9am Sunday 29th March on Greenwich Park saw the start of the first Gillette London Marathon. The boom of a 25lb cannon set the 7000 runners off on a cool damp morning. Large crowds lining the route gave a first indication that this was an event that would secure it’s popular place in the British sporting calendar. I managed to cover the first 16 miles in steady 9 minute mile pace, but beyond that point the lack of preparation really caught up with me, and the last 10 miles were a pretty painful “survival shuffle”. The spirit of the event was captured perfectly by the decision of the two athletes leading the race, who as they raced towards the finish line clasped hands and crossed the line together to record a dead heat. American Dick Beardsley and Norwegian Inge Simonsen crossed the line in 2 hours 11 minutes and 48 seconds. And 2 hours and 6 minutes later, I crossed the same line ! 43 year old Joyce Smith was the first woman to cross the line in a time of 2 hours 29 minutes and 58 seconds.
With no training to speak of I’d managed to complete a marathon, albeit in very unremarkable time of 4hr 17’, but for me the important thing was that I had been bitten by the bug, and almost immediately started to search out other events that I could compete in.
I realised at once that the key to improving as an athlete was training. This holds true no matter what level you start at. Very few can ever achieve the success at the highest level, and the fame that accompanies it, no matter how hard they may try, but with the right balance of a well planned training regime, determination, hard graft and a bit of luck you can come close to achieving all that you can. With this in mind, I did two things. First, I started reading running magazines and books that would become the source of information about training techniques and strategies necessary to progress as a runner. In the early days I had to start to de-mystify and understand some of the terminology and language of the ostensibly straightforward action of running. What was interval training?, what was fartlek? what were reps, hill work, LSD? I would discover the answer to these questions later. The magazines also contained events calendars, which enabled me to start looking out for races that I could take part in. The other thing I did was to start a diary in which to record all of my running, training and racing. That diary started on April 6th 1981, and I still keep it to this day, having recorded every step that I’ve run in the past 43+ years. For anyone embarking on the early stages of what may become a lifelong running habit, I’d strongly recommend keeping a diary. Not only does it become the place to record the many long hard miles covered over the years, but also to detail different training schedules and to gradually build up a history of what does and doesn’t work for you.
I needed a week to recover from the Marathon effort before starting on April 6th on what would become a new regular running regime. I felt pretty confident that if I could run a marathon in 4’17” off more or less no training, then I must be capable of achieving something very much better if I prepared for it properly. My expectations about how much improvement I may realistically be able to aim for were boosted very quickly when on only my second run I improved the time on the 13 mile course that I’d used before the Marathon by 14 minutes, and then two weeks after that, took another 8 minutes off the time. In just 4 weeks and about 6 runs, my 13 mile time had dropped from 1hr 58, to 1hr 36. Although I only ran a total of 6 times, for a total of 50 miles in April, the sudden new stresses and demands that I was placing on my body started to take their toll as I developed a knee problem which meant I was unable to train for 2½ weeks. By this time I had picked out another Marathon to run in, and as it was only 5 weeks away on 21st June I was very anxious to get running again as soon as possible. I was able to resume running on 15th May, and whilst it doesn’t begin to approach the level of training that is really necessary to prepare for a marathon, it was at least my first period of sustained training at a low level, averaging just under 20 miles per week for 5 weeks, with a longest single run being 14 miles. More next time…..
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