I stuffed some breakfast into the yawning hole in my face, threw the incorrect gear into my running bag and left the house.
What greeted my blurry eyes outside my front door was like a scene from 28 Days Later: dozens of staggering zombie-like Londoners, except they were all noisily waiting for the bus. My house is opposite a bus stop on a busy road in Camden Town, and at 3am on Saturday night, it gets very hectic. Upon seeing me leaving home dressed in lycra, about 20 drunk people gleefully cheered me on as I made a quick dash for the night bus 20 yards down the road. One reveller even yelled, "Go on, Rooney," a comment which got my day off to the worst start possible. Deep down though, I knew there was a lot of room for it to get even worse.
A short bus ride later I was in Big Ben. Based on the website at http://www.socialultra.co.uk/, I was hoping to find at least 4 or 5 people. To my surprise, I found about 25 people all clad in that unmistakably "ultra" look of compression clothing and bright OMM bags. I quickly learnt that Facebook was where all the cool kids had been discussing the event.
My surprise escalated when I realised James Adams seemed to be heading up the group, making authoritative announcements like, "I'm not the leader here, don't follow me. I don't know the way." I was slightly star struck seeing him in the flesh, but more shocked that he didn't plug his book (which is available at all good retailers called Amazon.co.uk).
I also met Ilsuk (I think that is his name!) who I met at a Runners Need group run a few weeks back. He told me about the Social Ultra site, and he seemed surprised that I had turned up to this event. I was even more surprised that I had turned up, to be honest.
Before I knew it, Big Ben had chimed four times and we started to run down Embankment, following the London Marathon route in reverse. Well, that was the plan.
Everyone shot off at a speed which for me would be a comfortable half marathon pace. I quickly found myself right at the back, and asked some people around me if this was quite a fast pace. "Oh, it's probably 3.45 pace." Given that my expected marathon pace would be around 4.15, this was not great news. I continued to hang at the back with a small group of the more conservative runners running at 4 hour pace.
There were no pedestrians around at this time - all the drunkards had gone home, so we didn't get any people shouting or asking what we were doing. The odd Taxi driver shot us funny looks, but that was about it.
I struck up a conversation with James Adams, and did my best not to act too star struck. I am tongue-tied at the best of times, but running severely exasperates my problem of talking incoherently while running. I tried to introduce myself, but forgot how to use grammar, and instead slurred, "It's nice to meet Kris, I am nice". He seemed to understand, and then asked what my name was.
The route became quite difficult to follow at mile 3 or 4 as it ducked in and out of some tunnels and through some winding streets near Whitechapel. Blue paint had been sprayed on the road to mark the route, so in theory we just needed to follow the paint to the start line. However, being 4.30am, all the roads were understandably still open to traffic, which made it difficult to navigate a few junctions. Still, we did our best, with fearless leader James Adams commenting, "It might be that way, but I wouldn't trust me to be honest, I have no idea." A couple of other runners who had run the marathon before said, "Well it might be that way, but I am not sure."
This was starting to feel like an ultra marathon already: too much lycra with not a drop of knowledge of the route between us.
I started chatting to Damian Hall about various races and our plans for the year. Though he is fairly new to ultras, I quickly discovered that he had raced a bunch of 100s and finished The Spine race, the UK's hardest ultra, in fourth place. Christ. With Damian on my left, and James Adams behind me, I suddenly felt that I might be biting off more than I could chew with this pace. I felt good though, so I pressed on.
We suddenly found ourselves on what I can now identify is the A1203, but at the time identified as "a particularly stupid road to be running on at 5am". It was ridiculously busy and did not have any proper pedestrian pavements or crossings; there was just a stretch of concrete separated from the road by a crash barrier.
Nobody really knew if we were following the route anymore, and our fearless leader James Adams had stopped a while back to try and break into a portaloo. He no doubt hoped that it would whisk him away, Dr Who style, to a time or a place where things like Backwards Marathons have not been invented.
Somehow, we managed to find our way back to the course onto the Isle of Dogs. The pace of our group had slowed slightly, and the front runners had all disappeared far into the distance.
Damian Hall is also a journalist, and was doing a piece about the Backwards Marathon for Outdoor Fitness Magazine. He said he was writing a bit about James Adams for the piece, and asked if I'd mind being mentioned in the article as a newbie. Not at all. I summarised my ultra running CV for him quite quickly (it is only one race, the Stort30, and that is a really short name). I told him about my plans to do the North Downs Way 50 in May this year, and that was the reason for my 'training run' of the Backwards Marathon.
As we made our way along the snaking route on the Isle of Dogs, the sun started to rise in the West which was important because it meant that the earth was still spinning. This comforted me, though it did mean the world would not imminently end, and I would more than likely have time to complete the full 26 miles.
As we left the Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf came into view. Here, journalist Damian asked if his photographer could get a few shots of us running past. He asked us to put on our best "Middle Distance Stare" - and that we turn around and run past the tripod a few times, which felt like an absurd thing to do given that I still had 3 hours of running ahead of me. We were all happy to help though as we all still felt pretty good, and it was quite a funny thing to do. I wondered if any of the runners of the actual race would end up doing triple-takes for the camera later on.
At this point, James Adams caught up the group. He had successfully broken into a portaloo, but complained at a lack of tissue paper. I was quite honoured to be witnessing yet another one of James's toilet-related dramas, though he was apparently less excited about it. Our group pressed on towards Tower Bridge, leaving James behind, who was mumbling something about "that bloody Mexican last night".
I started to lose sight of the group at around this point. I wasn't feeling bad, but my legs seemed to be saying, "Slow down! You still have 2.5 hours of running ahead of you". In perfect grammar. Well done legs.
I arrived at Tower Bridge to find the group of runners crowded around a man who had set up an aid station on the pavement. I was subsisting on nuts and the odd gel until that point, and to see a selection of real food was not only extremely exciting, but also totally amazing that somebody had gone to such trouble to help out on such a weird event at such a weird time! This turned out to be Richard Cranswick, the organiser of Social Ultra. He was accepting donations for charity as well. A top, top guy.
After Tower Bridge, we still had about 12 miles to go. It was at this point that I really slowed down and completely lost the group of runners with whom I'd run so far.
The rest of the marathon route is run on busy arterial roads towards Greenwich. It is not pretty, and I did not enjoy the scenery for the remainder of the race. My slowing pace meant that the possibility of a 4 hour marathon was quickly evaporating. My main concern though was not getting lost along the route.
The roads were still open, but volunteers, paid marshals and barrier workers had started to turn up to prep the course for the day. I received a few yells of encouragement as I ran on the roads towards the start. A couple of guys commented that it looked like I was running a marathon, to which I just laughed. I did not want to explain what I was doing to anyone, especially as my legs were starting to hurt pretty badly, and the idea of talking to other humans was not very appealing.
The remaining 10 miles of the race really hurt. I thought the route was supposed to be mostly flat, but towards the "end" (what is the start for most people) is up hill (well, down hill for most people).
My concern at that time was reaching the start well before the wheel chair race started at 8.50. I had visions of me being run over by speeding para-athletes, unable to move my legs quickly enough to get out of their way. The mile markers seemed to appear slower and slower as my pace dwindled to nearly a walk. Despite my slow pace though, I managed a 4h20m (8.20am) finish. Well before the wheel chair race, and not as slow as I had been dreading. Also, I was in dead last position, so in the logic of the 'Backwards Marathon', that meant that I had actually finished first. Woo hoo!
A great finish to a wonderfully stupid concept. Thanks to everyone who organised it and ran!
- The fastest runner completed the route in a staggering 3h15m
- My original pace group finished in 4h05m
- James Adams DNFd due to bowel issues, but did reach the finish (by train)