Bucko's World

Ok, so I’m a runner of sorts and spend many an evening and weekend pounding the pavements of Chislehurst and the treadmills of Fitness Exchange in the hapless task of some day being able to see my feet again. Occasionally I even get the urge to enter a race and put myself up against the elite to see where I compare with all the other Day-Glo vested idiots I often see pounding the other way. Like many of these I fancy seeing if I’m up to the ultimate test, a marathon and to this end I signed up with Children with Leukaemia to do first, the great North Run, and then, and here’s the clever bit, get a place in the Flora London Marathon for 2006. My cunning plan failed on two counts. 1) I got injured training for the GNR and 2) They didn’t give me a place in the Marathon. To be fair they offer me the alternative of either running the Hairy Haggis Marathon of Edinburgh (er, no thanks!) or, really helpfully, the ING New York Marathon (er, yes please but impossible….)

Why am I relating this? Well, two reasons. 1) I’m still bothered by the knee I hurt whilst training before and 2) Today I received a letter from CWL offering me the chance to take part in the 2007 London Marathon – for which training would have to start now…….which leads me back to my knee. I had only just decided that a visit to my Doctor, BUPA form in hand was the only solution to my knee. So what you ask? Well, if I apply will I have time to fit for the race? What if they have to operate? Will I run again? So, I thought the best thing to do was revist my runners diary from last year and try to relive the pro and cons of 6 months of training before I decide…..

30/5 to 12/6 – So, a sixteen week running plan is in order, but unfortunately this does not arrive from the charity until the end of what would have been week two of my training, so rather brilliantly my first two weeks “exercise” consist of a birthday bash, two leaving do’s and four curries - I forgot to count how many pints - with only a couple of visits to the gym. Some might not call this an ideal start, but with a normal running schedule of 12 – 15 miles a week confidence is still high.

13/6 to 26/6 – I’m limbered up for my first proper training run, with stopwatch set and 7 mile route all planned out, and it’s a lovely day for it. I’ve followed the advice and have an old pair of running shoes on to help avoid the blisters, along with trainer liners to keep feet in tip top condition. Big mistake. By the time I’ve run down the hill towards Elmstead Woods station, trainers are rubbing on my Achilles area and with in minutes huge blood filled blisters have formed. Being a bloke I soldier on and as luck would have it, they decide to burst 3 miles in just to keep the pain threshold steady. By the time I get home my ankles are a bit of a mess and my shoes sopping with blood. Lovely, really good start. Training on hold again to allow heals to heal (aha…)

27/6 to 10/7 – Chislehurst and Bromley is proving to be an interesting place to run. The tree-lined roads whilst being all very pretty to look at are completely lethal to the running fraternity. Dropped leaves get turned into an ice-slick mush which as well as being ankle twistingly dangerous in its own right, has the great advantage of also covering up the tree roots bursting through the pavements and generally turning the whole event into an obstacle course fit for the Royal Marines. Add to the fact that everywhere is down from Chislehurst and you soon discover that by the time you are homeward bound you feel like you are running up Mount Everest, lungs burning and legs on fire, but with less help from a bunch of Sherpas.

11/7 to 24/7 – Things go very badly. Not only has the intake of curries and beer been far too high, but due to a severe sinus infection assailing me for over a week, actual running goes out of the window. Difficult to train if you can’t breathe!

25/7 to 7/8 – Training is going well, only being interrupted by holidays, weddings and such like, the miles are being run, and a new 10 mile route has been mapped out running down to Sidcup Station and back, much easier on the knees as ankles as it is far less up hill on the way back than previous routes. My times are not good though, 10 miles taking me 1hr 24mins, ten slower than I should be doing. I consult with my mentor, a vetran of many marathons, and ask why my times are so slow. His sage advice proves both insightful and to the point: “you’re too fat and your not fit enough.”

8/8 to 21/8 – Live sport including test cricket and grands prix interfere with the carefully laid out plans to start “Fartleking”, along once again with too many curries and a rather good Australian red which arrives at the house, but despite this the training is going well - even if the temptation to hoof the Japanese Tourists swarming across the Millennium Bridge off into the Thames is proving difficult to avoid. New route proves to be a winner, mainly due to the fact that the bus home goes the same way, so always an option if you get bored. Decide due to legs feeling tired that an energy drink whilst on the move may prove a good idea. Big mistake (No2). Here’s a tip. Do not under any circumstances take a bottle of Lucozade with you and then attempt to drink it as you bowl along. Up my nose, all over my face, all over my already garish Children with Leukaemia running vest and everywhere else, it really makes for an unpleasant experience. Plus, once you do swallow some, you can guarantee vomiting it up into the gutter within a couple of miles, proving fizzy drinks and running don’t mix.

22/8 to 4/9 – Ah, big problems. Just the slightest misstep down a curb and by the time you get home your knee is the size of an orange and you can’t get up or down the stairs except in extreme agony. The only solution is rest, but with a race coming up that is not an option. I wonder what the quickest time the Great North Run has been done in by someone hopping………

Training Diary Update 5/9 to 14/9 – Ralgex, Deep Heat, Deep Freeze, Nurofen, elasticated knee supports; all these, and others (I considered the old hospital crutch I found in the loft too!) have been used to try and hold my right knee together in an attempt to keep training enough to complete the run on Sunday. Short distances have been going ok, if I’ve been careful, with only minimal stiffness in my knee after a 6 mile run, but that was hardly pushing it; it needs to last twice that long. I wonder if I’ll be the only person on the start line in Newcastle who has never actually run the full 13 miles before!! It’s ok though. My marathon running colleague has assured me that the course is quite even until 11 miles when it goes uphill for a bit. Great. My furthest distance in training has been 10 miles, so I’ll be dying by then anyway, I then I’m supposed to run uphill for a bit. Marvellous. Kick a man whilst he’s down why dontcha? Anyway, my clever training strategy of sitting in front of the cricket all weekend, eating curry, drinking beer, wine and champagne in a toast to our marvelous cricket team, will no doubt come to the fore as the dreaded “wall” approaches! I’m also now starting to hear a lot about the downsides of distance running (other than not being able to walk again afterwards!) Black toenails, jogger’s nipple and the aforementioned “The Wall” are all bad enough, but now I’ve been told about Jogger’s Trots; the sudden on come of stomach pains from nowhere, although you very quickly workout where they are going! Even the great Paula Radcliffe has suffered the ignominy of this one. Hopefully if it happens to me I won’t, unlike the hapless first lady of running, end up on the front pages of all the newspapers with a long lens focused on my a*se.

The Big Day

An early start for what proves to be a very long weekend. We get Abdul, the Iranian cab driver, who seems to think that only intermittent use of the windscreen demister is required and that using a dirty dish cloth to wipe the front screen every few minutes is a safe option at 50 MPH whilst steering with his knees. Eventually he realises this isn’t going to work so rather helpfully opens all the windows which, as it is minus 3 outside, clear quite quickly. Unfortunately the front does not. Somehow we make it to Heathrow in one piece, albeit with an incredibly stiff neck and frozen left ear.

The news comes to Bucko, in the shape of meal vouchers provided by BA in the wake of the Gate Gourmet food crisis. These £5 meal tickets are great, you can spend them anywhere in the airport you like so we head off in the hope of getting a fry up before we take off. Unfortunately, national departures only features a Costa Coffee outlet which, due to the meal crisis mentioned earlier, has a queue consisting of every BA passenger already at the airport, so although our flight is leaving from terminal one, we have to go outside to terminal five, just to join the back of the line. When we eventually reach the front of the line, two toasted panini and two small bottles of orange juice come to an astronomical £11.80, possibly proving to be the most expensive meal of the weekend.

While we sit there and consume the food literally worth its weight in gold, the celeb spotting can start in earnest. We see Ant (or Dec) joining the queue to gastronomic bankruptcy along with a young lady Lisa points out, who she assumes to be his girlfriend. “She can’t be his girlfriend,” I say, “She only looks about 12.” A couple of minutes later he strolls past carrying his bag, to be followed shortly by said young lady as she struggles to carry five large coffees and their nosh, barely managing to juggle them and her own bag as she attempts to follow him back to the VIP lounge, where we assume Dec (or Ant) must be waiting. Northern men eh? You’ve just got to love ‘em.

Boarding is great. The skybridge isn’t working so we end up traipsing across the tarmac and up the steps to the back of the aircraft. This is fine for those of us who, having checked in online, really do only have bags which, in any circumstances you wish to come up with, could reasonably be described as hand luggage. But guess what? There is a group of people for whom the term hand luggage seems to mean anything that doesn’t require a trolley jack and three burly weight lifters to manoeuvre. I’m still not sure how they got the bag up the steps in the first place, but the flight is delayed as they try to find three burly weight lifters to help unjam the bag from where it has become immovably wedged in the aisle.

The plan had been to get off the plane, grab the metro into Newcastle and have a mooch round, but due to the unexpected weight of the rucksack I’m carrying we decide to head straight to the hotel and drop our stuff off first. We arrive into the teeth of a large wedding party who are obviously staying at the hotel. “Did the company bookin’ ya all in like tell ya yas room is above the disco bar like?” What? “No.” “Well wai eye, disco to one o’clock, free entry for residents.” The look on my face must say it all, “But we’re here for the run, we have to be up at six o’clock sharp, we need our sleep!” “Nae problem man, breakfast starts at six, special like.” Feeling this isn’t going to improve, we head off to Boots to buy earplugs and sleeping tablets in a vain attempt to have any chance of resting up before the big event.

One of the treats of this type of event is the Corporately Sponsored Pasta Party, and as we have free tickets, for something which it says would normally be £6, we head off to the Metro Radio Arena to have a look. The Junior and Mini races having finished earlier in the day, means the place is packed with children whose demeanour is not being helped by a giant Scotsman on stilts, waving his bagpipes and stomping around intoning “Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum I smell the blood of an Englishman!” and generally scaring the living daylights out of anyone under 10. A group of little fairies all dressed in pink seem to be bearing the brunt of his attentions, running and screaming, at frequencies normally only audible to dogs, in his wake. The urge to walk over and push the big twat off his stilts is proving difficult to resist. Anyway, not wishing to go away empty handed, we grab out goody bags, which contain some microwave pasta and an energy biscuit that appears to be made of nothing more than sawdust and mouse droppings, and join the queue for our free lunch (apparently, as I may have mentioned worth £6,) being generously provided by Italfresco. Three bits of pasta in a burnt tomato sauce later and we decide to head off and get something decent to eat back in Morpeth.

Six o’clock Sunday morning comes around and we’re in the dining room of the hotel, eating our shredded wheat and trying to work out who might be doing the race and who is support staff only. Lisa is convinced she’s the only one there not running, but by the look of some of the others, I think she’d have a fair chance of getting round quicker than most of them. Most of us are in tracksuits, not the most flattering of attire at the best of times, but at least one bloke is showing a large amount of rubber ring between his top and bottoms – whatever possesses him to think he’s fit to run 13 miles is beyond me. Further amusement is provided by one old lady who comes in, charity vest, number, shorts and John McEnroe head band already being sported, as if we are already on the start line and ready for the off! I’m now worried that I’m a bit overdressed!

We’re dropped at the start line at 8.10, only a two and a half hour wait until the race starts. Oh good, I do like to be early. It’s overcast and freezing cold and once we’ve checked our bags all we have to wear is a plastic poncho and skimpy shorts. Add to this the hydration programme I been following, start line nerves and the biting North Easterly blowing straight up my ar*e and several visits to the toilet become necessary. Thankfully, they are the hand pumped chemical variety and don’t block easily or stink to high heaven so that’s a relief. At least part of that last sentence is a lie by the way.

I watch in fascination as normal people transform themselves into charity runners before my very eyes. One short butch looking bloke, covered in tattoos and probably having served a couple of tours in Iraq, is, with the help of his missus, putting on a padded bra, white blouse, tennis skirt, pigtailed wig and full makeup in a transformation that is just simply staggering. This most butch of northern men is now simpering away, flashing his knickers and offering to kiss several other blokes who reel away in horror, accompanied by a hearty laugh from our, for want of a better word, schoolgirl. Mind you, compared to some of the women around he actually looks quite good…..

The race itself goes really well. It takes 15 minutes to cross the start line, accompanied by as much “Oggie, oggie, oggie” and “Blaydon Races” as you can manage, and my knee holds up quite well. Unfortunately the sheer weight of people, and the ever increasing heat means that at times, if the course happenens to narrow, you are left with no option but to drop to jogging pace and wait until a way through the masses becomes available.

A sub two-hour time, which was well on up to half way, soon disappears as the wall of people walking in front of me becomes too dense to easily traverse. I pass a camel, Batman and Robin, and the bloke in the Mr Bump costume I had politely declined the offer of wearing, and am trying to focus on keeping up with the chap in front of me, when suddenly his legs just completely go, and he weaves across the road in front of me flailing like a puppet that has had its strings cut. I’m quite lucky not to be collected by him, and for a moment I’ll remember for a long while it suddenly becomes the Great North Run Steeplechase. I finish the race with two other runners from the Children with Leukaemia charity, both of whom had been walking the last couple of hundred metres, both of them looking really pleased I’d encouraged them to pick up the pace as we were nearly there. I’m sure it was an accident one of them nearly tripping me up.

As I cross the finish line and jog to a walk, it feels like a sniper has shot me through my right knee and I end up limping to a halt, probably looking like I’m about to pass out. A marshal comes up and asks me if I’m ok, and like a little old lady, although probably not the one we saw at breakfast, I have to ask him to remove my timing chip from my ankle for me as I cannot bend down. Who cares though, job done, and a big stupid grin spreads across my face as I realise that due simply to me being in the race, the world record has been broken. And that with the help of all my friends and colleagues I’ve managed, simply by having a bit of a jog, to raise the best part of £1,000 for an extremely worthy cause. Cheers chaps.

Newcastle airport: I’m being interviewed by Sue Barker. She wants to know all about my injury, my tactics for pacing the race and generally how a top athlete would prepare for such an event. I tell her I haven’t got a clue about the last part, but we do have a long chat about my knee. Talk about being star struck though, all Lisa is able to do is point at the powder blue coat Ms Barker is sporting, and wonder if she was too hot in it. I’m just about to tell Sue that I’ve been quite a fan of hers since seeing her in that tight little skirt at the French open all those years ago when we are interrupted by someone from BBC sport. “Sue, you know you’ve got to go to Burnham on Crouch tomorrow and interview Henman don’t you?” “Oh great,” she replies, “I’d rather go to the bloody dentist.” Class, pure bloody class. And a great end to a simply fantastic weekend.