Now, I've always loved America. On the few occasions that I've visited this great, oil stealing, nation I have loved every second of it. Everything is bigger here, the buildings, the food, the welcome, the people! Everything is bigger and I love it, it suits me. I feel that being overly nice, friendly, and stupidly upbeat about everything really fits in to the way that I am as a person.
Chicago is no different. The last time I was in Chicago' Grant Park it was the 'Taste of Chicago' food festival. Which was basically a lot of large, sweaty people eating large, sweaty food. It was more a festival of obesity than food, but it was still amazing and I reveled in it.
This time around I am sitting in Grant Park surrounded by the opposite, lots of thin, athletic people eating athletic, thin fruit. I am also putting on sun tan lotion in the dark, knowing that when the sun does come up at 7:40am it will already be 60 degrees.
The last time I was here was in 2001, and I was clinging onto the desperate notion of true love, believing that true love could conquer time, distance, and circumstance. In 1998 I met an American girl called Amy, she was doing a term studying at my University. We met fairly simply because she was living in halls next door but one to a soon to be close friend. Our first meeting was hugely uneventful, I asked her if she knew where my friend was, she said she didn't know. I then questioned if she was the 'American girl' that had moved in, she replied,
"Yes, that's me, I'm Amy"
I would be lying if I said there were fireworks, or that it was love at first sight. In fact I just ran out of things to say and wandered back to my room. A week later we, when I say 'we' I mean our little group of friends, ended up at a pub where a lock in was afoot. The bar manager had taken a shining to Amy, and in the noble tradition of bar managers was trying to get her so drunk that she would sleep with him. The plan backfired splendidly when Amy' ability for drinking ended up with her needing to puke violently somewhere. I just remember holding her hair. The next day she called to thank me and we arranged to meet for lunch so she could thank me for my Welsh gallantry in person. We had lunch, and after that we fell horribly, inexplicably, frighteningly, in love with each other...
Fuck me, I can see straight to the start line, and I can see the elite runners. I'm looking for the pacemaker for a 3:00 hour time, the plan is I'll drop behind them, sit in until the last 2 miles, and push forward. I feel like 5 months of training is going to fall right into place and I'm going to smash this marathon to pieces. I have sacrificed time, energy, friendships, and basic happiness to get to this point, and I'm comfortable. I feel as ready as I can be. My music goes on, my adrenaline rises, and I'm ready. Except I'm not...
Being in love, or feeling love towards another person is a ridiculous, ultimately pointless exercise, but when you are in the middle of it, the feeling that you have is unlike anything else. It's unbelievable, and the eight weeks after Amy and I fell in love were the most outrageously amazing time of my life.
As I wander around her hometown with my Dad I remember when I had to go home to pack the family house up because we were moving. My Dad came to pick me up from halls and Amy came back to Wales with me. My Dad, being the incredible man that he is, decided to pretend that the traffic was too bad for us to make the journey home in one night, and put us up in a hotel, so that Amy and I could spend some time on our own. This would have been foolproof, except that the receptionist decided to put our rooms next to each other so I was too scared to have sex in case he heard. The time passed very quickly and Amy went home, and with her went promises of visits, long term plans, and a future together...
The siren goes and I'm away, the pacer is in the corral in front of me and I need to catch up with him to fall into place. The crowds ache along the street, and even above the music in my ears I can hear the noise. I have a pace sticker on my arm that outlines the minutes per mile I need to finish where I want to be, I hit the first mile running fairly easy and I'm bang on time. 'This is the pace you know and like, you can do this' I speed up a little to catch the pacer and my legs feel good, my breathing is steady, and the view is amazing. The only problem comes with the water stops. It's all in cups, trying to drink out of a bottle cap is tough enough, but out of a paper cup it's a farce. A drop back a little while I snort water out of my nose but eventually I catch the pacer, drop in behind, and settle in, and I'm ready. Except I'm not...
Amy returns to Chicago and I am gutted. Heartbroken. Ruined. A broken man. We exchange phone calls weekly but things inevitably fall apart. I break my promise to visit her and she realizes that she needs to walk away from me to stop herself from failing University and the breakup is complete. It would be eight years until I felt that level of emotion and love again, and even then it would be different...
Before I know it I've hit the fifth mile, the pacer is opening a gap between us but I don't think I can keep to it, and I don't know why. We run through a park and someone is smoking a cigar. The fumes invade my lungs and my breathing shortens, the pacer stretches out again and now I feel doubt. 'This is mile six, I'm not sure if I want to do this for another twenty miles' I have a habit of looking at the ground straight in front of me when I run, it comes from having damaged ankles and needing to always know where my feet are landing, so I just focus on the ground and follow the yellow lines around the route. At around eight miles a guy taps my shoulder,
"Yo! you running a three hour time?" He's obviously seen the 'three hour pace' bib on my back,
"I don't think so, he's ahead and I don't think I can catch him"
"Fuck him, his time' are all off, you're running exactly right. check at the next mile marker"
The next mile comes up and he's right, I'm still bang on time, and at a pace I know I've run hundreds of miles at, and I'm ready. Except I'm not...
On the morning of the race I get a text from a friend telling me that he has done ecstasy for the first time, and he tells me that he loves me, and then he wishes me good luck, and then he thanks me for all the things I've done for him. It's a beautiful, heart warming text. I wonder about how amazing it would be to experience your first pill again, the rush, the unmitigated joy, the innocence, and I think it's a lot like love. You chase the same feeling and wish it could be as strong and purposeful as the first time. And then sometimes it happens again. But different. The next time I fell in love it wasn't like the first, it was more substantial, more rounded, as if it wasn't just about the immediate power of it. More that I knew that this was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my entire life with...
I keep snorting Gatorade by mistake and it's fucking me up. I can't drink and run this fast at the same time. I'm rounding into 'boystown' and the sun is getting up but if I stay in the shade the breeze is just enough to get me by. Mile ten swings by and I feel an indifference, a disinterest , in fact, a general malaise. I don't think I want to run anymore. And this emotion dumbfounds me, but it's there. I check myself, and I'm ready. Except I'm not...
I round the corner at mile 11 and head over a bridge, there's people everywhere and the runners are thin enough for you to believe that you're the person they a shouting for. As I cross the bridge I look to my left, then to my right, and when I can tell there's nobody behind me I stop. I stop, look around, and walk to the emergency tent, walk passed the first aid team and sit down,
"Sir, Sir, are you OK?"
"Yes, I'm fine thank you"
"Do you have any heart or breathing difficulties?"
"No, No, I just don't want to run anymore. I've had enough"
"OK, that's fine, do you have any muscle or stomach pain?"
"No, not at all. I just don't want to run anymore"
"Oh"
And that's where this story ends. I try very hard to be as honest as I can in this journal that I keep, and I'll carry on with that honesty until the end. The truth is that I don't love running anymore. I really wanted to but I don't. And one thing that I've learnt recently is that if you don't love something you'll never be able to do it properly. And that could be in the work that you do, the friends that you keep, or relationships that you have. If you don't love them, you'll never do them right.
I thought that determination, anger, frustration, hatred, and spite could get me through this race but I was wrong. It CAN get you through the training, the late nights, the early mornings, the sacrifices, and about half way round, but to do anything, you have to love it. And I don't love running anymore. I don't love the training routes I run, I don't love the pains in my legs, and most of all, I don't love the memories that taint my running.
I was always a big believer in the solitary runner, out on the road with his thoughts and beliefs, I'm not anymore. The truth is that running just makes me sad and lonely, and there isn't a man, woman, or sheep that's going to change that except me, but I know that the answer is not in me running.
I get a big, yellow, school bus back to the finish line with a distraught elite runner, she's in tears because her chances of getting an Olympic place have gone.
I get to the finish, get my bag, text my Dad and tell him to meet me at his hotel bar. When I get there the bar's closed, I ask if I can sit and wait by the window. As I sit down I quietly begin to sob. The Mexican busboys don't really know what to do about the crying, ginger, gringo until a waitress comes and brings me a coke. I sit there for an hour drying my eyes, knowing that I've done the right thing, with not a single regret, but with a hollowness in my heart. I need to go away and be myself for a while, find out what's really important to me and fix up.
It goes without saying that this is the last blog I will ever write. I've never written a single word of this for anyone except me, but I am forever touched, confused, baffled, and shocked that anyone ever reads it.
Thank you.
Gareth x
Sunday 9 October 2011
Tuesday 4 October 2011
The last long run takes a strange, fateful twist.
I don't believe that I am the only runner in the world that starts to get paranoid in the last couple of weeks before a race, but I do think that I take it to a whole new level. As race day quietly tip toes towards you a runner treads the fine line between making sure that he/she is at the peak of their fitness, against the constant worry of picking up an injury if you train too hard, or if simple bad luck comes calling.
These last few weeks I have been running in the style of a man holding a bomb in his hands, with no safe place to set it down. Every step I take is a possible ankle sprainer, and every loose paving slab is a definite knee crusher. Everything in my path is an enemy now, divots, puddles, tree roots, gravel, mud, steps, curbs, leaves, other people. All of these things have the potential to do damage and ruin 6 months of training, sacrifice, and effort.
My assassin of fate did not come in these forms though, I was not felled by a a loose slab of concrete on the Regents canal, I did slip on the new gravel by Victoria Park, but it did not cause me harm. No, I was cruelly struck down by an agent of doom, a bringer of misfortune, lady lucks cruel joke did not throw me something so predictable.
I got done by a suicidal squirrel.
I was running my last long run and to bump the miles up I went twice round the park, which is about 6 miles give or take. It's a circle I have run many times and I know it well. As I came around the first lap, through the gates by the village I moved across onto the grass path, in between the bushes and the benches. I don't look at people anymore, I don't enjoy the early morning hue, I just stare at the space one meter in front of me, making sure that every step is a safe one, picking each landing foot to make sure I don't twist or pull anything. From the corner of my eye I don't see him, I just see a rustle, like a flash something is a foot and a half in front of me, maybe one step in front of my eyes the pace I'm going, it's a squirrel, with a conker stuffed in its little mouth.
Time slows while I try to work out why this normally nervous little animal has decided to get so close to me, did he see me? or was he too busy making sure the conker doesn't escape its jaw? Then I consider my options,
1. I could run straight over the little thing, who's eyes are now firmly locked into mine. He looks sad, as if he knows that the conker will be never be enjoyed, because death is upon him in the shape of a ginger, running blur.
2. I can swerve to my left and smash into a newly painted bench.
3. I can swerve right and into the bushes.
I go right, the squirrel doesn't even move, and I become acquainted with the bushes like two old fat friends embracing at the airport, arms out stretched, struggling to wrap their arms round each other. I go in one side of the bush and come out the other, I look back and the squirrel runs back in to where he come from, eyes front I straighten up and check for damage. nothing. I am in the clear so I round the corner and head back around.
By the time I get to Alexander McQueen's old house the squirrel is a forgotten memory, a brief moment of awkwardness, followed by confusion, then forgotten. Like a one night stand. I have completely forgotten about it by the time I head back through the gates at the village, and onto the grass verge.
This time I see the little bastard, his head is moving from side to side, poking out of the bush, like he's waiting to cross the road. and then he does it again, still with a conker in its mouth, he bounces in front of me and stops dead. Now I'm just confused, once is a strange little accident, a funny, early morning quirk, but twice? from the same bush? This is just weird.
so the ballet starts and a decide to leap over the squirrel and deny him what he so clearly wants, a way out. Death by runner, it's a bit like death by police but the park based, animal version. I jump over him and my right foot lands on a big stick, and the uneven surface does something to the underneath of my foot, I regain my balance, look back and the squirrel is waving a fist at me and shouting,
"come back and finish me off! I don't want to live anymore, come back and end this cruel nightmare for me!"
He doesn't, the little shit just sits there, then scampers across road and into another bush.
I exit the park and a shooting pain has started, I get home and stretch out and my foot feels OK. I go to work and walking to the bus stop, the pain starts again. I sit on the bus and ponder the possibility that a squirrel may have ruined me in 2011. I phone my physio and explain what's happened,
"A squirrel?"
"Yes, a squirrel Bob"
"Came at you twice?"
"Yes, out of the same bush"
"And now your foot hurts?"
"Yes, like a stabbing pain underneath my foot, going all the way to the ankle, you think I should go for another run?"
"No. you've done enough now, stay healthy, rest it, I'll see you Tuesday. Just try to stay off it"
"OK, will do."
"Oh, and Gareth?"
"Yes?"
"Don't go to the park again"
"OK"
Today is Tuesday, I fly tomorrow, and I have no idea what Bob is going to say. I run the 2011 Chicago marathon in 5 days from now and it's possible that I might be injured and unable to run the race that I want to run because of a squirrel.
Life is very strange.
These last few weeks I have been running in the style of a man holding a bomb in his hands, with no safe place to set it down. Every step I take is a possible ankle sprainer, and every loose paving slab is a definite knee crusher. Everything in my path is an enemy now, divots, puddles, tree roots, gravel, mud, steps, curbs, leaves, other people. All of these things have the potential to do damage and ruin 6 months of training, sacrifice, and effort.
My assassin of fate did not come in these forms though, I was not felled by a a loose slab of concrete on the Regents canal, I did slip on the new gravel by Victoria Park, but it did not cause me harm. No, I was cruelly struck down by an agent of doom, a bringer of misfortune, lady lucks cruel joke did not throw me something so predictable.
I got done by a suicidal squirrel.
I was running my last long run and to bump the miles up I went twice round the park, which is about 6 miles give or take. It's a circle I have run many times and I know it well. As I came around the first lap, through the gates by the village I moved across onto the grass path, in between the bushes and the benches. I don't look at people anymore, I don't enjoy the early morning hue, I just stare at the space one meter in front of me, making sure that every step is a safe one, picking each landing foot to make sure I don't twist or pull anything. From the corner of my eye I don't see him, I just see a rustle, like a flash something is a foot and a half in front of me, maybe one step in front of my eyes the pace I'm going, it's a squirrel, with a conker stuffed in its little mouth.
Time slows while I try to work out why this normally nervous little animal has decided to get so close to me, did he see me? or was he too busy making sure the conker doesn't escape its jaw? Then I consider my options,
1. I could run straight over the little thing, who's eyes are now firmly locked into mine. He looks sad, as if he knows that the conker will be never be enjoyed, because death is upon him in the shape of a ginger, running blur.
2. I can swerve to my left and smash into a newly painted bench.
3. I can swerve right and into the bushes.
I go right, the squirrel doesn't even move, and I become acquainted with the bushes like two old fat friends embracing at the airport, arms out stretched, struggling to wrap their arms round each other. I go in one side of the bush and come out the other, I look back and the squirrel runs back in to where he come from, eyes front I straighten up and check for damage. nothing. I am in the clear so I round the corner and head back around.
By the time I get to Alexander McQueen's old house the squirrel is a forgotten memory, a brief moment of awkwardness, followed by confusion, then forgotten. Like a one night stand. I have completely forgotten about it by the time I head back through the gates at the village, and onto the grass verge.
This time I see the little bastard, his head is moving from side to side, poking out of the bush, like he's waiting to cross the road. and then he does it again, still with a conker in its mouth, he bounces in front of me and stops dead. Now I'm just confused, once is a strange little accident, a funny, early morning quirk, but twice? from the same bush? This is just weird.
so the ballet starts and a decide to leap over the squirrel and deny him what he so clearly wants, a way out. Death by runner, it's a bit like death by police but the park based, animal version. I jump over him and my right foot lands on a big stick, and the uneven surface does something to the underneath of my foot, I regain my balance, look back and the squirrel is waving a fist at me and shouting,
"come back and finish me off! I don't want to live anymore, come back and end this cruel nightmare for me!"
He doesn't, the little shit just sits there, then scampers across road and into another bush.
I exit the park and a shooting pain has started, I get home and stretch out and my foot feels OK. I go to work and walking to the bus stop, the pain starts again. I sit on the bus and ponder the possibility that a squirrel may have ruined me in 2011. I phone my physio and explain what's happened,
"A squirrel?"
"Yes, a squirrel Bob"
"Came at you twice?"
"Yes, out of the same bush"
"And now your foot hurts?"
"Yes, like a stabbing pain underneath my foot, going all the way to the ankle, you think I should go for another run?"
"No. you've done enough now, stay healthy, rest it, I'll see you Tuesday. Just try to stay off it"
"OK, will do."
"Oh, and Gareth?"
"Yes?"
"Don't go to the park again"
"OK"
Today is Tuesday, I fly tomorrow, and I have no idea what Bob is going to say. I run the 2011 Chicago marathon in 5 days from now and it's possible that I might be injured and unable to run the race that I want to run because of a squirrel.
Life is very strange.
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