely anyone else around. I didn’t care.

There was a man in a giant emu costume lying on the ground next to me. I didn’t care.

I was so happy.

Like I had never been happy before.

The thing about post-London Marathon is there’s nothing really to do afterwards. As you wander/hobble back out into reality, you are surrounded by tens of thousands of people, all now going their own separate ways. Some go alone, smiling euphorically to themselves, others in groups quietly reflecting on what a wonderful few hours it’s been. I wondered why there’s not a party or a free music concert, say in Hyde Park, for everyone to go to afterwards and enjoy a few hours of group closure. Maybe the powers-that-be consider the marathon is the party, and the sooner everyone goes back to where they came from the better. Perhaps they have a point.

And so what do you do after running your first marathon?

The question I had asked everyone I’d met who’d run a marathon in the last six months.

Here’s what I did.

I took a cab with the fam until we were a mile from home, where I asked to be dropped off so I could try to walk off some of the stiffness that felt like it was trying to immobilize me for the rest of my life. Noah came with me on his scooter for company.

‘Haven’t you just run the marathon?’ commented a lady walking her dog who must have seen me on the telly.

‘Yes, I have,’ I beamed.

‘Wow, and now you’re out playing with your son, that’s impressive.’

‘Thank you.’

Well, I wasn’t going to tell her I was in fact in the park for entirely
selfish reasons, was I?

Ten minutes later Noah and I had rendezvoused with wife and son number two in the pub where the kids ordered pizzas, I ordered a Guinness, and Tash a Bloody Mary. After which Tash informed me she’d booked a babysitter and that the grown ups were going out to celebrate.

‘The kids can finish their dinner, then you stay here while I take them home and I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

All of a sudden I could hear those angels again.

Half an hour later, Tash and I were in Odette’s restaurant on Regent’s Park Road. After three starters I tucked into a huge steak with a bowl of the most buttery salted new potatoes I’ve ever tasted, all washed down with a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red and several glasses of house champagne. At no point did I feel full or tipsy, let alone drunk.

And the next day:

Ping!

I was up at 4.30 a.m. as bright as a button, ready for work and a morning of post-marathon glow. Apparently the post-marathon glow is a recognized condition. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to becoming enlightened other than the time I went down to the business end to see Eli pop out of his mummy’s tummy.

The glow lasts between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, after which it disappears, poof, into thin air, as mysteriously as it arrived.

And that was basically that.

My marathon story, from shuffling start to achy breaky finish.

Will I do it again? Yes, absolutely.

Did I wear the new trainers?

Actually, no, I didn’t.

They are still in the box.

Whereas my old faithfuls, their glass case is being measured up as I speak.

I want to be buried in them, or cremated in them, or whatever happens to me.

They changed my life.

Forever.

For better.

PART 3

Planning for ‘Life Part II’

Ten Things I Do to Make My Life Easier, Simpler and More Relaxed:

So how do we go about estimating how many heartbeats we have left?

I decided to look around at various people I know who are older than me. Friends and family, work colleagues who I admire, and observe their general level of fitness, awareness and mental sharpness compared to their age. The conclusion I came to was that, with the minimum of self-preservation, everyone from all the above categories was generally very OK till at least their mid sixties, and still OK-ish until their mid-seventies.

It looks like we really are ageing more slowly than our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Not surprising really, considering they had to survive a terrible and bloody war just so we could lie on the sofa watching
Deal or No Deal
.

In fact it increasingly looks like we may be the first generation in two thousand years of massacres and mayhem that has managed to slip through the net and not had to endure very much at all.

That doesn’t mean we can take life for granted.

I am very good friends with a chap who has been hugely successful in a particular sport. A gentleman who is also widely and fondly regarded as being the life and soul of any party he chooses to grace and lace with his presence.

‘What would you change if you could do it all again?’ I once asked him.

‘That’s simple,’ he smiled ruefully. ‘A couple of years ago at Christmas, I said to one of my kids, who’s now grown up, “Come here, give your old dad a hug.” At which point, he looked at me and broke down into floods of tears right there and then. “What on earth’s the matter, son?” I asked. “You just don’t get it, Dad, do you?” He could barely speak, so gritted were his teeth in between the sobbing. “You were never there.”’

Wow.

‘And you know, he was right.’

As you can imagine, this was a real wake-up call for my pal. The moment which crystallized for him the fact that he now has more money than time left, an issue he has since seriously acknowledged
and done something about.

How many of us have made that call: ‘Don’t wait up, I have to work late.’ Or,, ‘You eat with the children, I’ll pick something up on the way home.’ Or, even more pathetically, sent a text.

These are not just hours we’re missing, these are golden nuggets of everything that’s important in life – and we are wilfully throwing them away.

These are super-minutes, our most valuable time. The time that, if time were a commodity, would be the best-performing stock. Time with loved ones, lost for ever, is totally irreplaceable. No matter how many millions you throw at it, it’s not coming back.

Therefore we have a duty to ourselves, and to those dear to us, to identify our own individual super-minutes and guard them with our lives. Bedtimes and bathtimes with the kids, the time when they’re at their most reflective and receptive. The most important time to seed their subconscious with sunny, stimulating, positive and loving thoughts before they drift off to sleep.

I’ll never forget a particularly joyous session of splish-splashing with my eldest son Noah when, without realizing, I slid down on the bathroom floor, having floated off into a happy cloud of contentment.

‘Daddy?’ he said.

‘Yes, son,’ I replied, immediately snapping out of my trance.

‘Why have you gone all quiet?’ And then he looked at me for an answer, as if his whole world was on hold while he figured out what was going on.

A beautiful moment in time, a moment I will never forget. A moment we would have never experienced had I not put time aside for my super-minutes.

Equally as important are super-minutes with the older members of our family. Those for whom time with those they love is now all that matters. Every day more valuable than the last. Every second, ever more priceless.

Super-minutes in the gym. Super-minutes preparing a special meal for our friends and family. Super-minutes sitting by a stream,
or listening to the birds, or lying under a tree in the dappled light of our life-giving sun.

Yet we waste these precious minutes.

Why, I’ve no idea. All I know is that we need to stop.

Sleep is the land bank of super-minutes, yet how often do we wake up groggy from not giving ourselves enough?

We need to make quality time and then protect that quality time for all it’s worth.

A minute late picking the boys up from school may not seem like such a big deal, but they go to sleep at seven. Why would I want to put any of those minutes up to tender?