Keep on Running (12 page)

  I'd completed in time enough to freshen up and wait for him at the finish. It was fairly quiet by then, and, with my medal still around my neck, I was able to go back into the enclosure and catch him just after he'd crossed the line. There was something I needed to know.

  We'd both completed doctorates at Oxford University. Receiving the degree was a moment I thought nothing could eclipse, until my first marathon. 'Which was the better moment?' I asked the newly finished Michael as he looked around, slightly bewildered. 'The DPhil or the marathon?' 'The marathon' was his instant answer.
Welcome to the club
, I thought. Forget the brains, forget the poncy degree. We'd both missed our vocation. Now we'd found it. Two 'academics' had turned into 'athletes', Michael at 69, me four years previously at 34.

London 2003 was a similar run, this time finishing in 3:53:38 – around three minutes quicker than in 2002, but a time accompanied by disappointment. Having cracked 4:00, I'd wanted to crack 3:50. But it was not to be. Even so, I had moved up to 8,540th out of 33,000 finishers – which again illustrated just how thickly people were finishing at that point. I was just under three minutes quicker but around 2,500 places further up the field. I was getting there. I'd halved my 1998 finishing position by coming in 18 minutes quicker.

  Once again, Michael was running, this time on a charity place, having failed again to get a ballot place. I was delighted he was there, not least because his presence meant all the more family support. I was flagging at 17 miles, which is when I saw Fiona's brother Alistair. He took my picture and shouted 'How are you?', to which, not at my most articulate, I replied '******* knackered', to which he replied, 'You look it.' But the conversation helped. Ten minutes or so later, I was feeling better and more in control. There is something very significant in being asked directly how you are and being able to give such a colourful answer. It's as if it gets something out of your system and allows you to move on, almost like spitting out a poison. Not nice for the spectators, but it was from there that I started to improve.

  And once again, I was marvelling at the London crowd. Loads of people were shouting out my name, as if they had some sixth sense, unerringly finding those of us that really needed it. Again, I was looking for that eye contact. There was a glorious moment when a chap roared at me, 'Come on, Phil, dig deep, dig deep, you can do it!' It was really special. I go tingly even now just thinking about it. It says so much that massed humanity can roar you on and yet, the icing on the cake, you can still get that sublime individual connection.

  But after the race, there was one particular individual connection I enjoyed even more. This was the day that Paula Radcliffe knocked almost two minutes off her own world record to come in at a sensational 2:15:25. The pleasure was immense for all of us who followed.

  Radcliffe is simply the most gracious and graceful of athletes. In interview, she always comes across so well; generous and sporting in the very best sense of the word. She's one of those rare heroes who never alienate. We share in her disappointments and we share in her glories. She's never surly in defeat; she's never arrogant in her triumphs. She's a running genius – and her 2003 London Marathon was an astonishing achievement which stands to this day. No one else is coming remotely near it. And I was there.

  Technically, of course, Radcliffe was running a different race to me, but I wasn't prepared to let a technicality like that stand in my way. As far as I was concerned, I was a tiny, tiny part of a race which saw her rewrite the history books. And that is one of the many thrills of the London Marathon.

I haven't done a single marathon I regret. Even the ones I hated are ones I love in memory, stinkers which are somehow transformed by hindsight into worthy efforts. In the end, it all comes back to that old saying that has always seemed so barking mad: whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. If I start to look at my marathons as parts of my running's rich tapestry, then a pattern does start to emerge, the rotters becoming somehow leavened by the wonder runs – runs in which the pleasure isn't in the perversity of it all, but simply in the sheer joy of running. The going has frequently got tough, but in amongst the troughs are unbeatable highs, none higher than the New York City Marathon of 2003, a fantastic experience in surely the world's most exhilarating city.

  New York was the marathon that brought it home to me that, when I say I love running, what I actually mean is that I love marathons. Mine is a very specific obsession. I have to concede that I am unusual. Hundreds of thousands of runners know that the best way to improve is to run races across all sorts of different distances, safe in the knowledge that each discipline will benefit every other one in the long run, if you'll pardon the pun. The running magazines tell you endlessly to mix it up, just for the enjoyment of it all as much as anything else – but it's advice I've never been tempted to follow.

  Rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly, I've never been able to psyche myself up for any race other than a marathon. Other runners will reckon I've pointlessly limited my horizons; my belief is that I've focused on the only running horizon that inspires me. The big M – the only race I want, the only race that stirs me, and none comes more stirring than the New York City Marathon.

  It was meant to be. No one had told me how heavily oversubscribed the New York City Marathon was. I simply applied and got a place, but my jaw did drop when I looked online on the appointed day and trawled through the thousands and thousands of rejections. For some reason, they publish the whole lot – presumably to make the rejected feel somehow less rejected. The other effect, of course, is that it sends those that are actually accepted into orbit. Rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, accepted, rejected, rejected, rejected. Hang on. Whose name was next to 'accepted'? Mine!

  And the timing couldn't possibly have been better. Just three weeks before the race, I celebrated my 40th birthday, a landmark which suddenly seemed slightly more palatable for the prospect of the New York City Marathon following so soon in its wake. Is there any male who hasn't gulped in horror at the ghastly thought of turning 40, a day which couldn't possibly ever be just another day? For years – well, 40 to be precise – it had hung there, immovable and depressing, like a final farewell to youth and a 'come on in' to cardigans, dribbling and dotage. It seemed the stopping-off point between a world of endless possibility and a world of 'No, I never did quite get round to that'; whatever marathon I ran after 11 October 2003, I would be running as a 'veteran', a word which made me shudder with its images of upright, overpolished, ancient cars farting along at 5 miles an hour while queues of traffic snaked endlessly behind them.

  But suddenly New York hove into view – and it seemed that some kind of afterlife might actually be possible. Having cracked four hours in London, I now wanted to crack 3:50. The New York City Marathon was the perfect birthday present, one which suggested that there might just be a future worth having.

  I was straight on to the MS Society. They were offering places to people willing to commit to raising certain amounts in sponsorship. I told them I had a place already, and they promptly added me to their team. We were called the MS Superstars. How fantastic was that. What a great team to be part of, and what a great place to go and run.

  Fiona and I had had a couple of days in New York a few years before, and I had instantly fallen head over heels in love with the place. I'd asked the taxi driver at the airport how long it would take to get to the city centre. 'Anything between forty-five minutes and the rest of your life' was his gloriously New York answer. That was it. In that moment, I was hooked, and over the next couple of days I became increasingly enchanted by the mad, bad brashness and excitement of the whole place, the stunning beauty and the awful ugliness which sit side by side in the least restful, most intoxicating city I had ever seen. How fabulous would it be to see it on foot, slowly and in the company of 35,000 other runners? How fabulous indeed. So much more fabulous than I could ever have hoped.

  In
Desert Island Discs
, having chosen your eight records, you're allowed to take only one with you to your desert island. In
Desert Island Marathons
, my choice would have to be New York, for the sheer thrill of it, for all the poignancy of running it just two years after 9/11 and for the pinch-yourself unbelievability of a magnificent course through all five boroughs of a magnificent city. Kicking off on Staten Island, you run into Brooklyn before clipping Queens and then heading into Manhattan for a loop which takes you briefly into the Bronx before heading back into Manhattan for a Central Park finish. In prospect, it seemed running simply couldn't come any better than this.

  The organisers haven't gone all-out for speed. Apparently they could have come up with a quicker course if they had wanted. But these are people with huge pride in their city. They don't want you just to whizz through it. They want you to set foot in its every borough – and that's the course they came up with. Moreover, New Yorkers want to be there to see you do it. The crowds were phenomenal.

  By now Adam and Laura were seven and five; it was term-time; there was no way I could drag them out to New York. Instead, I went out with my mum, Juliette, flying out on the Friday before the marathon on the Sunday.

  As always with a big-city marathon, the build-up begins at the registration. It's when the juices start to flow, and the New York registration was suitably inspiring. You signed in at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, which certainly gave you an idea of the scale of the whole event. The centre was huge, and there were hundreds of people milling around. However, the queue to register was moving all the time and we were processed very efficiently. It was all very friendly as well. You were given your number and a microchip. You then scanned the chip and looked to see whether your number and name came up on the screen. If they did, you were ready to roll. Next, you got the chance to buy a bus ticket ($12) to the start – not quite your usual ticket, simply a sticker that they attached to your running number. And then you were done, free to wander out into the marathon exhibition to soak up the atmosphere before heading out into the New York evening. This was 31 October – and the Big Apple was in Halloween party mood. Scores of people were in Halloween costumes, dressed as horned devils, or as scary, green-faced witches. New York was fun that Friday night.

  Saturday morning was phase two in the marathon build-up. I was keen to get a feel for the finish, and so we walked to Central Park where it would all come to an end, just a few minutes from the hotel. Already it was clear that it was going to be a hot day. There were plenty of joggers around and also groups of dog-walkers. The atmosphere was relaxed and tranquil, with the park resplendent in all its autumn glory, the leaves every shade of yellow, orange and red – a gorgeous oasis right in the heart of the crazy rush of the big bad city.

  The finishing area is in the south-eastern corner of the park and on the Saturday it was also the finishing area for the Friendship Run, a 4-mile leisurely trot from the United Nations building. Maybe I should have done it. It was open to all international competitors in the marathon, but actually it was rather nice to be a spectator. Again, it was very relaxed. There were lorries full of waiting goodie bags, huge piles of drinks bottles, music playing and people strolling around.

  The arrival of the Friendship runners was heralded by sirens and by police on motorbikes, and then came the runners themselves, coming in by country by country, all very colourful and impressive. Playing over the loudspeakers was 'Shattered' by The Rolling Stones – which shouldn't have been appropriate so early in the day after just 4 miles, but maybe it was. It was getting worryingly warm by now and quite a few people were looking fairly sweaty. But it was lovely to watch it, a little foretaste of the big day itself.