11 November 1996
The Times
While pounding Hampstead Heath, Oliver
August set his sights on breaking a marathon barrier.
Three hours; 180 minutes; 10,800 seconds.
That is the sound-barrier for marathon runners.
The sub-three hour club isn't exclusive, world-class
runners jog the 26 miles in a little over two hours.
But for an amateur, a two-hour something marathon
is quite an achievement.
At least that is what I have been
telling myself over the past few months as I have
ploughed around Hampstead Heath in the dark. My
chosen location for an attempt at joining the sub-three
hour club was New York, home of the hyperactive.
Now I was facing the Verrazano Narrows bridge, the
world's second largest suspension bridge and starting
point of the New York City Marathon.
How much of an uphill struggle this
would be was easy to grasp. Unlike the London Marathon,
there were no easy-to-overtake runners dressed up
as Mr Blobby or Mystic Meg. I was sandwiched between
30,000 lean Americans (I didn't know there were
that many), and it seemed that getting across the
starting line, let alone reaching Manhattan, was
going to take more than three hours. I was cold,
I was claustrophobic and I had missed the last chance
to go to the toilets - they still called them "bath
rooms" even though they were stinking portable
lavatories. Opposite, the world's longest urinal
- 380 feet - had been erected. Unfortunately, it
collapsed at one end as runners were leaving the
various pre-race religious ceremonies in the warm-up
area.
The start gun went off. Five minutes
later I was still standing in the same spot. I overheard
a conversation between two marathon veterans, almost
Clinton and Dole lookalikes, one tall and talkative,
the other thinner and more sceptical. Bill said:
"A marathon shouldn't hurt till the very end."
Bob said: "You just push through, I guess."
How I wanted to agree with them. But
my first marathon, in Leeds last spring, had taught
me a different lesson. Until mile 20 I had been
moving at a somewhat over-optimistic pace as it
turned out. What happened after mile 20 I find difficult
to recall because I was only just conscious enough
to stay upright. The running community has coined
two terms that describe what happens when your body
runs out of fuel: "hitting the wall" or
simply "blowing up".
In the last six miles of the Leeds
marathon I was passed by the most humiliating range
of runners. One-legged pensioners still seemed to
have enough breath to mutter something patronising
as they hobbled past. I eventually finished in three
hours 38 minutes. My second and so far only other
marathon saw a decent enough improvement in my finishing
time but was equally painful. I bumbled along the
Thames from Windsor to Chiswick in 3 hours 14 minutes.
Getting under three hours now seemed to be within
my grasp.
It took 15 minutes to get over and
off the Verrazano Narrows bridge. We were heading
north through Brooklyn and the weather and atmosphere
were warming up. Runners took off jumpers and woolly
hats and tossed them into the crowd. Many runners
had T-shirts with their names printed on and the
crowds readily cheered "Go Ollie, Go Ollie,
Go".
Thousands had come out. This was a
street party as typically American as the chocolate
chip cookie. Children had lined up with their hands
held out, waiting to slap a runner's hand. Their
mothers looked on with baskets of food and slices
of fruit for us. Meanwhile, a different band was
playing on every street corner, urging the runners
onwards with anything from jazz to the theme tune
from the Rocky films.
More than once I felt like asking
"why aren't you running?" But I was still
feeling fit and well. I was logging seven minutes
per mile which put me on course for my sub-three
hour goal.
Running the New York marathon must
be one of the safest and most comprehensive sightseeing
tours of the city. Protected by a wall of well-meaning
spectators we ran through some of the poorest and
most crime-ridden neighbourhoods. No tourist would
dare to come here at any other time. Yet these areas
reveal a surprising picture. To judge from the segregation
among the crowds, the idea of America as a melting-pot
seems preposterous. Cubans, Mexicans, Jews, Afro-Americans,
Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Italians, Russians
- they all occupy their own separate blocks, offering
their own food and playing their own music.
The marathon as a sightseeing tour
became even more attractive as we left Brooklyn
at the halfway point, dipped into Queens for two
miles and then crossed the East River into Manhattan.
There is little that hasn't been said about the
Manhattan skyline, and the view from the 59th Street
Bridge, made famous in a Simon and Garfunkel song,
made all the effort of getting there on foot worthwhile.
In Manhattan along First Avenue, the
crowds were even denser than in Brooklyn but some
runners were already fading and starting to walk.
At mile 20 a medical tent was waiting for them,
with more than 50 nurses kneeling by their haggard
and blistered patients. I had just passed the tent
and entered Fifth Avenue in Harlem for the final
stretch when my body started to rebel. I had reached
"the wall"; my club membership wasn't
going to be cheap.
Asymphony of marathon noises is all
that my brain registered in the last five miles.
A subway train rushing below. The never-ending it's-not-much-further
shouts from the crowds. Dogs barking in the adjoining
Central Park. At the water stations, the sounds
of the half-full cups splashing onto the road, the
squashing noise when the following runners stepped
on them, and then the gentle rustling as the wind
swept the empty and flattened cups across the Manhattan
canyons.
The finish line announced its proximity
with a deafening roar. Runners grunted, barely audible,
as they crossed it. Then, silence, for the first
time in 3 hours, 3 minutes and 24 seconds.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 1996.
