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 30
ОглавлениеCHRIS MONSEY
Born: 1962
130 marathons:
• 1st marathon: 1981 – Scarborough
• 100th marathon: 2005 – Berlin
When Chris Monsey set off from home one day in 2003 on a business trip bound for Africa, little did he know that he was about to participate in the strangest marathon race of his life.
‘I was on an Ethiopian Airlines flight when I had a chance encounter with the manager of a group of Ethiopian athletes,’ he explains. ‘He invited me to take part in a marathon that was being held that weekend in Addis Ababa and gave me the telephone number of the race organiser.
‘I should have known something wasn’t quite right because after I’d rung him and arranged to enter the race, the race organiser actually delivered my race number to my hotel in person!’
For the uninitiated, it is normal practice for race entrants to have to go through the tedious process of collecting their own race numbers from an expo, involving lengthy queues in draughty buildings and single-minded salesmen trying to tempt you with the latest in designer sportswear and must-have, yet totally unnecessary techno gadgetry. In other words, Chris got lucky – or at least he thought he had.
‘The race was due to start at eight in the morning at the national stadium in the centre of Addis Ababa,’ he continues, ‘the third highest capital city in the World, but it was actually delayed two hours and started instead at nearby Meskel Square.’
Uh-oh! Warning bells are beginning to chime.
‘Along with the majority of the field, I’d purchased the Ethiopian national kit from a local sports shop and lined up at the start in red shorts and green vest with “Ethiopia” emblazoned in white letters across the front, a thick layer of sun block and shades!’ he recalls. ‘There was a small field of under 300 entrants and a few fun runners, but I was the only foreigner.
‘The course contained scarcely any flat terrain and went through the outskirts of the city southwards towards Debre Zeyt. At the halfway point, we were to turn around and return the way we had come.
‘The race was not the best organised – there was only one set of drinks laid out on a table at about the 10K point and there were no marshals, clocks or mile/km markers to indicate the distance covered. It was simply a case of following the stragglers.’
Hmm. Ding-dong (but not in a David Niven kind of way)! ‘I’d done some training runs in Ethiopia, but at a much lower altitude,’ he adds. ‘From the outset I felt as though the thin dry air was scorching my lungs and the traffic fumes were also very uncomfortable. There were no spectators as such, just passers-by on a Sunday stroll, who gave cries of “Haile” – a reference to [distance runner] Gebrselassie – and “eye-zoh”, meaning literally “be strong” – a refrain uttered to anyone facing adversity. The sight of a foreigner running in Africa seemed to excite at best mild bemusement and at worst, ridicule.’
Oh dear. Not quite London, was it?
‘Then the stragglers began to accept lifts from passing vehicles.’
Ding Dong merrily on high! But he’s kidding, right?
‘No, I’m not,’ Chris avers. ‘I was running along with a youth in cut-off jeans. He had a ridiculous loping stride and was barefoot with huge splayed leathery feet. He jumped into a pick-up truck and I saw him dropped off 500 metres up the road. As I caught up with him, he accepted another lift and that was the last I saw of him.’
Ding Dong Merrily on High, with Tubular Bells!
‘At another point I found myself running beside an oldish-looking fellow in a yellow vest, who bore an astonishing resemblance to the late Emperor Haile Selassie. We encouraged one another with “eye-zoh”, but encountering a particularly steep hill at what I later estimated to be at around 21 miles, he too accepted a lift! This proved a devastating psychological blow to me and I began to walk.
‘By the time I re-entered the southern outskirts of the city, there were no other runners in sight for me to follow. Consequently, at each junction I had to ask passers-by which way to go. Fortunately, I knew the words in Amharic for left, right and straight ahead, but it would only have taken one wrong direction and I would have been hopelessly lost and unable to finish.’
Now that is truly scary, especially for someone like me who can get hopelessly lost trying to find my way out of a paper bag – not that I’ve ever tried it, never having found a bag large enough to get into.
‘Aside from these difficulties,’ the intrepid Chris continues, ‘the broiling African sun was also taking its toll and in the absence of any proper provision of water, I took to stopping at roadside cafes to request “wuha” – water. A hush would normally fall upon the cafe as a sunburnt Englishman staggered across the threshold in vest and shorts, but they gave me what I asked for readily enough. I was even offered ice and a slice!
‘After one such stop and mildly refreshed, I made an attempt to jog again. As I did so, I passed a boy herding an ox.’
Dehydration perhaps, or maybe a spiked lemon slice?
‘It’s true,’ Chris assures me. ‘To my surprise the boy began to jog beside me, spurring on his ox with a stick.
‘“Haile, Haile!” the boy shouted to me,’ says Chris. ‘“Eye-zoh!” I shouted back to him. I must have jogged 500 metres with the boy and his ox. Passers-by viewed our approach with some alarm and anxiously shepherded their children into doorways. I thought that this was almost as good as having a motorcycle out-rider!’
That’s one way of looking at it.
‘Somehow, though, running with the ox had helped me through a wall and I mysteriously found a second wind.’ There’s nothing like a bit of oxen distraction to make you forget your troubles.
‘I was also pretty sure I was getting closer to the city centre as I’d started to recognise some landmarks and at last I saw Meskel Square in the distance and could clearly make out the race director resplendent in his yellow tracksuit,’ he continues.
Has the man no shame?
‘But first I had to cross some traffic lights at the busiest intersection of the city. I closed my eyes and launched myself across eight lanes of traffic, hoping the lights would remain on red. Luckily they did!
‘And then I saw the finish – or at least what remained of the finish. Originally it had been marked by an arch of balloons and a bouncy castle, but by the time I crossed the line, the bouncy castle had already been deflated and folded up. Not that I was going to let a little thing like that stop me celebrating finishing the race! I held my arms aloft and dipped as I crossed the line as though I was involved in a photo finish!
‘And then, unbelievably, [I really don’t see how Chris can even think of using such a word at this stage of the story, but he does] despite all my efforts and probably being one of the few runners who had actually completed the race under my own steam, the race director and his driver greeted me with a slow hand clap!’
Shoot them, Mr Mainwaring!
‘There was no sign of any other runners or spectators…’
Hardly surprising given they’d all been driven to the finish and probably by that time were enjoying their Sunday roast or whatever the African equivalent is.
‘I asked the race director what was my time. He looked at his watch and told me it was about 5 hours 37 minutes, which I was quite surprised by as I’d expected it to be around 4 hours. Maybe my surprise showed on my face because the race director’s driver then joined in the conversation and said he thought it was more like 5 hours 10 minutes, as if this was some sort of consolation, and reminded the race director that they had been late starting.’
You may as well have asked the ox, Chris.
‘I asked the race director when the previous runner had finished,’ he goes on. ‘The race director looked into the distance and shuffled his feet, and then told me it was about an hour ago. So I asked if he had to wait for anyone else and his assistant said in a low voice, “No, there is no one else.”
‘Only then did it dawn on me that they were embarrassed to tell me that I’d come last – and by a long way!’
Yes, but only because you and the ox were the only ones who didn’t cheat, Chris!
‘At that point, I decided I’d encroached upon their Sunday afternoon long enough, recovered my tracksuit from an ice cream parlour (where I’d left it in the absence of any changing facilities) and, by way of recompense, helped them load the bouncy castle into the back of their car. Then they offered me a lift back to my hotel, which I accepted.’
As opposed to offering him a lift halfway through the race…
‘There wasn’t even a finisher’s medal,’ he adds. ‘All I got to remember the day by was sunburn on the back of my legs, where I’d forgotten to apply sun block! Oh, and a racing heart that went on far into the night – probably a combination of the sunburn, dehydration and altitude. It was an extraordinary experience.’
And that last comment earns itself the ‘understatement of this book’ award.
Certainly, this was an experience that Chris could never have foreseen when he ran his first marathon at Scarborough in 1981 at the age of just 19.
‘I’d trained specifically for it, and finished in 3 hours 36 minutes 33 seconds,’ he recalls, ‘although I wasn’t at all bothered about the time – I just wanted to finish.’
Having joined a running club at 14, by the time Chris was in his mid-20s he had become quite a serious runner.
‘I ran my fastest marathon in 2 hours 48 minutes when I was 27,’ he says. ‘I’d run 22 marathons by then, but then due to other commitments which meant I couldn’t put in the time for training and racing, I stopped running altogether. However, I took it up again seven years later with the intention of completing 100 marathons.
‘To be honest,’ he goes on, sounding a little dismal, ‘since I achieved 100, I’ve lost a bit of motivation. These days, and certainly for the last five years, I’ve stopped thinking of myself as a serious runner. I’m not bothered about the numbers and I’m too old to go for times.
‘Still,’ he adds, sounding a mite more cheerful, ‘I do it as much for the social side as anything else now, meeting up with my running friends at the races I go to. I think of it more as a leisure activity and only do about four or five races each year. They tend to be the same ones each time – Berlin, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Amsterdam – I like big cities with flat courses!’
How very sensible.
‘And,’ he goes on, decidedly more cheery now, ‘apart from a little bit of knee trouble over the last few years, I’ve been very lucky not to have suffered from any serious injuries all the time I’ve been running. Given that most of my training and racing has been done on the road, that’s really something of a miracle!’
SUMMER SHORTS
Unfortunately, one of the difficulties of having started running early in life is that you never better your best times set when you were younger and in your running prime. However, as Chris has discovered, there are many other aspects of running that can motivate and inspire you, such as the social side, the travel and the camaraderie. Not forgetting some rather unusual after-dinner stories gathered along the way…
