Monk Quixote

There will no doubt be a lot of these. But I’ll chip in my twopen­neth. Great, great day. Up at six and try­ing not to order Listy about too much (NO PHILADELPHIA IN MY POST RACE SNACK, THANKYOU!). Faffing like a good ‘un. For­tu­nately have already decided what kit to wear and left it out to remind me that I have already decided, actu­ally, and don’t need to change my mind sev­eral times. Cof­fee and var­i­ous vit­a­min based liq­uids and off we go (I don’t trust my tummy with any form of solids on >15miles, not even porridge).

Listy dri­ves and I lis­ten to house music. I get over excited and am told to calm down. I then nav­i­gate wrong and nearly end up in Chel­tenham. Or some­thing. Any­way, we waste ten min­utes, by which time the car park is almost full. I change gel strat­egy yet again. I get changed in the car and man­age not to dam­age (a) me, (b) the car, or © our mar­riage. I do, how­ever, smell strongly of Vicks and Ral­gex. Listy gets over excited and I tell her to calm down.

I attempt humour in the toi­lets while queue­ing for a cubi­cle. Decide not to do that again. Ever.

I run out with my fat top on. I see oodles of Fetchies. I don’t talk to any­one in the start­ing melee. I feel shy. And fat and under­pre­pared. I empha­sise this by putting my hands in my pock­ets and bring­ing out the sign I pre­pared ear­lier. I give a posse of Fetchies a thumbs up. And BANG off we go. I start le Garmin.

By 100m it is obvi­ous my gel strat­egy won’t work as the weight of ick in my pants is pulling them down. Cross, I take two out of a pocket and decide to carry them, as well as the con­tents of the front pock­ets. After giv­ing every­one a lovely builder’s arse shot obvi­ously. I mean, why else would I have my name on the back of my top except to make it per­fectly clear whose arse cleav­age they’re look­ing at?

Mile 1 I run past Hendo. I have never met him. But I still say ‘twat’ in my head. It’s the Fetch way. I am going faster than any of my sched­ules, but I’m feel­ing good. Lots of peo­ple run past me. Pos­si­bly to get away from arse cleav­age.
Mile 2. Hendo runs past me. He’s being paced by KinkyS. This is bla­tantly unfair and against the rules. Ran­dom school­girls honk their horns at me. This never hap­pened when I was younger.
Mile 3. Gobi shouts at me. We run past a turkey farm. I don’t know who is more ridicu­lous — thou­sands of turkeys run­ning to the edge of their pens to gob­ble at us, or the hun­dreds of loonies wear­ing wick­ing tops. In the end, I decide Gobi wins.
Mile 4. I run past Hendo again, and pre­tend to be on for 3:35.
Mile 5. Me and my big mouth. First gel, about 30 mins early. I will gel in front of the next four feed sta­tions.
Mile 6. This is a piece of piss. I am a God. I am run­ning past peo­ple at will. Well, not exactly at will, but feel­ing good.
Mile 7. A FS has the temer­ity to run past me. I will have my revenge.
Mile 8. Is always a bor­ing mile in marathons.
Mile 9. My lovely wife is where she said she’d be, and I shout at her. It’s what Gobi would have wanted. I also take a bag of gels and jelly babies. And suck greed­ily on a Lucozade teat.
Mile 10. Umm. I think this was the bit with the weird ‘run­ning round the back of a ware­house bit’. Which was not excit­ing. See Superted I think. And that das­tardly Hendo is about a minute behind. Next!
Mile 11. Begin­ning to flag a bit, but the metronome has stuck at 8:04 by the Garmin (although it’s beep­ing early and I know I’m run­ning slower.
Mile 12. Fetch­point. Bed­lam. Chaos in lycra and hoodie form. Gobi shouts at me.
Mile 13. Annoy­ing. Trail bits.
Mile 14. Ho hum. Metronome. Gobi shouts at me from a car. Leave it alone man, I’m mar­ried. *smile*
Mile 15. Metronome. Small child gives me sweets in a wrap­per. I resist the temp­ta­tion to run back and clock him one for idiocy.
Mile 16. Slow­ing a bit. Feet hurt. Nearly hit my head on some thatched cot­tage non­sense. I’m all for scenic, but this is not Mid­somer Mur­ders.
Mile 17. I don’t feel like I’m going faster, but the bas­tard Garmin keeps telling me the aver­age pace is slip­ping. I’m sick of the taste of every­thing sweet.
Mile 18. I hit the mile marker bang on 8:10 mil­ing pace — on for 3:35. Wife is now wear­ing Fetch beanie. Things must be seri­ous. I vow never to touch another gel (until the next train­ing plan). I suck hard from the lucozade teat. I run past a fel­low clydes­dale and feel like the big I am.
Mile 19. Yes. There was one. I’m begin­ning to go back­wards. I’m try­ing to visu­alise the rest of the race as my stan­dard run home, but my feet are hav­ing none of it. They hate me, and the horse I rode in on. My ham­strings are also hav­ing an argu­ment and I gen­er­ally feel like poo.
Mile 20. I am a run­ning God. I am feel­ing good. I have 10k to run. Look at me run! Peo­ple! Look at me run! I will just check my Garmin. Oh. I am run­ning slower than ever. How the fuck is that hap­pen­ing? I am a run­ning god! Look at me stride for excel­lence.…
Mile 21. Not big, pretty or clever. I think Hendo is still a way behind me. I pass Superted. Just build­ing up to:
Mile 22. Fetch­point. Less like a water sta­tion and more like a seething mass of red, yel­low and tow­elling. There is noise. Lots of noise. Peo­ple have for­given me for arse cleav­age and are now shout­ing my name as well. I feel great. Widger runs past me like she’s left some­thing in the pub. She goes on to PB by 20 mins. What­ever. :o)
Mile 23. Not a good mile. Def­i­nitely off my Christ­mas card list. It seems to wind and turn and stuff. Please God let it end soon. Peo­ple start com­ing past me more often. I catch the FS from ear­lier. I realise, with a sense of over­whelm­ing clar­ity, that we are ALL STARK RAVING MAD. It turns out to be her first marathon. She’ll learn.
Mile 24. No longer on my bud­dies list. I nearly punch a cyclist. When I say ‘nearly punch a cyclist’, I mean ‘I swore loudly at a cyclist in my head. And I don’t mean the cyclist was in my head.‘
Mile 25. Oh God please let it fin­ish.
Mile 26. With the pre­dictabil­ity of things that are really pre­dictable, when pre­dicted by peo­ple who know about pre­dict­ing things, Hendo and KinkyS run past me. It’s ok though, because I know this bit — this is the way from the car to the start — turn left here and there’s almost noth­ing left. What’s this? BASTARDS! WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME RUN AWAY FROM THE FINISH WHEN IT’S ONLY OVER THERE? I have a sense of humour fail­ure. The FS runs past me. What­ever. Like I care. Then the clydes­dale runs past me — a Wim­ble­don Wind­miller or some­thing *waves*. Some ran­dom Big Bug­ger is try­ing to take my Big Bug­ger glory! I ask a mar­shall if we have to do a lap of the track. He says yes. I make plans to kill him.

I enter the sta­dium. Like, I sus­pect, 99.9% of the com­peti­tors I do not see this as a Gobi-like snack to be devoured in the name of inter­vals. It is quite pos­si­bly THE BIGGEST LAP OF THE BIGGEST TRACK I HAVE EVER SEEN.

I strug­gle to main­tain for­ward momen­tum around the far bend, the back straight, and the final bend. Then I hear some ‘Monki’ from the crowds and I absolutely, totally and utterly lose it. I shout at the crowd and sprint — SPRINT prop­erly, to the fin­ish, pass­ing three oth­ers in the home straight. I fin­ish and a stew­ard comes towards me. I kind of growl at him, and he backs away. Frankly. I could have run through a wall right then.

Then medals and bags and cups of tea. UP FLIGHTS OF STAIRS you sadists. And the lovely, lovely LOVELY No 8 comes over and gives me the big ‘well done’ for fin­ish­ing 59 min­utes slower than him. Ok, it was really to tell me off for look­ing too fresh. Ok. It was really to say well done. Because he’s lovely like that.

And then I give Listy a kiss, and we sit and grin a lot, watch­ing oth­ers fin­ish. I even for­give Hendo for cheat­ing by using a proper metronome as opposed to my rub­bish one. And I buy a neon top. Well, Listy buys one for me as I need a sit down. See lots of other Fetchies but don’t talk to many. Shout a lot. See a medal pre­sen­ta­tion for the first time (never fin­ished in time before).

And then we slip away. Because we’re like that. And shout at more fetchies in the last mile. And laugh at the lunatic sup­porter with the bike and the stereo. Well, laugh with her — she’s happy enough. But per­haps she’s got more than tea in her flask. Kidding.

And I get home. And log on to Fetch. And old faces get in touch. And I realise that I’ve been wait­ing three years to meet McGoohan and Cliffy and I com­pletely for­got. Arse! Cleavage!

A great day. An 11 minute PB. Oodles of affec­tion all round. And now a big pie and chips and quite pos­si­bly some vino.

And more impor­tantly, I learnt a lot today. A lot about prepa­ra­tion, about men­tal strength, about cama­raderie, about shorts, about turns and quite sim­ply about. I now have the moti­va­tion to really kick on and see what I can do with this run­ning lark. It’s no good hid­ing behind the weight all the time. I can, and do, run. I just need to stop sab­o­tag­ing myself. And wear­ing bet­ter fit­ting shorts.