Читать книгу Running Crazy - Imagine Running a Marathon. Now Imagine Running Over 100 of Them. Incredible True Stories from the World's Most Fanatical Runners - Helen Summer - Страница 15

Virgin – someone who has never run a marathon before. Slut – someone who, while running one marathon, is thinking about another. Commonly a 100 Marathon Club member.

You never forget your first time. Whether you only ever do it once or you end up doing it 100 times, the first time remains with you always. You’ll be able to recall with clarity the weather, the people you met, how many drink stations you stopped at along the way, at what mile you felt your best (and your worst), how your nipples fared and what underwear you wore – and despite those last two references you’ll have guessed by now that I’m not talking about sex.

You will also be able to recall that magical moment when you stepped across the finishing line after covering 26.2 miles on foot, unaided, with only your mind and body for company. That’s not to discount the thousands of other runners who ran it with you or the crowds cheering you on along the way or the countless officials, who handed you water and gels or placed a medal around your neck. There was only one person who got you from the start to the finish, and that person was you.

It was you who kept going despite the burning pain of a blister on your little toe that rubbed against the side of your trainer with every step you took, it was you who kept going when your legs screamed at your brain to tell you to ‘STOP, STOP NOW!’, and it was you who kept going when your heart banged painfully inside your chest and your lungs tightened and had you gasping for air like a fish out of water.

And it is because of those things that when you finally cross the line and feel the soft brush of a warm hand placing a ribbon around your neck and the contrasting cold, harsh metal that almost knocks your teeth out as you bend over in an effort to locate a pocket of air in your chest, making you take the medal in your hand as you straighten up, you cast your eyes downwards and stare almost in surprise at the gong in your hand confirming what you have just achieved. You study the inscription, move your fingers around the rough edges, caress the solid piece of metal and slowly a smile spreads its way across your face, despite the fact that you have never felt worse in your entire life. And you know a moment of pure, unadulterated joy, the joy that comes with the knowledge of all you have suffered yet never given in to, of the months spent training alone on cold dark nights, of revelling in the aches and pains in your body that are part of your achievement and make it real.

And as you look around, you see others – total strangers, their faces mirroring your own emotions and that same slow smile spreading its way across their faces – so that when eventually your eyes meet, you smile at one another like old friends with a shared history. Such is the experience of running marathons, whether your first or your 100th.

I know this to be true not from personal experience but from talking to those who have run anything between 100 and 800 marathons. It would seem not only is there always the pain and suffering during a marathon, no matter how experienced you are, always there is the joy, too. It also appears to be the case that no matter how many marathons a person runs, perhaps not surprisingly the first is the one that stays most clearly in the mind.

Take current chairman of the 100 Marathon Club, Roger Biggs. To date, he has 635 marathons under his belt and holds several records, but can still recall his first marathon with clarity.

‘Like many others, I’d watched the London Marathon on TV and was inspired to run one myself,’ he explains. ‘I failed to get into London, but in 1984 my hometown of Stevenage was having its first marathon so I decided to give it a go there.

‘I trained on my own and with a friend, and also ran three or four half marathons leading up to my debut. I remember in the race itself, I walked for the first time at 18 miles on a downhill section. By the time I entered the finish area, my calves were on the limit and I actually ground to a halt about 100 metres from the finish. A spectator helped me with a quick calf massage and believe it or not, I was warned for getting outside help! I finally got going again and limped over the line in 3 hours 58 minutes and 11 seconds.’

And then there’s Gina Little, who has run 400 marathons – the most marathons ever run by a female. She too has no difficulty in summoning up her experience of that first time.

‘It had to be London,’ she remembers. ‘The course passes the end of my road and I’d seen the runners in the second London in 1982 and promised myself that I would do it the following year.’

Sure enough, in 1983 Gina was on the start line.

‘On the morning of the marathon I walked up the hill towards the start. As I got nearer, I could smell the liniment runners were rubbing into their legs. The nearer I got, the stronger the smell! That smell still brings back great memories of that very special day.

‘I also remember that the friend I was running with was very nervous and had an upset tummy, so all through the race we had to keep stopping for the loo. One stop was in a pub and the loo was all the way downstairs. We must have lost so much time in the different loos we visited!’

Another prominent 100 Club member, Steve Edwards, who has completed over 550 marathons and has a selection of past and current national and world marathon records under his belt, gives an account of his first experience.

‘I did everything wrong,’ he admits. ‘It was 1981, I was 18 years old and I entered the Coventry Marathon with six weeks to go. I did no proper training, had no dietary preparation and wore the wrong shoes.

‘Back then there was no internet or ready advice about training, so I decided to run five miles a night for five nights a week. However, I had no idea how far five miles was, so I went down to the school running track and ran 20 laps of the 400-metre track to cover the five miles and did that every night leading up to the race!’

Race day dawned and Steve set off in his old, barely-there football boots, in which he’d done all his training and which had less support than a school football match.

‘I remember with about 10 or 11 miles to go thinking everything was okay – I was running at around 8-minute mile pace, which meant I would finish in around 3 hours 30, which I would have been really happy with. I even started to wonder what the wall thing was that the Americans were always talking about!’

Just over a mile later, though he knew exactly what they meant. Not so much hitting the wall as running smack-bang into a concrete edifice.

‘I no longer owned my legs, they wanted to stop and I was trying to make them move. I knew if I wanted to finish I had to stop but that only resulted in me stiffening up, so I started to walk and then tried a little jog and eventually ended up doing alternate jogging/walking until the last mile when, somehow, I was able to run again.’

Steve eventually crossed the finishing line in 3 hours 38 minutes.

‘The next day and for several days afterwards I could barely walk. My legs felt like gateposts and I had to walk backwards down the stairs.’

In fact, this is such a common experience for first-timers that there is actually a T-shirt available to purchase with the logo ‘I’m in the Downstairs Backwards Club’!

Steve clearly recollects his first words after finishing, ‘I am never doing that again!’ Those words are probably the most common ones spoken at the finishing line of a marathon, particularly when it comes to those who have just lost their ‘virginity’. It would appear that the members of the 100 Marathon Club are no exception. Indeed, only one of the guys and gals I spoke to admitted to setting out on that first marathon with the intention of running at least another 99 – you have been warned.