Good luck to all FLMers

[MickCollins]

My thighs were starting to cramp. I wasn’t imagining it, it was really happening. I felt sick with worry – really, genuinely panicking. I’ve run 22 miles in training, and not had cramp. I’d spent the last four days drinking water and eating pasta, and suddenly, on the day it mattered, my body was letting me down. The truth was that the dodging around was killing me, and the lack of flow to my running, not that it’s ever exactly in the Steve Ovett class, was causing problems.

Coupled with that, we were now heading out around the Canada Water/Surrey Docks loop, which makes Brookside Close look like an area of outstanding architectural beauty. On we sped, on gossamer wings, past those famous London
An 11.08 tenth mile reflected the all-pervading sense of gloom, and while the eleventh, along towards , was quicker, at 10.39, I was worried by the onset of cramp, and starting to feel fed up at this unexpected problem. Given the way I felt, the fact I felt so uplifted by the sights and sounds which awaited me over the next half a mile or so, tell their own story about this particular stretch of the course.
Looking up as I turned right, it wasn’t so much the sight of the bridge that stunned me – I’ve driven over it a million times – but the flood of people in front of me, both running and watching. The noise was extraordinary, and for the first time, for reasons I still can’t quite understand, it felt as if spectators were trying to make eye contact with the field, not just cheer them on from a distance. Three times people didn’t just call out my name, but did so looking at my face, and cheering on further when I greeted them with a smile. I wished I’d felt more emotional, but to be honest, halfway across the bridge, I started to worry about my legs again.
The crowds were amazing, the noise fantastic, and I got an insight into what it must feel like to be a star – to compete in front of that sort of crowd the whole time, but my heart felt as heavy as my legs. I think, to be honest, I’d invested a bit much into this, and the thought it might be going wrong on the very day it was meant to be going right was making me panic, as well as ache.
Mile 12 was 10.56, and 13 took 10.52, but I’d trained really happily at just under 10, planned to run the first half a fraction slower than that, and now, halfway through, found myself heading inevitably towards 11 minute miles, with legs which wanted to cramp whenever I tried to speed up.
As I headed for Docklands, and away from the bulk of the support for the next few miles, my times of 11.23, 11.21 and a sixteenth mile of 12 minutes dead told their own story. It was going wrong, and I didn’t have the experience to deal with it. Trying to do calculations in your head at this stage is close to impossible, but 16 miles is an easier point that most, as 10 is at least a straightforward number of miles with which to deal, even if the reality of still having those 10 to run was becoming steadily harder.
[SIZE=3]I’d been running for 2 hours and 53 minutes, and ten minute miles would have got me home just over four and a half hours. The problem I had, was that ten minute miles weren’t going to happen any more, and it had been three miles back since I last ran one in under eleven. By this time Colin was blowing hard, but James was drifting off, as a groin strain he’d hoped would hold off raised its head and left him walking. The agreement we’d made was that if one of us cracked, the other two would press on, and to his huge credit, James was insistent that we go on ahead. Now there were two of us, ten miles to run, and a world of tiredness.

While Colin’s ability to find sweets from the sparsest crowd was impressive, mine still needed refining. Claiming the jelly baby from the young girl’s outstretched palm was a good move, but shoving it into my mouth and discovering it was sherbet was not one of my greater moments. Foaming at the mouth, I sought out the next drinks station looking as if I’d contracted rabies, not hit the wall.
Managing to run 11.55 and 11.51 for miles 17 and 18 was a real slog, and stopping for a second to stretch my thigh caused me only to cramp my hamstring, as the effects of the early stopping and starting, really began to tell on my legs. Colin’s sudden departure off in the direction of a pub was odd enough, given the circumstances, but his return, complete with a handful of sandwiches, won all prizes.
“Cheese and pickle or egg and cress?” he asked, cheerfully.
I couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to turn him down, but getting the message, he gulped them down himself. When people tell me about having an iron constitution in future, I’ll think of Colin, wolfing egg and cress sandwiches at mile 19, and ask them to reassess. The buffet stop notwithstanding, the 19^th mile took us 12.05, while the 20^th – a slog through grim, undeveloped East End streets took exactly 12. The next was slower still, at 12.31.
It was decision time. I hurt everywhere, and despite the fantastic occasion and the emotions, I could still salvage something from this. Five and a quarter miles to go, and 3 hours 53 on the watch, this was only a disaster if we let it be. I wasn’t coming away with a time that started in 5, and that was all I really knew. I had wanted low 4-something. I’d done my last long training run – 20 miles, in 3 hours 10, yet I was half an hour off this pace and slowing. Victories are relative though, and I was going to claim one, even if it was only a minor one.
Mile 22 took a second over 12 minutes, mile 23 three seconds longer, and suddenly the Embankment was beckoning. I did another four minutes on the radio at this point – that I haven’t lost my job yet, is a testimony to my ability to retain some sort of civil tongue in my head, despite the provocation. Quite what I said, only the listeners could tell you, because from here on in, it was one, long blur.
It was here though, that the crowds came into their own. Screaming and cheering, willing us on to the end, somehow they let me carry on running when all I wanted to do was stop and walk. My legs hurt – hurt like they’d never hurt in training, and I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, but I just knew I had to plod on and finish as well as I could. Mile 24 was 11.56, and mile 25 three seconds quicker.

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