26.2 Miles to Happiness: A Comedian’s Tale of Running, Red Wine and Redemption

To Ra

Contents

Preface

5.45 a.m. Race Day

Part 1 Beginning: Miles 1–13

1 November. Five months ­before the marathon. A ­conversation with Richard

2 Scarborough 1981. The first run

London Marathon. Mile 1

3 2 January. Flat white orgy

4 4 January. In da club

5 Two days later. Bryony Gordon drags us south of the river

Mile 3. Woolwich Arsenal. Shark in the water

6 Mid February. McIntyre Mayr madness

7 10 February. This is a journey into time

Mile 10. Rotherhithe. Observations from the pack

8 Scarborough 1982, 5.30 a.m. Teenage kicks for free

9 Crouch End. Dirty Burger. Richard gets behind the sub-3 goal

10 Late February. Tuesday track. The voices, the voices

Mile 13. Wapping. Halfway but NOT

Part 2 The Monster: Miles 13–20

11 What’s that coming over the hill?

12 Why this is not a misery memoir

13 Happy talking, talking happy talk

14 Early March. You are my hero

  Mile 16. Isle of Dogs. Peaking

15 Six weeks to go. The life of the hero

16 Five weeks before the marathon. Cuba

17 The hardest week. 26 March – 2 April. 58½ miles

18 Pantsgate

Mile 18. Isle of Dogs to Canary Wharf. Crossing over

19 York Marathon. There are things we don’t know we don’t know

20 Meaningful mantras. Rudeness

21 The juice

Part 3 The Battle: Miles 20

Mile 20. Poplar. We go again

22 Super Mario catch-up

Miles 21, 22. Limehouse to Shadwell. Knocked out

23 Black Tuesday, 7 p.m. Three weeks before the marathon

Mile 23½. Approaching the Embankment. A bearded intervention

24 Two weeks before the marathon. Owning Richard

Part 4 Tipping Point

Mile 24. Blackfriars. The magical possibility

Part 5 Better

25 Mile 25. The final corner

26 Finished

26.2. Bonita

Postscript: Blinking into the light

Acknowledgements

Plates

Preface

The dawning of the New Year saw a plan percolating in my mind. A faint notion that possibly, just possibly, this could be the year I would run a marathon in under three hours and write a book about it.

The last few years had seen me running more and more. I’d also been doing a lot of writing, thinking and talking about running, both in my column for Runner’s World and on the podcast Running Commentary. I’d joined a club and had found much fun and inspiration within the running community. I was feeling grateful and wanted, as they say, to give something back.

There are a great many running books around, often inspirational tomes detailing epic adventures, which I’ve devoured hungrily. I noticed a pattern had emerged within their pages, almost a formula mapping the startlingly transformative qualities of the running life: the author as protagonist changed beyond all comprehension. These books, which I love and constantly return to, would typically start off in the middle of an epic adventure...

It’s Mile 45 in the Cross Antarctic Ultra Midnight Challenge. The temperature’s −5, with a wind chill of −17. I’ve been running continuously for 37 hours and I can’t feel my face, legs or feet. In fact, I should say leg – I’ve just sawn my lower right limb off and am licking it feverishly for nutrition. Having long since broken through all the notions of normal human behaviour, I am soothed by the taste of my own flesh. Breath freezes and shatters in front of me with every step across the lunar icy floor, it dissolves in front of my eyes, blending into the thousands of stars above me, which festoon the jet-black sky... I am lost and, due to extreme fatigue, vision is fading fast. Is that a bear in front of me? It’s hard to say; I am suddenly rendered blind. I hear a blood-curdling roar, my nostrils are seared by hot bear breath. I turn and run, as best I can, blind, on one leg through the snow. Will I live? Will I die? As my one remaining foot smashes through a sheet of ice into the freezing waters below, a barbaric yawp escapes me up and away into the cold, unforgiving Arctic night.

Suddenly swallowed by a gigantic shadow I dimly sense the bear approaching, it’s like the eclipse of my soul. My frozen hands desperately claw at the ice like clumps of dead meat.

Is this my final moment?

For a second, I ponder: How did I get here?

Cut to

: Two years earlier.

If ever there was a more unlikely runner, I’ve yet to meet one. As an overweight, chain-smoking, meat-ingesting alcoholic, the only running I ever did was to the burger stall at half-time. More of a waddle, really.

This gently parody is not delivered to deny the power of these epic journeys. I love these books and thrill to the stories. The truth is, I couldn’t even attempt to tread on the same turf, never mind compete. For me, there was no real before and after. I’d always loved running, even as a child. If I see a space, I imagine myself running through it; that’s just how I see the world.

My effort was to be a humbler affair, a fairly simple detailing of my attempts to run a marathon in under three hours, intended for the fun runner and serious runner alike. I have been both and, in fact, see no difference. Rather unusually for me, the notion became a reality – the book you’re currently holding.

At its simplest level, this book wants to persuade you to run a marathon. If you’ve already done one, it wants you to run another and really commit to your best effort. I truly believe running a marathon is an experience everyone should have once in a lifetime, existing as it does on that perfect parabola of difficulty and attainability. It’s tough but doable, and the journey to get there is richer than you’d imagine.

As I settled at my table and tentatively launched forth, the writing of the book began to mirror the act of running a marathon itself. There were stages where I felt carried aloft by angels and others where I felt despair, wondering whether I’d finish it. Gradually the training and the writing started to fuse; I was giving myself wholeheartedly to both.

The end result surprised me. This was not the book I set out to write. It details a few months in the spring of 2017 when I allowed my extremist nature to run wild and gave myself fully and simply to a very simple task – running a marathon as quickly as possible.

Like all of us – and to paraphrase Walt Whitman – I am large, I contain multitudes; so the book is both serious and funny. It combines some very practical advice with the odd flight of philosophical fancy, for which I hope you’ll forgive me. There are nuggets of showbiz, but it also contains some deeply personal moments – moments that emerged in the writing unplanned, revealing themselves while I explored this mysterious beast.

That’s all I can say at this juncture.

Like a Zen master pointing to the moon, the only way of explaining the marathon is to point to the marathon itself, the actual event, the experience of which is different for every one of us. Reading about running is great, but it is only through the running of a marathon that you will understand it. Once you emerge blinking into the light, rinsed and broken by the Wall, but unbowed – only then will you see it.

There’s a saying in stand-up comedy, a joke really, which acts often finish on. They say if you can make just one person laugh onstage, you’ve had a terrible gig. Well, this book’s different. If I can nudge just one person to run a marathon, my work here is done.

I hope the book surprises you.

5.45 a.m. Race Day

‘The start is a wonderful moment. For a fleeting moment, it is as if mankind is joined together, we are totally one, facing the same direction.’

Jean Christophe (Frenchman, flâneur, friend)

I’ve slept.

That’s my first thought upon waking, and a blessed relief. The good stuff as well: deeply restorative, miraculous, refreshing sleep. Thank goodness. It can be hard the night before. Excitement’s off the scale; think Christmas as a six-year-old. Marathon Eve can send you tossing and turning for hours. The knowledge that to prepare for the energy-sapping lunacy of a marathon you need to rest can easily scupper your plans. In years gone by, there’d been late nights. I’d even thrown gigs into the mix: Comedy Store late shows in London’s Leicester Square; zigzagging across town till 2 a.m. like a clown (literally) as a prelude to a few hours of sweaty, adrenalised, spiralling panic. That year, marathon morning’s alarm had slowly insinuated itself into a much delayed but profoundly deep reverie, wrenched me from heaven, crashed into my REMs with a panicky poke, and said, Grab your kit, you tit, you’re late! Late – on marathon morning. The sheer stupidity of it. Instead of a leisurely morning, I was trapped in an anxiety dream of my own creation. Late. Jump in a cab, step on it late. Circumnavigating the security cordon of the marathon in confused panic late. Jumping out running to the start to run from the start late. Raiding the larder already for stores of mental and physical energy that I did not possess. Already knackered for a marathon that I’d not really trained for and, all in all, undisputed winner of London Marathon’s Most Idiotic Man of the Year Award.

I have learned my lesson. This year was different; an aura of deep peace settled upon the valley. I’d done it right this time: no gigs the night before; in fact, no gigs the previous three nights. Some would say, given my current financial situation, this is a tad overcommitted. Still, I’m rested. OK, the kids are sporting a slightly undernourished, haunted look, Netflix is down and there are red letters through the postbox – but Dad’s ready for the marathon.

I’ve followed the programme, done the miles, stuffed the carbs, visualised, stretched, been massaged, pummelled. I am peaking.

The evening before the marathon, we scoffed the last remnants of papa’s bolognese with a ceremonial gravity. All was quiet at Tonkinson Towers. Family rituals had shifted to accommodate the following day’s battle. Ra, my glorious wife, had made the ultimate sacrifice of a no-wine Saturday. Teenage kids had desisted from inviting any mates back to their ‘yard’ (the family kitchen) for preloading, a mysterious ritual involving the drinking of much booze and the sequestering of more booze upon their person to sneak into establishments that served booze in order to drink their own. Even the dogs seemed calmer; the two wire-haired dachshunds (the jet-black Dashy and sandy blonde Calypso) had snuffled down early doors, licking my Achilles tendon in a wonderfully intuitive canine gesture of solidarity, as if in anticipation of the carnage that the morrow would bring.

In my bedroom as I prepared to snuggle down on freshly laundered sheets, I perused my training diaries from the last few months with gleeful serenity. They say the map is not the territory, and it’s true: the scribbled digits and brief descriptions only hinted at the huge ups and downs that had occurred in the last few months. The journey both physically and mentally had been tumultuous, but the diaries did undeniably point to loads of running – and, as running was what I was planning on doing the following day, I seemed well set. Placing my marathon kit at the end of the bed like a Christmas stocking, my head took the long fall onto the sweet cushions and I swiftly succumbed to the oceanic slumber of the innocent.

5.45 a.m. The first few seconds of peace upon waking are swiftly scrubbed by the sharp reset of a new morning. Today is marathon day. Yikes. The internal monologue quickly kicks in. This is it. I’ve done the work. Time to cash in your chips. You’ve got this. Do it. Run hard. Relax. Feel free to think in longer sentences. It’s like being trapped in a Tony Robbins seminar. The truth is, I’m incredibly hyped; I don’t think I’ve ever felt as determined in my life. Maybe as a kid for school cross-country or a brief skirmish with Sunday league football on Hackney Marshes in my mid-30s. Those keyed me in, briefly, to an ultra-competitive state that I’d long since abandoned. It’s good to be back, and I know enough about myself now to keep a lid on my rampant anxiety.

Rituals have been established:

6.00 a.m. Breakfast, water, coffee. Absolutely essential. Not much is needed, I’ve been filling up with carbohydrates in a slightly demented fashion the last few days, so it’s a couple of slices of malt loaf, half a banana. Really, it’s just a top-up to get the system going.

6.25 a.m. Checking the bag. Primarily the three absolute essentials: vest, shorts, trainers. Now, this moment can get a bit fetishistic. From a distance it might look like I’m caressing, kissing the race trainers. Maybe. There’s certainly a sacramental nature to the movement as I place the kit on the bed before me, and I for one would never judge any action you deem appropriate at this stage of race prep. For me personally, at that very second when I peruse the race kit, it’s probably a feeling akin to love. These are, after all, the accoutrements of battle, they will carry me forth. Behold the majesty of the London Heathside club vest with its royal blue hue bordered by a fiery blade of red and yellow. Witness the glory of the black Ron Hill marathon shorts, borderline obscenely skimpy, definitely unsuitable for anything but an athletic context and certain parties underneath the arches in Vauxhall. Don’t pay much attention to the ultra-thin marathon socks, but feel free to genuflect and marvel at the altar of the recently purchased new release Adidas Boston race shoes, a snip at £95(!).

Other items fill out the regulation London Marathon plastic bag. Sports drink for last-minute, pre-race replenishment. A banana, because, well, what situation isn’t improved by a banana? GU gels. (Gels could have a chapter all to themselves. Today, I’m doing, for the first time, a gel every 40 minutes, alternating espresso and caramel sachets; other flavours are available.) I’ve also packed a towel, a T-shirt for post-race warmth and, of course, a bottle of water. (Everyone should have a bottle of water on them at all times. Check now if you haven’t got one, notify the authorities immediately and make your way to a place of safety.) Then the medical stuff: plasters for nipples, Vaseline for armpits and Baby Bottom Butter for ... shall we say the smoothing of the undercarriage? Those testicles aren’t going to look after themselves, you know! Not to be indelicate while being indelicate, the plasters, Vaseline and Bottom Butter are a must. After my first marathon, the photo at the finish line looked like an outtake from Platoon, two rivulets of blood streaming down my chest. I was running as if my pants were on fire, which is exactly how it felt.

6.50 a.m. Departure. Ra drops me at Finsbury Park and I’m off then, alone. The next time I see her will be at the finish. Rudy, my youngest at 14, will be there as well; the other two – George, 18, and Bonnie, 17 – have reached the age where waiting for two hours on The Mall for Dad to finish on a Sunday is ‘dead’. All I can say is I’m incredibly glad little Rudy’s going with his mum; I’ll be thinking of him as I run.

The great thing about setting off is that it starts the countdown, three hours till the race starts. In jumping on the Tube I join a tribe of runners gradually assembling. I spot them peppered throughout the Tube coming down from Finsbury. They are stretching, yawning nervously, checking Fitbits, surreptitiously feeling for a pulse on their wrist. Smiles ricochet around the carriage. The air fizzes with anticipation. Fancy-dress outfits slowly infiltrate the Metropolitan Line. At Bank, a man dressed as a banana and wearing Asics trainers hops on board; opposite him, a man holding a pantomime horse’s head is doing the Telegraph crossword. The ratio of runners to non-runners is around 50:50 as I stop off at Monument. I’m meeting my running mate Rob Deering to record a marathon special podcast pre-race. It’s nice to hop off the Tube for a second. I pop in to a Pret A Manger, it’s awash with runners of all shapes and sizes. The queue for the toilets is four deep. People avoid each other’s gaze, fidgeting while they stand. Tension accumulates as the start gets closer. People react in different ways; some babble excitedly, others seem sullen and retreat into headphones. The train on the way to Maze Hill is crammed with marathon types. Stray civilians stand trapped, encircled by the rising babble of maranoia: injury woes, pacing issues, gel confusion. Sitting across from us is a very chatty Scottish man in full chain body armour. Dave is from Arboath. He’s red-faced already and cackling like a lunatic. Why are you doing it? comes the obvious question.

‘Why not?’ he retorts.

Looking at him, I can’t imagine the day that lies in store. To run a marathon is ridiculously hard, to run in full chain body armour seems ludicrous. Has he run one before?

‘Aye. It’s my fifth,’ he fires back. ‘Nae botha!’ There’s not an inch of fat on the parts of his body that are visible to the naked eye (his face and upper neck) and his eyes sparkle with giddy self-awareness; he knows he’s a bit odd. ‘I know it sounds daft, I just really enjoy it, you know. I run it with mates from school. It’s like a reunion.’

He rises to say his goodbyes. ‘Any road, I’m away to the blue start to meet them and pick up the cannon.’

Cannon?

‘You need a cannon if you’re going to war,’ he says matter of factly, as if telling a child not to touch the oven. With that he puts on his helmet, pulls up his visor and disappears into the melee.

A stream of runners spills out at Maze Hill station. Something huge is happening in Greenwich, an army is gathering. Men and women of all ages, genders, nationalities and ability. Club runners, first-timers, veterans, the obviously fit and the obviously fat. Rob and I make our way to the Green start. We mike up to record our observations. It’s incredible to be part of this teeming river of humanity, this rolling carnival of marathon mayhem. Flags unfurl, banners fly, more fancy dress. I notice a lot of vegetables this year. Within two minutes I spy an aubergine, two tomatoes and a man who is, I think, a courgette; it’s basically an allotment in human form. We chat to Wonder Woman, who’s down from Stoke and aiming for a sub-4 marathon. Across the road, Rob spots a moody Father Christmas urinating against a fence. Many people have names written on their tops and photos – tributes. The fact that so many people are running to honour loved ones suffuses the whole day with an emotional undercurrent. It gives it a depth amid the almost medieval gaiety.

Volunteers cheerfully point us in the right direction. There’s plenty of time, but the volume of people is immense, thousands upon thousands. I’m trying to keep focused, and rein in my excitement, but it’s impossible to contain, the collective energy is infectious, intoxicating. Our bodies are coiled like springs. We’ve trained for months, tapered up, now we’re ready to go, straining at the leash.

The mass Green start sprawls out over the Greenwich common. Club flags have popped up, charity groups cluster. There are tents, coffee bars, massage areas, container lorries for kit – and people; loads of people. Nerves are fraying slightly, smiles seem a tad nervous, eye contact is haphazard. Mania nibbles at the edges of everyday chat. It’s all well and good, we all know we’re at the start of a great and momentous day, but it’s not started yet. We’re in the too early to get really nervous, but this is nowhere near normal zone. There are six queues for the portaloos and each one snakes a good quarter mile across the common.

The weather is perfect: overcast, coolish with absolutely no breeze. We cut across the common to the celebrity tent. Our names are on the list. We’re in. There, inside the tent, if it’s possible, the tension cranks up a notch.

A light giddiness prevails, the frequency has changed. PAs flitter twixt the stars, the air reverberates with the clicking of cameras. Famous people like seeing other famous people, and non-famous people like me like watching famous people mingle. And we’re all in a tent, which isn’t that big.

The usual suspects are evident: Chris Evans, Sophie Raworth, Danny Mills, James Cracknell, Mark Chapman, assorted DJs, soap stars, actors, charity award winners. Many fall under the category of people I know the look of but have no idea who they are – the same category of which I am a proud member. Indeed, it’s fair to say my celebrity status is confusing to myself as well as others. I place myself firmly in the chancer category, I’m under no illusions. Still, I’m more than ready to milk it; it means you get away cleanly at the start, the toilets are accessible and the food’s great.

A long table at the far end overflows with a cascade of pre -marathon goodies: mini Mars bars, bananas, grapes, flapjacks, biscuits, muffins, bacon rolls – what kind of fool eats a bacon roll an hour before the marathon?

Hailing from the North, I’m of an almost aggressively friendly persuasion and, as a compulsive chatterer, I’m in heaven. Folk I wouldn’t normally be able to get my teeth into are actually in front of me; it’s like Twitter, but real. I grab a coffee and scan, sniper-like, looking for an opening. Faces removed from their natural setting slowly come into focus and then, yes, I see... Is it..? It is ex Manchester Utd midfielder Quinton Fortune. I love football and by extension footballers, so any chance, I’m at it. There’s absolutely no rational reason for me to do so, he’s standing at the edge of the tent, but I casually mosey over, feigning interest in a table top. I keep a dignified distance for a moment before, having secured what looks like a nod from the woman next to him who might be his PA, I plunge into his personal space. He was a hard player and like many hard players, a very sweet man. Of course, being footballers, I reason that all anyone wants to talk to them about is football, so I make a point of talking about anything but football, despite the fact that’s all I want to talk about and all they want to as well. We settle on the marathon; the onset of extreme physical pain is very bonding. It’s Quinton’s first