Spartathlon 2012

FOREVER HEATHCLIFF

 

It’s difficult to write an interesting report about a DNF. The reader wants to read about success, not whinges about how hard done by the writer was and how ‘but for… etc’ and it just all sounds so feeble when the same potential readers have already read accounts of those who did make it to the finish. However cathartic an exercise the writer putting down in writing his feelings may be for him, it’s rarely therefore of interest to anyone else but him, but regardless of that, we are often drawn, by way of penance or to exorcise race demons, into recording it all nonetheless.

 

So here I was again. Its amazing how only a week after this race I can have forgotten the feelings of utter dejection that I felt after a 6^th and final DNF, so its lucky that, being aware of the ‘rose tinted spectacles’ phenomenon I put down on paper my feelings on the plane on the way home on the Sunday after the race so that if I did complete a race account it would be more true to the feelings I had at the time and not a Herodotus style account, many years after the event.

 

On each occasion I have failed to finish this race previously there has been a different reason for failure – and that’s dangerous because it can lure you into attempt after attempt. The constant nagging feeling that this time things will be different is hard to ignore. In the past in 2004 it was my hips, in 2006 it was 35miles of cramps slowing me down, in 2007 it was not giving the run the respect it deserved and attempting it within a month of the UTMB. In 2009 I was ‘nearly’ there … 97.5miles but the result was ultimately the same, timed out yet again. In 2010 it was my hips, quads, knees, dizziness and everything else that fell apart, and quite early on too. So I gave up. This route just isn’t for me. Although a finish would crown the twilight years of my ultra career I just can’t run fast enough, or for long enough on hot tarmac any more, if I ever could.

 

It took me 2years to come back this time. Things had been looking up a little. PB’s on the Wilmot and 4 Inns and the Hoka effect which seems to have rejuvenated my joints gave me back enough optimism for another ‘final’ go. I know for me that the 2^nd 25 is the deciding factor. Having finished a marathon, instead of sitting down and enjoying the post race comforts like most people do, your reward is another 25, in the heat of the day, and nearly as fast. So I concentrated in training on running slow 25’s that would get me to the end of the 1^st 25, in good shape and with energy to spare for the hot one. The warning signs were there had I chosen not to ignore them. A TP100, followed by a GUCR finish gave me confidence that the head was still there – but they were slow and unspectacular times and although I failed to meet my self-imposed qualification criteria, I decided I could justify another go. I wanted another go.

 

To be fair to myself I don’t feel I could have done more. I did the best in training that I could have expected. I could have been fitter and faster, but I was as fit as I was ever going to be. I had no injuries and I had a plan, slow but steady, Hokas, Perpetuem and Succeed. All had to go like clockwork and with no surprises, there would just not be enough time otherwise. Even on my best estimate things were going to be marginal. But I knew that if things DID come together I COULD do it.

 

So there I was at the Acropolis again, at as spectacular a race start as you will ever find.  Not nervous this time, just fatalistic and ready to go. I had just one chance, I had prepared myself as best as I could ever hope but looking up at the skies I could see it might not be enough. Sometimes the gods look down on our endeavours, sneer and just rain down fireballs of scorn. It might just as well have been fireballs this year.

 

As Forrest would say, ‘life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get’, well this year we got heat. It was forecast 36 degrees in Athens and 39 or more out on the coast. It may have been hotter. Some said it got into the 40’s. As hot as hell anyway, a variable that was just out of my control and not in the plan at all. But you don’t come to Greece from 10 degrees of Derbyshire mirk for much of the same and it is foolish to expect it. I’d had the foresight of a weeks training in Spain to help get the mind in the right place for heat but at, what I’d thought at the time was a representative 26-27, the heat was clearly going to be in a different league today.

 

It all started off so innocently though. As usual it was difficult to tell whether the throngs waving their arms at the side of the road in rush hour Athens were in friendly cheer or in annoyance for holding up their bus to work, but it was good.  I knew the hill up to Dafni was there and I held a good, steady pace on it. There were a few of us Brits together and the atmosphere was excellent. The sun was also still in hiding.

 

The plan was on course through Elefsis at half marathon distance. The schoolkids were there again, looking older and stronger than I recall, and the wall of High 5’s was more of an exercise in strength than I remember, but it was still good.

 

The hill out onto the coast wasn’t a surprise either, but the heat was making itself known now. The pace was still to plan but by as early as 20miles it was becoming a struggle. Still a good 15mins up on the buffer though and at this stage, in this heat, I don’t want or need any more.

 

But I’m having to walk a bit from time to time already and worryingly the buffer is just evaporating in the heat. At 25miles I’m suddenly right on the nail. I was 15mins up last time I looked. At marathon distance I’m 5mins down, a good 20mins off what I usually do to here. How did that happen? It’s over a hundred degrees, that’s how. The 2^nd and critical 25m section would be run in the hottest weather I have ever run in. Not good. Not good at all.

 

I worried about this and cursed my bad luck. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, after all Spain was ok. I just had to hang on till about 4pm when it cooled off but I just couldn’t let anything knock me off the pace I had dialled in. If it did then there wouldn’t be any time for recovery or waiting out the heat.

 

Into the 2^nd 25 and it’s up ‘that hill’, my least favourite part of the course and I just can’t run at all. I keep bursting into a slow jog, feeling fine for all of 100yds and then it just stops. I hate this hill. It seems less of an incline than I recall from 2years ago but it doesn’t help, I just can’t run. Kevin comes past but I can’t rally. The long drag to the CP at the brow just takes it out of me. I’ve been eating and drinking fine but there’s still no energy to draw on.

 

Desperation has eaten its way into me well before the top of the hill. It is just too hot. I cannot run and before I know it I’m out. To be fair I’ve known for the last 5-6miles that it’s impossible for me to keep a decent running pace today. I’m losing about ½ mph per stage and since the plan was marginal at best it just isn’t going to happen, not today. The thought of 4 more hours of this heat and more again in a 2^nd day and my inability despite all I can do to raise the pace is enough for the chimp to gain the upper hand. I heard later from some that some CP’s were allowing people to have an extra half hour because of the unusual heat, but some weren’t, which seems about par for the usual Greek mentality, meaning that at some CP’s no-one dropped out and then all of a sudden there was a glut of DNF’s.

 

It’s a long way to have come for a 50k but there is no point in hindsight being annoyed about it and I wasn’t on my own. That in itself is cold comfort but the usual drop out rate is about 33% (out of 350 runners all of whom have met stringent qualification times). Last year it was 50% and enough to tip me off the fence and into another attempt. This year it was around 20%. Only just over 70 runners. 5 Brits finished. Most of the rest were on the bus around the same time as me and well before Corinth. As I took the steps onto the bus Allan, Drew and David were already there. Phil, Rob, Bridget, Kevin, Sue, Lindley, Laurence and Martin were all there in a CP or two.

 

The heat was enough to show me just how fragile the plan had been. In a matter of less than 10miles the heat had knocked over half an hour off my buffer and enough to end my race. Even just an hour or so after my race had ended, and having cooled down I struggled to recall the feelings of utter desperation and a total inability to run that had caused me to sit down. Again it was my speed v the cut-offs that had been the issue. It always is. As ever, I could have carried on – but not at a speed that would have enabled me to meet those deadlines, which have forever been the bane of my attempts. Is it foolish, now that I am slowing down, to expect to ever be in a position to reverse that, no matter how much I want it?

 

It has been an adventure though. I find it impossible to explain to anyone just how I can get infinitely more from attempting this race even where there is only a 20% chance of getting to the end, than I can in any number of other races. The depth of highs and lows I have encountered on my travels year on year are just not found in any other race, but the one emotion I am not able to write about is the one of feeling just what it is like to run down that final road in Sparta under the shadow of the statue of Leonidas.  It has been said many times before but if there is a race to attempt, this one is it. It will take you where no other run ever will, even if it does not take you to Sparta.

 

But life is an exam. It is only at the end when we will find out whether we have passed and whether the individual lesson we all face was in fact one of humility and acceptance or of persistence against the odds. There is no way in advance that we can know whether we will eventually be rewarded for our faith and determination or be ridiculed for foolishly wasting what time we have.

 

I believe someone once said that it takes a strong man to come to terms with his limitations, though I believe it is also probably said that that talk is for losers. But after 6 attempts, 3 times past Corinth and 3 times not, it is probably time to call this adventure to an end. I have never given up on anything before. I have never indeed given up in this race - it is just that on each occasion something has caused me to fall foul of those deadlines. There will probably always be something and I do not wish to become another Heathcliff, a tortured soul in torment, wandering the moors, since that’s where you are now probably likely to find me, rattling the windows of anyone who will listen to my bleatings. Life is tough, but knowing that does not make it any easier to bear.