The loneliness of the long-distance runner

I’ve always enjoyed the solitude of running. So far in 2012 I’ve covered about 1560km in 129 hours, and almost all that time has been on my own. I usually listen to music, or let my thoughts roam. On short runs I appreciate being out of contact and so free from interruption. For runs over 15km I usually take my mobile (so the boys can reach me in an emergency), but it rarely rings. There is something gloriously elemental about running as exercise. Take away the shoes and the gadgets and there’s not much that separates us from thousands of years of human history. A few weeks ago I read Christopher McDougall’s classic book ‘Born to Run’, a present from a thoughtful friend. While I’m unconvinced about the whole barefoot/minimalist idea, it is a stirring account of the deep roots of endurance running.

Regular readers of this blog will know that in the last three years, I’ve come to see running events as motivational tools to exercise, and through better health, to increase the chances that I’ll see my children grow up. So the significance of a marathon is not so much the 42.195 km on the day, but the 800-1000 km of training that precedes it. Yet every marathon I’ve run has been an important personal event, and this year’s Melbourne Marathon was no exception.

Conditions were nearly perfect : cool at 7am, sunny later, but no wind. There’s a buzz as 7000 runners take off at the start, although for the first few kilometers one has to dodge around slower competitors. Journalists always describe the marathon as ‘gruelling’, but with proper training you should feel fine for the first 20-30km. I chatted to a few other runners as I went – just the usual enquiries about previous races and time goals. The half-way mark came in 1:38:20, about four minutes slower than my half-marathon time in July. At this stage I was ahead of the 3:20 pacing team. An old friend of mine, running a bit further back, later observed that at 25km he was grateful to be there – still alive and fit enough to run, recovered from illness and enjoying the sunshine.

It’s justly said that in a marathon the real race starts in the last 10km. By that stage the 3:20 pacers had caught up, and I was pushing myself to stay with them. It’s in this phase that the glycogen in the muscles becomes depleted as an energy source and the body switches to metabolizing fat. This is the classic cause of ‘hitting the wall’. With good training, proper hydration and gels (the kind you swallow), this isn’t a dramatic transition, but nevertheless I could feel the change happening.

Around 36 km, the route looped back near the south edge of the Botanic Gardens, and just before Domain Rd I lost contact with the last of the 3:20 pacers. It’s easy at this point to slow right down, and here the GPS watch came into its own in providing a continual feedback on pace. The conversation with other runners had long dropped away. The world shrank just to the roadway ahead, the distance and the time. This is the solitary stage, where beyond the investment of training it’s about mental strength. Every now and again the thought comes – ‘wouldn’t it be nice just to stop running and sit down by the side of the road?’ At 40 km, I know it’s about 11 minutes to the finish if I can hold my pace. Before the race there’s a fantasy that I’ll get to this point and be able to put in a surge of speed, but in reality it’s about not slowing down. This year we finish inside the MCG. That last 200-300m across the grass in the sunshine ought to be glorious, but all that matters is being able to cross the line and stop.

My elapsed time is 3:20:08 – right at the limit of what I thought was possible on a good day. The second half took 1:41:48. I ought to be very happy. But in a marathon where I push my limits, as I normally do, I feel physically terrible for the first half hour. My legs hurt even when sitting down. I stagger down the walkway to collect my gear, and the slope down and then up is just painful. I sit on the concrete and force down a banana and some sports drink to begin the recovery. I didn’t organize for anyone to be there for the finish this year – too much effort for a glimpse of those final couple of minutes – and at that moment I didn’t care. It’s hardly a spectator sport.

I’d parked up near the Exhibition Gardens, and so there was a 15 minute walk from the MCG back to the car. It was while limping up the slight hill that I was struck by a sudden desire to talk to Jen – the one person who would understand what it meant for me. This was one for the ages: a day when it all came together, when the training paid off, when the weather was kind, when I kept myself going in the crucial stages. Of course Jen is three years’ dead, and there’s no one else I want to talk to now. I stagger on with tears in my eyes. I should know that the high moments are often the low moments, but grief is so often surprising in the way it ambushes me, especially in times of physical exhaustion. I think too of the less celebrated endurance event of being a single parent. Almost all of that daily effort is unseen by other adults and often unnoticed by the boys. Sometimes the world shrinks to the day ahead and the tasks to complete. So I must accept the solitude of this other marathon, this life without Jen, and keep going.