Silly questions

Yesterday I went to an information day run by the Virgin London Marathon team for the benefit of Golden Bond runners (these are runners who have been given a charity place, rather than runners who've qualified by doing excellent times or who have got in through the ballot). And today I ran 13.1 miles, which is half the total marathon distance. I think these two facts are related.

Firstly, I got chatting to other people, including Mike, who as well as listening sympathetically to my worries about actually completing this marathon, took one of my limited edition Fairy Tales for Marathon Runners cards and sponsored me. Thank you. Secondly, I got answers to questions that had been bothering me. Silly things, like where to start from, would I be able to take a bag and if I did, would I have to carry it round the course, how would I be able to meet up with James afterwards? And - most importantly and hardest to ask - when will the route be closed? What's my marathon completion window?

Seven hours.

And the advice of the ultra-marathoner who advocates total avoidance of carbohydrates was deemed inappropriate for first-timers, and the importance of doing an increasingly long run every week was highlighted, and jelly babies were praised. I felt more like part of something and less like an impostor about to be unmasked. David Bedford (the race director) said that 97% of the people who make it to the start line, finish.

And so today I ran 13.1 miles. It took me just over two and a half hours and I still feel dizzy every time I stand up too fast. But somewhere, deep in my nervous, inexperienced and still-not-quite-believing-it psyche, a little spark of maybe-perhaps sprang into life. Maybe-perhaps I will cross that finishing line.

Mind tricks

I'm beginning to think that running a long way is just a question of tricking yourself into thinking you're doing anything other than running a long way. Because as soon as you think, gosh, I've chalked up three kilometres (that'll be a fourteenth of the total distance), you immediately think helphelphelp I have to do thirty nine more, which is a physical impossibility, as I am about to die having just done three, and I'll just check again and oh my goodness that's not even 3.01 km and everything's aching and would you look at that the distance monitor has actually stopped which is a good thing as I couldn't have done any more. And then you stop. Whereas if you can avoid thinking, gosh, I've chalked up three kilometres, the whole vicious cycle forgets to start and sometimes you can get to six or even ten kilometres without realising you're aching.

The most I've done so far was sixteen, and that was by mistake because I can't read maps. I didn't realise that Waterloo Bridge didn't meet the Thames Path head on and so ended up doing a loop round Parliament Square and Whitehall. You can't pull tricks like that on a treadmill.

I had a lovely post from a former student who'd found me by accident. Apart from being delighted to hear from her, the post was good for at least five kilometres - I was thinking about the class she'd been a part of and the production she saved when she stepped in last-minute in place of a young man whose dancing skills were surpassed only by his own opinion of his dancing skills. I remember how affronted he was when I said it was unprofessional to walk out on a show just days before performance week. He seemed to think I ought to have counted my lucky stars that I'd had him in it up to that point. Jane was a real dancer, committed as well as skilled. She was in several productions I directed and missed only one rehearsal - and that was to take part in an archeological dig. Digging and dancing - what a combination! I wonder which way her life took her. (See? Five kilometres, easily).

My sponsorship page is up - www.virginmoneygiving/wegenersmarathon - thank you so much if you have already sponsored me. Please do - it's incredibly encouraging, as are posts on the blog! I've had some cards printed too, each with a different Fairy Tale for Marathon Runners on the back (five to collect). This whole crazy idea is about raising awareness as well as raising money, so simply by reading, you're helping the Wegener's Trust. Thank you.

Lovely Arches

I've done two significant things since the last post. Firstly, I attended a training afternoon with some of the other people who are running for Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital Charity (under whose umbrella the Wegener's Trust operates). Instead of having a strong suspicion that I'm the least experienced and slowest runner they have, I am now absolutely certain I'm the least experienced and slowest runner they have. On the plus side, I found out that I have lovely foot arches. That'll be a comfort as the others all go sailing past me, as they did on the training run in Southwark Park.

I also bought some books. It's what I do in the face of great challenge. When James and I decided to start a family, I read every book on conception I could find, and startled James practically to divorce by announcing one evening that we'd never got pregnant unless he gave up red wine for the duration. Then, whilst hunting down the gazillion obscure food supplements recommended in these various books, I discovered a single tablet that did it all. 'Specifically designed to promote male fertility,' it said on the label. Vitamin E? Check. Selenium? Check. Vitamin C? Check. And there, on the label, as a featured ingredient, was 'Extract of Red Wine.'

I had to grace to put the bottle back and go home and open an altogether different and tastier bottle with James, much to his relief.

Unfortunately, relaxing with a good red wine won't get me trained. Neither will reading books, even if they do promise (variously) to fulfil all my dreams, put me into communication with the universal human spirit, give me eternal youth on a plate and give Tony Blair a conscience (ok I made that last one up - even American motivational blether has its limits).

The only one I feel might work for me is 'Run a Marathon in Sixteen Weeks!!!' I think that's a realistic target. I'm just not sure Boris Johnson will be prepared to keep the roads closed for that long.

The Route Clutterer

I apologise to all those real runners out there who are training for this Marathon, talking about sub-four and sub-three and if-you-manage-x-you-can-start-with-the-elites-next-year and knowing what you’re supposed to do with those little sachets of stuff they give out with the water later in the route. But running is boring. I get bored. And I’m not very good at it (I suspect those two may be related). I know that if I am to complete this Marathon I have to do a lot of it, and I really am trying. But I’m not a real runner. I’m a well-intentioned wife, mother and unpublished novelist trying to do something for a charity that means – well, everything, really. James was diagnosed early and lives a full life. David was not diagnosed and died. We need nice people in this world. We can’t have them keeling over and leaving widows and widowers and fatherless sons and daughters simply because no one’s heard of Wegener’s granulomatosis. And we can’t keep blasting suffers with ghastly chemotherapy simply because we don’t know what else to do. Awareness must be raised and research must be done. It’s such a rich area for research – at the last Wegener’s trust meeting, the PhD student the Trust is funding presented some of her research, and it was so exciting to see the progress being made and the ideas that are bubbling to the surface as a result. One of those bubbles, properly nurtured, may become a more targeted treatment. An accurate tool for diagnosis. A cure.

And so I get back on the machine while O and T are at school and nursery and A and E are napping. I get on it when my mum comes over to supervise the children’s tea, and if neither of those scenarios have been possible, I get on it when the children are in bed and the dinner is cooking. I would rather be doing almost anything else. And I’m increasingly worried that what I’m doing isn’t enough – that I won’t get round the course – that I am just not runner enough to make it.

My Proper Runner friend won’t do the London Marathon, because she loves running and there are too many amateurs cluttering the route. I cling to that. I’m no good as a runner, but I reckon I’ll be a pretty effective route-clutterer.

Happy New Year 2011

2011. So here begins the year. The year in which my dear friend Julie is getting married (it’s ok, we’ve found the dress and it is truly a thing of great beauty, especially with Julie inside it). The year in which I turn 40. The year in which I can no longer say that I’m running the London Marathon next year. Because I’m not running the London Marathon next year any more. I’m running the London Marathon this year.

Not so very long from now, in fact.

I’ve been running fairly consistently for a while now, but my runs have been short and slow. I recently put my timing into the Runner’s World time prediction page and it came back with six hours and something. I’ve got to get faster, because if I am running for six hours and something and am still alive, I will end up lobotomizing myself with a teaspoon. My friend Emma’s mother ran the Marathon a few years ago and carolled cheerfully, ‘Oh, you’ll do it in half the time I did!’ In nervous trepidation, I ventured to enquire as to her time, feeling even as I did so that the answer ‘Twelve hours’ was extremely unlikely. Four and half hours, she said. Four and a half hours. If I ran a marathon in four and a half hours I would be singing it from the rooftops and dancing in the streets with an illuminated placard.

It’s not going to happen. I have got to be realistic even while I am reaching for the stars. If I can finish this thing and raise some money for the Wegener’s Trust, that will be lovely. Fantastic. Wonderful. Four, five, six hours? It’ll take all the time I can give to training and more to make sure I don’t keel over en route. Maybe one day I will be the hare and finish in four and a half hours. But this year, I’m the tortoise.

Running in the dark

My last two runs have had to happen in the dark. This has not exactly been out of choice. The day goes on, and things happen, and you're just about to go and get changed to run when the baby needs changing, or is covered with a giant teddy by the toddler, or the school rings, or a parcel needs signing for, or you suddenly realise that the tax disc you were sufficiently organised to sort out has not actually got as far as the car and is now lost. And it gets dark earlier, and the children need to be fed and settled snugly to bed, and there's dinner to cook and it's half past seven and pitch black and you haven't run.

The ballot results came out last week and I didn't get a ballot place, so I am using the charity place Guys' and St Thomas' offered me. That's another layer of commitment, another set of people I'd be letting down if I didn't train, another level of accountability. I've already had a cheerful voicemail message asking how my fundraising's going.

Fundraising. Oh, yes, I have to ask people for money. I'm not a natural at this. I believe passionately in the Wegener's Trust. I can see how much we've already achieved. I know how much the money is needed, and how much value is being returned for the money we've already raised. But asking people to sponsor me takes me right back to those awful, awful Sponsored Walks at school. I remember sitting up with Mum, faking names in various handwritings so that I wouldn't lag too far behind the extroverts who presented their sponsor forms to the checkout ladies in the village supermarket and strangers on the bus with no self-consciousness whatsoever. I'm no Bob Geldof.

So as well as running in the dark, which is cold and dull and a bit frightening, because you never know whether the footsteps behind you belong to a mugger or to a real runner who knows what they're doing and wants to do it so much that they go out in the dark, I have to discover my inner Bob Geldof.

Dr D'Cruz and his team are researching a rare disease about which very little is known, but which kills people. James lives with it - he's well now, but it's there, always there, ready to pounce. I'm not the only one running in the dark.

As Sir Bob once said - Please, if it's not too much trouble, would you be good enough to sponsor me?

Third time lucky...

Except it's clear that there isn't going to be any luck involved. Just commitment and training. And seeing as I last updated this blog in June, I'm not showing many signs of either. If there was any such thing as luck in marathon training, I'd have found myself fit as a flea and ready to go without having to go on a single run. Because there is always, always, always a reason not to run. Not an excuse. An excuse is something you think up to make yourself feel less guilty about not doing something you jolly well know you should - and could - be doing. A reason is a three year old unhappy at nursery wanting a cuddle. Or a five year old desperate to read to you, or a two year old about to smother his baby sister in an excess of love, or the baby herself needing a feed. Or a husband who's suddenly run out of prednisolone (unfortunately not a new type of pasta) because he's been groggy and has had to up the dosage and didn't notice it how fast it was going down. Or a mother whose good friend has just become a widow far too young and far too suddenly, or a best friend whose mother has just died - again, far too young and far too suddenly. A sister who's just bought her first house, a friend who's just had her first baby, another who's just had her fourth. Meals must be cooked, cars serviced, presents bought, clothes washed and ironed, children loved and supported, husbands, mothers, friends loved and supported too.

I tried. I really tried. Sometimes I'd manage twenty minutes just after James came in from work. For a whole week, I managed to run at seven every morning. But I couldn't sustain it; neither my two year old nor my baby sleep well; James was ill, I was exhausted, and the mornings became rushed and fractious, and I began to realise that I just couldn't do it.

I'm not a sporty person. Antonia and The London Marathon is not a natural marriage. A friend offered to run it for me; another friend offered a friend of hers to run it for me. I was within inches of admitting defeat. I wondered, as I struggled to manage one run a week, whether I wanted it enough.

So I gave myself an ultimatum. We were going on holiday to France, to a rented house, with my mother and my parents in law. And I said to myself (and anyone else who would listen) that if I did not run when there were three doting grandparents on hand to help with the children, I would pull out of the marathon altogether.

And I ran. Not fast, and not far, but regularly - at least every other day. And I swam. Every day of that fortnight saw me either running, or swimming, or both. I know there are people who would love that, for whom time to exercise would be a wonderful aspect of a holiday. But I'm not one of them. I like reading. I like writing. I love playing with the children and baking and spending time with James and watching films and drinking amazing wine and discovering new cheeses and eating baguettes and talking in French. And I did all those things. But I ran as well. And that's what I'm trying to do now. To run as well.