Dutch Courage

I am passed mile twenty two of the Rotterdam Marathon. The crowds, which have been massive, have thinned on this bit of the course. Small pockets of people applaud as I go by. The pace team I have been following for almost the entire race are slowly pulling away from me. I have had a stitch in my right side for a couple of miles now which I cannot shake off.

I am crumbling inside. This is not hitting the wall where everything is suddenly crashing down around me, it is more subtle than that. I feel as if my bubble of fitness has been pierced by the finest pin and energy is slowing draining out of every step, as I watch the pacers edge further ahead. Never mind the start line of the marathon which I had left some three and a half hours earlier, this is where the real race begins for me.

“this is the challenge of the marathon”

This is the battle with myself. This is the challenge of the marathon. This is the point where all logic is telling me to stop. This is where my legs want to walk. My feet want me to sit down. My left heel jabs on every step. This is where the stitch feels even more piercing than before. This is no longer about physical fitness. From here until the finish line is only going to be about one thing. Finding the mental strength to keep running.

I am going slower than I was earlier. I know I am going slower. But I am still moving. People are overtaking me as I get beyond the next distance marker – in kilometres rather than miles as the race is in Europe of course – but others are walking and I am gradually picking them off one by one. Every time I see a walker I focus on them, they draw me forward. As I pass them I look ahead for another.

“they are there for me”

But now when I look ahead all I can see are crowds of people. And these crowds of people are on the road. They are no longer on the pavement. They are on the road and they are cheering. They are clapping. Some are drinking cans of Heineken. Some are holding banners. Some are screaming. And some are screaming my name. They are high fiving me as I go past. I feel like I am dying inside. But every shout, every cheer, every clap, every high five, every person who is there, it feels as if they are there for me. To get me through it. It is as if they are putting their fingers over that pin prick that is sapping my energy, trying to keep the energy in, trying to keep me going.

I feel better. I push on, trying to run faster. That lasts maybe about one hundred yards. I feel worse. I push on, just trying to run. I am trying to ignore the distance markers now. The next one I spot is thirty nine kilometres. I have missed the thirty seven and thirty eight mile kilometre markers, so distracted by the crowds I have become. I have three kilometres to go, under two miles. This is a distance I have run thousands of times. It is time to forget every inch I have run so far and to focus on this. I know I can run three kilometres.

“the city itself is willing me on”

The crowds continue to roar. This is getting seriously intense. This is madness. Dozens of people call out my name as I pass. They can see I am toiling. They can see the strain I am going through. They cannot run for me, but it is as if the city itself is willing me on. These people are there not to just support their friends and family. They are there to support everyone. This is the magic of the marathon. This is the city opening its arms and embracing those who take on the challenge. At this point, at this time, in this moment they are there for me.

I pass the forty kilometre mark. The forty one kilometre mark. I pass the mark on the road which says there is one kilometre to go. The noise of the crowd subsides slightly as the road widens out and the supporters retreat to the pavements once more. I am so close now. I run underneath a building, the cheers now echoing and reverberating, bouncing off the building and the road and through my head. I turn. I make the final right turn on the course. I am in the finishing straight.

“I want the run to end”

The noise of the crowds builds once more. The finishing straight turns slightly downhill, I try and summon up some more energy. My legs are shot. They barely feel connected to the rest of me, but they are still carrying me forward. In so many ways I want the run to end, but in many ways I want it to continue. I want to remember this feeling. I want to let the atmosphere wash over me. I want the energy from the crowd to permeate my skin, for me to retain the energy which is pulsing through these city streets. I want to enjoy and I want to remember what I am going through. This is seriously special.

The cheering continues, but over the noise, then I can hear the voice of the announcer at the finish line. I am closing in now. I am looking ahead but as yet I cannot see the line itself. I try and run faster, but I feel like I am treading in a bath of syrup. I am still overtaking some people, those who are walking, those who are limping. I pass one person being attended to by medical staff. I feel for them so much, they are in sight of the finish line but are not going to make it. But I am going to make it. I can now see it.

I raise my arms in the air. I try and look at faces in the crowd. I see the announcer and I head over and high five him. The line is so close now. Just a few more steps. Just a few more paces and the ecstatic agony will be over. I try and try and try to run faster but I cannot. And then it is done. I cross the line. I stumble. I stop. I am a six time marathon finisher.

Worth every step

And at this point I then get immediately grabbed by one of the first aiders just over the finish line. A young man, probably in his late twenties, looks at me with a concerned expression on his face and he says something to me in Dutch. I reply that I am sorry but I do not speak Dutch. He has his arm round me now and he says, “I just want to check you are ok, you are stumbling a bit”. I reply with the immortal line, “I am fine, can I stop my watch?”.

Pascalle -I asked him his name – lets me do that and then keeps a hold of me. I feel fine but he wants to walk with me for a little bit to check I am ok. I insist that I am fine, but I just need a drink of water. I am bit done in. We walk together for a few yards then he says he will let me go if I can walk in a straight line. It felt a bit like a drink driving test!! I can walk ok and off I go, heading through the finish area to get my medal, a drink and something to eat.

“could not catch me”

The moments after a marathon are weird. There is so much to process, so much to take in. I am walking and I get a tap on my shoulder. Another runner speaks to me in Dutch. He realises I do not understand and then he tells that he was behind me for ages during the race but could just not catch me. We congratulate each other and move on. Perhaps when I felt like I was running in treacle I was perhaps running a bit quicker than I thought.

Rotterdam was a great event. A very flat course, tons of support – this even blew the support in Manchester and Barcelona out of the water – and well organised, with just one flaw. The signage for the start was non existent and getting into the start pens was a bit chaotic. Once the race got going, it was terrific and I would highly recommend it to anyone. One thing to note, there is a five and a half hour time limit which they do enforce so bear that in mind.

After I made it through the crowds and back to my hotel I could begin to relax. I ordered a beer and a water and got my traditional post race photo done – thanks to the bar staff.

Boy that tasted good!!

After showering, having some snacks to eat – peanuts, biscuits, sweet stuff are good in the immediate aftermath – I headed out to a nearby bar to get some food and have a drink. I was sitting at the bar, wearing my JogScotland hoodie when a Scottish guy came up and spoke to me, asking if I had done the run. It turned out him and his friend had also ran and so he asked me to join them. So I sat with Iain and Adrian and shot the breeze with them for a while and enjoyed a couple of drinks together, which was really nice. A good opportunity to chat about what had happened, to decompress, to process the event with others who understood.

Yes I did wear my medal out in the bar!

Then it was back to the hotel to pack as I was leaving fairly early in the morning. I never sleep well after a marathon and this was no different which meant that I felt super tired really all day on Monday. My legs did not feel too bad as I was on the go quite a lot, walking to the train station then through the airport, though I was definitely avoiding stairs if I could! Tuesday was the worst day of the week as my thighs felt like concrete but since then things have gradually improved.

I have also made sure that I have used this week to eat loads, drink loads and celebrate. I have virtual drinks with people from work every Friday night and since Christmas I have been on soft drinks ahead of my Saturday runs, so this week it was nice to have a beer with the guys again. I think, after all of the sacrifices of training, it is really important to celebrate success, so this has totally been a week of enjoying myself.

And I have made it back out for a gentle run, but I will be taking it easy for some time to allow my body to recover from what it has been through. The run also gave me the chance to wear my brand new t-shirt too!!

A nice run with Maxine and Cara

So one week on how do I reflect on what happened? I did not quite achieve the time I was hoping for, but tt does not matter. The time and pace is irrelevant and only really matters to me. What matters far more is how I responded when I faced that moment of crisis I described at the start of the blog. What matters is how I responded, when I faced that point where the easy thing would have been to stop. What matters is what this says to me, about me. Marathons are learning experiences. The training and race teach you so much about yourself, about your boundaries, about your capabilities, about your capacity to cope, to endure, and ultimately to achieve things you never believed possible.

And when that moment arrived, I overcame it. I met the challenge of the marathon and conquered it. It is not about beating other runners. It is not about the position I finished in the race. It is about me and the distance. Six times now I have lined up at a start line with twenty six point two miles looming ahead of me. Six times I have crossed that start line and embarked on that journey. And six times I have succeeded and I have finished. The question now is, will there be a seventh?

500 miles (almost)

Four hundred and forty six point eight . That might seem an odd number when it comes to talking about marathons. Most people would talk about twenty six point two (the distance in miles) or forty two point two (the distance in kilometres) and they would be right, of course. But four hundred and forty six point eight miles is the distance I have run since January just to get me to the start line. It has taken me seventy five hours to do it. This is what it has taken me just to get the chance to run the Rotterdam Marathon.

My log of training on Strava since January

Now totally by coincidence, the distance from my house to the start line in Rotterdam city centre is just over four hundred and fifty miles (and genuinely I only found that out when I had a look when I started to think about this blog), which I think is rather fitting.

Plenty of folk will have run further than this in their training (I have run further than this in other marathon training blocks), plenty will have run less, but this is what I have got. Now it is cards on the table time. The preparation is all done, this is where it really counts.

“I was beginning to catastrophise”

But at least I have made it here – writing this from my hotel in Rotterdam – which even this morning looked slightly doubtful. A thick fog descended in pockets last night, and one of those pockets was right over the city’s airport. When I arrived visibility was very poor and at least one flight was diverted and another cancelled while I was waiting for mine. Knowing my luck with flights and travel I was beginning to catastrophise about what was going to happen.

There then ensued a very nervy half an hour or so as I watched on online flight tracker showing me that my inbound flight from Amsterdam was circling off the coast of Fife as it was unable to make its approach due to the weather. Round and round it went and every time it headed south, I was expecting it to continue on that trajectory and head back from where it came, but thankfully, just in time, the fog lifted and the flight made it in.

The relief when the plane broke out of the hold at last

The rest of my trip was then very straightforward, once I got to the Netherlands. A direct half hour train journey got me from Schiphol Airport to Rotterdam and a short walk to my hotel, which is very close to the station and the finish line for the race. As with many of the big international marathons, I needed to pick up my number from an expo, which was not too far away and was extremely busy. I guess that is not surprising when there are seventeen thousand of us doing the marathon, and a further fourteen thousand doing the 10k tomorrow, plus today there are tons and tons of kids and other races going on, giving a real buzz to the city, so I took the chance for a look at the finish line too. Hopefully I will still be in reasonable shape when I see it again tomorrow.

Looking forward to that finish line feeling

But having picked up my number – and endured a bit of stress this morning after an early start and then the time anxiously awaiting the flight to land – all I really want to do now is put my feet up and have a bit of a rest. The only place I will be going tonight is to an Italian restaurant a short distance away for my traditional pre-race pizza, then it will be an early night. Plenty of time for drinking once the race is done tomorrow, fingers crossed.

My final few training runs this week were, thankfully, uneventful, which is just what you want at this point in the proceedings. The final spell of training is not the time for any heroics, it is the time for just getting through it, continuing on from the tiptoeing around which I wrote about last week.

Windy and cold conditions have continued throughout the week and this reflected in the runs which I did – two of them down at Aberdeen beach and once from my house – and for two of them I made them slightly tougher than perhaps I would have had the conditions been better. For the runs at the beach, the wind was so strong in my face on the way out once more, it forced me to push a bit harder. Now I was only pushing for a mile or so but it served as a decent reminder about how hard running can (and will) be, particularly in the latter stages of the marathon itself.

Grey and blustery conditions

Conditions for the final run I did were not much better, though thankfully the overnight rain had blown through when I went out from home for only a two mile run on Wednesday. This run is always one of the most nervous for me, permanently on the lookout for a loose paving stone, a pothole in the road, a small tree branch brought down onto the pavement, anything which could cause me to go over on an ankle. I was therefore mightily relieved to make it back home in one piece and with no dramas along the way.

Much of the rest of the week has been spent just killing time as my wife and I have been off work this week. A visit to see our daughter. A trip to see my mum on her birthday. A bit of shopping. Trips out for a coffee and a cake. A spot of lunch in town. All good things to take my mind off the one thing which just looms over everything else right now.

“did i mention… the weather?”

And that has been the challenge these last few weeks, trying NOT to think about the marathon itself. It is so tempting to check the weather. So tempting to look at the marathon’s various social accounts to see if there has been any updated information. Checking the airline website religiously. Looking at the weather. Thinking, “is that sneeze the start of a terminal illness?”. When running, feeling every niggle, every twinge. Checking the weather. Looking up the train service (possible delays on the line, what joy). I even got to the stage this week of watching videos of people running the marathon last year (yeah, like their experience is going to match mine), but that is the reality of the lead up to the day of the race when you do not have work to occupy your day. Oh, and did I mention that I kept checking the weather….

The actual weather, which is all that counts, looks good. Cool conditions, cloudy, small chance of drizzle and a bit of a breeze from the north. The warm and humid conditions which I faced in Venice in October will not be repeating themselves here. And let’s all be thankful for that.

“I will not have that to look forward to”

One sad element though is that I am here myself. Because of the way the flights worked out, unfortunately my wife Fiona was not able to make the trip. A highlight of any race is looking for Fiona at various points and the amazing boost which that gives me when I see her in the crowed. She has been such a great supporter of me at races over the last few years, but tomorrow I will not have that to look forward to, unfortunately.

So that is it. After almost four hundred and fifty miles, just twenty six point two miles to get through. Just…. It is a tall order and never gets easier. For me it represents my ultimate test of endurance and will power. I have done five marathons before. I know what I need to do. I just have to summon up one final effort to get me round and over that finish line. After writing about if for so long, no longer do I have weeks to go. Now? One day to go. Let’s get it done.

Tiptoe

You might not associate tiptoeing as having much to do with running a marathon, but right now, this is precisely how I feel I am doing it. Being careful, watching where I am stepping, watching how I am running. I feel like I am tiptoeing my way to the start line.

With now just a week to go until the race, the hard work is done, now it is simply a case of getting there (I say simply but let’s not forget the nightmare which was travel to Venice for the marathon last October…) in the best condition I can be.

“put all the work in jeopardy”

But while the hard work is done – the longest runs, the highest mileage – things do not stop. There are still miles to be run in the tapering period running up to the race and that is why I have felt like I have been on eggshells all week, worried that a simple slip, a foot placed in a crack in the road, a dodgy bit of pavement, could put all the work in jeopardy. This is not a particularly healthy way of looking at running, but it is how I am just nursing my way through these days.

This week I took myself down to Aberdeen beach for my midweek runs, mostly because I enjoy running there, but also because it is flat – good preparation for the flat Rotterdam roads – and the weather has been ok. Well I say it has been ok, it has remained really cold, and in actual fact, a strong wind has been blowing for most of the week and that actually made the runs a little bit more challenging than I had anticipated.

“work quite hard”

Distance-wise, they were nothing to write home about – four miles, three miles and four miles – but each of them was tough in its own way. While the views were great to enjoy as a distraction, running into a stiff breeze each day on the way out on my chosen running direction (I prefer to start into the wind to then get the benefits of wind behind for the later part) did mean I had to work quite hard to get through them. Mind you, that is probably no bad thing, as the temptation to switch off totally in these final runs is pretty strong. It is important to keep the effort going.

The blue skies disguised how cold and breezy it was!

The effort was hardest on Thursday night when I ran on my own, but it had also been challenging on the other nights when I ran with friends, Liam, and then Cara. Running into the wind is a good mental test, forcing me to concentrate harder on maintaining pace, pushing me to put in a good shift to get through it. This might be the tapering stage, but after working so hard up until this point, easing off completely runs the risk of making the effort on race day seem all the tougher, having forgotten just how difficult long distance running can be.

With Cara on our midweek run

Having got through these runs without incident, it was then a case of negotiating my final, longish, Saturday run. Only eight miles this week, but an important eight miles nonetheless. At this stage, eight miles seems like nothing, it is the fact that it is over so quick that comes as such a surprise (it was the same with the twelve mile run last weekend). Having been used to being out for more than three hours on my longest runs, when you go out for around two hours last week or under ninety minutes this week, it really does pass so fast (even when you are tiptoeing around).

But I guess the reason it does pass so fast, is that I have been so fortunate to run with so many of my friends throughout this training block. In addition to all of the people I have run with at JogScotland, I cannot thank my regular training friends Cara, Susan, Jeanette and Maxine, who have all got themselves out really early on so many Saturday and Sunday mornings to join me for various runs. Without their help, this block would have been much more of a chore to get through, so to all of them (and Scout, Susan’s dog, who has also been regular companion), thank you so much.

And then there is this. Now this photo below may not look much, just a wall outside a house, but this wall, and in fact this specific spot above the drain, is my finishing line for all of the runs which I do which lead me back to my house.

The finishing line

Whether it is a good run or a bad run. A wet run or a cold run. A run in the daylight or a run in the dark. It does not matter what type of run it is. Whenever I get into my street and head towards my house, I head for this spot to tap the wall beside the bush to mark the fact that I have reached my own, personal, finish line. I do not recall when I started doing this – in many ways it would be simpler just to run straight up to my front door – but stopping here, tapping the wall, then stopping my watch, has become my routine for as long as I can recall now.

“no run is ever pointless”

I think stopping here signifies to me that it is time to relax and to think about how the run has gone. Sometimes I have stood around here for a few minutes processing things before going inside. On other occasions, I have tapped here and headed straight in to get out of the cold/wet/snowy/sleety conditions! But every time I have tapped here, I know the run has been worth it. Worth it for my mental health, worth it for my physical fitness and worth it for my general wellbeing. No run is ever pointless.

This week, the finishing line will only be in use a couple more times, as I only have a couple of very short runs to do before the race day in Rotterdam. But I will tap the wall. I will stop my watch. And I will reflect on what has just happened.

The organisers also published the first pictures of the medal which I will be aiming for this week, and I received my confirmation of my number for the race – 17044 – and that I will be starting in wave four for the race, so I should get going at around 10.30am local time. All I am praying for now is a smooth journey to get there with no cancellations this time around, so that a lot of the stress which the journey to Venice put me through can be eliminated and I can focus on doing the best I can around the streets of Rotterdam.

This is what it is all about

The week ahead will be mostly spent trying NOT to think about the race, and trying NOT to constantly look at the updated weather forecast, which has already changed about a thousand times since I first had a look at the long range forecast last weekend! At this stage, it is about controlling and influencing the things which I have in my own hands. What I am eating, what I am drinking, how much rest I am getting. As I am on holiday this week, fingers crossed we will have some nice day trips away and some relaxing time with my wife before I make the solo trip for the race.

All things going well, I will write my next blog from Rotterdam, on the eve of my biggest race of the year. One week to go.

Know Yourself

I have reached the stage of marathon training where there is virtually nothing I can do now which is going to make the race day any better, but there are plenty of things I could do which could make it whole heap worse. This is the point to just stay focused, not do anything daft and nurse my way through to the start line.

Now what I mean by that is that the hard work of the training has been done. It is not that I have stopped running, far from it, but the longest runs are done, the biggest mileage weeks are behind me, the weeks where the distances just grew and grew are all completed. All of these miles are in my legs and in my head and this is a great feeling.

“reducing the strain”

But it is equally important at this point to let your body (and mind) recover a bit before the full stress of a marathon course, so the process of tapering, reducing the mileage, reducing the effort, reducing the strain on your body which has built up over the previous three months of the training plan, comes into play. Doing too much, experimenting with different things, trying out new techniques. Now is not the time for any of that. Now is the time to rely on what you know.

Speaking from experience, this period of tapering can also drive you crazy. All I have thought about for weeks now is running (yeah ok there has been work too but you know what I mean), and all I have done for weeks is run. Now you have to tell yourself not to run, or at least not to run as far or as fast, feels rather counterintuitive as you sense that the fitness and resilience you have built up through that time is slipping from your legs like grains of sand falling through your fingers.

One way this was broken up for me this week was that I had a work trip to Berlin. This did two things. First, it gave me something of a distraction from my usual work from home routine, and secondly it also meant I could take my running stuff with me and run somewhere different during the week for the first time in ages.

“easy and flat miles”

Berlin is where the fastest official marathon time has been set and the course there is known for being incredibly flat. Now the record time in Rotterdam is also very quick and has a similar flat course, so this was a good opportunity to get some easy and flat miles in. Where I was staying was not too far from where the Berlin marathon finishes, so I planned an early morning route of almost five miles to take me to the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and back to my hotel.

What a fantastic place to finish a marathon this must be, a long straight which leads up to the gate, and flat as a pancake too. Good luck to everyone who is heading to race in Berlin in Autumn, it will be a sensational feeling I am sure when you pass through the gate and on to the finish line just beyond.

The run also made me appreciate again how lucky I have been to run in so many different places. While travel for work is much more limited now than it used to be for me – and that is totally fine – it has provided me with opportunities to run in cities across the world where I would never have been able to go to under other circumstances. This is not to say I do not enjoy running where I live, of course, but running elsewhere has a special feel to it.

The one thing about the travel which I saw as a downside was that I was flying through busy airports and mixing with lots of people, so the spectre of picking up an illness has certainly been floating around my head this week, as with such a short length of time now before the race, the last thing I want to do is to get something. So far, so good, and I got back home and feel fine. What did I say about this period driving your crazy?

While last week marked the longest run of the whole training programme, this week is where the mileage really backs off, so it was just (ha, just) a twelve mile run which I did with some friends back in Aberdeen. It was a straightforward out and back course to the city centre and round the beach and I was joined by some friends for the run and it totally zipped by. It is amazing how twelve miles – which is a significant distance in its own right – can feel like almost nothing in comparison to what I have been running lately.

The morning route

This demonstrates to me two things. The first is the value of just keeping turning up. Training programmes work, but there are no shortcuts. There is no magic bullet, no secret sauce, no hidden aura about any of this. It is just about hard work, building up over time.

The second thing was at the end of the run today I was thinking back to the dark days in January when my training began, coming back from injury, and how hard just a few miles was back then. I remember writing that I had to focus on the fact that what I was doing in those days would reap benefits in the months to come and how true that statement has turned out to be. I felt great today as we got to eleven and twelve miles, it felt easy, one of the days to bottle the feeling, and to hold on to it, using it as a reminder of what you can do if you really set your mind to it. This is what a training plan can help you to achieve.

This week I also past some more milestones for the year. March was another month of more mileage – almost one hundred and sixty miles – and I past four hundred running miles for the year. This is a proof point. A marathon is not twenty six point two miles, a marathon is hundreds of miles, the hundreds of miles you put in when no one is watching which simply get you to that starting line.

Passing four hundred miles

While these are notable achievements on their own, so far, from the perspective of the marathon, I have achieved nothing. I have just moved another few paces closer to the start line. For anyone who is concerned, the toe nail has survived another week, so perhaps it will make it to Rotterdam with me after all. Two weeks to go.