It had been raining for several hours now, it was dark, and the mud under my feet squelched and sucked at my every footstep, the pain in my right ankle was severe. I was beginning to shiver hard and clenched my teeth together to prevent them from chattering, trying to generate some more determination to keep moving. “Yep, a lovely Kebab! I’m going to get one and eat it in the car on the way home” said the dark figure a few steps in front of me in a mixed Belfast/Wakefield accent.
I smiled, “last time I had a Kebab was a couple of years ago, damn near killed me with campylobacter poisoning” I replied, “ I was puking and shitting bloody for a week” I laughed as Tom groaned in front, “ You’ve gone and put me right of the idea now”
We had been on the move since nine am that morning, it was now half eight at night. We had run a marathon and then had to start walking as we were drained of energy and both in pain, it had started raining at mile thirty and simply hadn’t stopped. Over the last two days we had covered ninety miles, I had run just under 50 miles the day before and Tom a couple less as he had managed to stick to the correct route where as I had made a mistake which had added three extra miles to the (just over) 46 miles that it should have been. We were now both wet and cold and pushing on through the mud covered water logged tow path of the Grand Union Canal. In an hour we would cross the last few miles to complete two back to back Ultra-marathons.
I had met Thomas Crawford Fitzsimons or ‘Tom’ only the day before but already it seemed like a lot longer; some people you just click with. We’d both started the morning before running from Northampton to Tring a distance which we’d been told was 45 Miles but turned out to be just over 46 Miles. Tom had gone hard the previous day and had really given it tons of spirit and had run far and fast, I’d run the first few miles with him then he’d pushed on but we met up again around 26/27 miles and I’d pushed ahead, but generally I thought we are around the same fitness level. The day before (Saturday) had been a great day; it was my first Ultra-marathon and today was my second. I’d run strong the day before with few problems. My biggest problem had occurred at 13.1 miles. I was in the middle of nowhere; I had been running along when suddenly I felt a piecing pain in the ball of my left foot. After a couple of paces I stopped as the pain was persistent and sharp. I took off my shoe and on closer inspection discovered inch and a half long hawthorn that had penetrated the sole of my shoe, gone through my insole and speared my foot. What was more annoying was that I couldn’t get the thing out.
I looked around to see if there was anything that I could use to secure a purchase on the offending piece of wood but there was nothing. Eventually in desperation I wiped off as much of the mud from the area around the puncture as I could and holding my shoe with both hands tried to get my teeth around the offending foreign body. It was whilst engaged in this act of desperation that the next two runners came around the corner; the look on their faces was I suppose what you’d imagine if you can picture two people who have just come across a man in the middle of nowhere during a race eating his muddy shoe!
I had been unable to get the thorn out so eventually knock off as much as possible of either end and carried on running. Every now and then the ground underfoot would hit exactly the point on my shoe to jolt the thorn up and back into my foot; of course I had no way of knowing when that might be so it was always a surprise. Eventually I managed to get the worst of the thorn out at a check point at just over the 26 mile mark using tweezers that one of the crew had with them. I thought about Shaka’s Zulu’s who he made run over thorns with bare feet, he killed those who complained or couldn’t do it; So I guess I was a lot better off than those men had been.
By the time Saturday evening had come I’d completed the distance, all I’d wanted to do was eat and sleep. It had been a long and tiring but great day. In all honesty I wasn’t sure how I was going to managed the next day but I knew that whatever happened I would not DNF (Did Not Finish) I had no idea though just how I would feel in the morning or if I’d even be able to walk properly.
This morning had seen Tom myself and a handful of racing snakes start the race; early on Tom and I had agreed to run the day together and that for us completing the distance would be the victory. Throughout the day we had motivated each other along when each of us in turn had dark points the other would crack a joke or come out with something motivational. As the marathon check point had come up we stopped for a quick five minute rest. I’d packed a pair of running socks in to a zip lock back along with a load of talc and used this as a chance to change my socks and talc my feet. It felt fantastic and the motivational lift afterwards was tremendous. When I had removed my right sock I had noticed that my right ankle was pretty swollen. I had had this problem once before just after the Dublin City Marathon, and it had led me to get MRIs done on the injury. Still there was no way I was about to DNF so I pushed on.
Once we had got to 30 miles the rain had started and as the darkness fell along with the temperature the rain appeared like snow as it fell in to the circle of light that our head torches flared around us. The psychological effect was to make us feel even more cold. I’d always said that ‘If you’re feeling cold its nature’s way of telling you to pick up the pace’ unfortunately by this point there was nothing left in the tank and no amount of energy bars or gels seemed to make any difference. Jointly we had decided to speed march the last 15 miles as neither of us was up to running any further; we tried to run but it simply took up more energy for no more speed and aggravated injuries . So we stuck at it grinding out the last few miles. We had talked a lot in the preceding hours about everything under the sun. Tom is training for the Marathon Des Sables (MdS) just three years ago he had been over weight and alcohol had blighted his life, he had drank fifteen pints a day everyday for fifteen years. Then he had decided to change his life and turned it around, he also started to train other people and started a charity to help alcoholics to reclaim their lives. He is running the MdS to raise money for charity and to show others that they can also reclaim their lives.
We were both pretty tired when the lights of Northampton turned the clouds in the sky above us orange, Tom’s feet were giving him some serious pain and my ankle was bordering on agony. Somewhere along the last 40 miles the mantra ‘I am a focused individual who wants to achieve’ had come out and now we used it both in jest and in sincerity to push ourselves onwards in the cold rain and slippery mud. I kept reminding myself that this was a training run for me, in Namibia I will be on my own in the desert and will have to motivate myself. The day before I had hit a low point in the night and mud and had decided that the best way to deal with it was by finding my song for the day, who knew but it turned out to be ‘The walk of life’ by Dire Straits!! I had forced myself to start singing it out loud and as the tune slowly unwound from within me it lifted me up out of the dark place and raised my spirits, and my feet had followed and the next I realised, my speed had picked up to. That was it then, for the rest of the run the song was on loop in my head until I had finished.
Tom and I push on and eventually were happy to see the exit point from the canal path, Tom had a religious moment and right then and there got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground in a pontiff like manor; I was really impressed as I’m pretty certain that if I’d got down on my knees I’d have never made it back up again!
We finished the day together and were welcomed by Rory and Jen who were there to give us our medals. I was chuffed, I had completed ninety five miles in two days.
People have told me that I have inspired them, I’m grateful for hearing this as it means that maybe what I’m doing can help others as well as the children and families who need to Paediatric hospice that the Laura Lynn Foundation is building. For me I find others inspirational, people like Tom, Rory and Bethany. Bethany has also had to fight her personal battle with alcohol and also with mental illness, yet she competes as an Ultra runner for the Isle of Man and works for several charities including homeless charities. She also ran both days of the weekends Ultra-Marathons and ran well.
What inspires me about these people isn’t that they can run very fast or very far but that they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Even the general public inspire me, during the weekend people both ways stopped to take time to encourage total strangers to do something that most thought mad. Some people even took it on themselves to go and buy some jelly babies or mars bars to give to us as they saw us running past.
Ordinary people doing something extra ordinary, people are fantastic, we can all accomplish so much all it takes it the decision to do so.
I smiled, “last time I had a Kebab was a couple of years ago, damn near killed me with campylobacter poisoning” I replied, “ I was puking and shitting bloody for a week” I laughed as Tom groaned in front, “ You’ve gone and put me right of the idea now”
We had been on the move since nine am that morning, it was now half eight at night. We had run a marathon and then had to start walking as we were drained of energy and both in pain, it had started raining at mile thirty and simply hadn’t stopped. Over the last two days we had covered ninety miles, I had run just under 50 miles the day before and Tom a couple less as he had managed to stick to the correct route where as I had made a mistake which had added three extra miles to the (just over) 46 miles that it should have been. We were now both wet and cold and pushing on through the mud covered water logged tow path of the Grand Union Canal. In an hour we would cross the last few miles to complete two back to back Ultra-marathons.
I had met Thomas Crawford Fitzsimons or ‘Tom’ only the day before but already it seemed like a lot longer; some people you just click with. We’d both started the morning before running from Northampton to Tring a distance which we’d been told was 45 Miles but turned out to be just over 46 Miles. Tom had gone hard the previous day and had really given it tons of spirit and had run far and fast, I’d run the first few miles with him then he’d pushed on but we met up again around 26/27 miles and I’d pushed ahead, but generally I thought we are around the same fitness level. The day before (Saturday) had been a great day; it was my first Ultra-marathon and today was my second. I’d run strong the day before with few problems. My biggest problem had occurred at 13.1 miles. I was in the middle of nowhere; I had been running along when suddenly I felt a piecing pain in the ball of my left foot. After a couple of paces I stopped as the pain was persistent and sharp. I took off my shoe and on closer inspection discovered inch and a half long hawthorn that had penetrated the sole of my shoe, gone through my insole and speared my foot. What was more annoying was that I couldn’t get the thing out.
I looked around to see if there was anything that I could use to secure a purchase on the offending piece of wood but there was nothing. Eventually in desperation I wiped off as much of the mud from the area around the puncture as I could and holding my shoe with both hands tried to get my teeth around the offending foreign body. It was whilst engaged in this act of desperation that the next two runners came around the corner; the look on their faces was I suppose what you’d imagine if you can picture two people who have just come across a man in the middle of nowhere during a race eating his muddy shoe!
I had been unable to get the thorn out so eventually knock off as much as possible of either end and carried on running. Every now and then the ground underfoot would hit exactly the point on my shoe to jolt the thorn up and back into my foot; of course I had no way of knowing when that might be so it was always a surprise. Eventually I managed to get the worst of the thorn out at a check point at just over the 26 mile mark using tweezers that one of the crew had with them. I thought about Shaka’s Zulu’s who he made run over thorns with bare feet, he killed those who complained or couldn’t do it; So I guess I was a lot better off than those men had been.
By the time Saturday evening had come I’d completed the distance, all I’d wanted to do was eat and sleep. It had been a long and tiring but great day. In all honesty I wasn’t sure how I was going to managed the next day but I knew that whatever happened I would not DNF (Did Not Finish) I had no idea though just how I would feel in the morning or if I’d even be able to walk properly.
This morning had seen Tom myself and a handful of racing snakes start the race; early on Tom and I had agreed to run the day together and that for us completing the distance would be the victory. Throughout the day we had motivated each other along when each of us in turn had dark points the other would crack a joke or come out with something motivational. As the marathon check point had come up we stopped for a quick five minute rest. I’d packed a pair of running socks in to a zip lock back along with a load of talc and used this as a chance to change my socks and talc my feet. It felt fantastic and the motivational lift afterwards was tremendous. When I had removed my right sock I had noticed that my right ankle was pretty swollen. I had had this problem once before just after the Dublin City Marathon, and it had led me to get MRIs done on the injury. Still there was no way I was about to DNF so I pushed on.
Once we had got to 30 miles the rain had started and as the darkness fell along with the temperature the rain appeared like snow as it fell in to the circle of light that our head torches flared around us. The psychological effect was to make us feel even more cold. I’d always said that ‘If you’re feeling cold its nature’s way of telling you to pick up the pace’ unfortunately by this point there was nothing left in the tank and no amount of energy bars or gels seemed to make any difference. Jointly we had decided to speed march the last 15 miles as neither of us was up to running any further; we tried to run but it simply took up more energy for no more speed and aggravated injuries . So we stuck at it grinding out the last few miles. We had talked a lot in the preceding hours about everything under the sun. Tom is training for the Marathon Des Sables (MdS) just three years ago he had been over weight and alcohol had blighted his life, he had drank fifteen pints a day everyday for fifteen years. Then he had decided to change his life and turned it around, he also started to train other people and started a charity to help alcoholics to reclaim their lives. He is running the MdS to raise money for charity and to show others that they can also reclaim their lives.
We were both pretty tired when the lights of Northampton turned the clouds in the sky above us orange, Tom’s feet were giving him some serious pain and my ankle was bordering on agony. Somewhere along the last 40 miles the mantra ‘I am a focused individual who wants to achieve’ had come out and now we used it both in jest and in sincerity to push ourselves onwards in the cold rain and slippery mud. I kept reminding myself that this was a training run for me, in Namibia I will be on my own in the desert and will have to motivate myself. The day before I had hit a low point in the night and mud and had decided that the best way to deal with it was by finding my song for the day, who knew but it turned out to be ‘The walk of life’ by Dire Straits!! I had forced myself to start singing it out loud and as the tune slowly unwound from within me it lifted me up out of the dark place and raised my spirits, and my feet had followed and the next I realised, my speed had picked up to. That was it then, for the rest of the run the song was on loop in my head until I had finished.
Tom and I push on and eventually were happy to see the exit point from the canal path, Tom had a religious moment and right then and there got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground in a pontiff like manor; I was really impressed as I’m pretty certain that if I’d got down on my knees I’d have never made it back up again!
We finished the day together and were welcomed by Rory and Jen who were there to give us our medals. I was chuffed, I had completed ninety five miles in two days.
People have told me that I have inspired them, I’m grateful for hearing this as it means that maybe what I’m doing can help others as well as the children and families who need to Paediatric hospice that the Laura Lynn Foundation is building. For me I find others inspirational, people like Tom, Rory and Bethany. Bethany has also had to fight her personal battle with alcohol and also with mental illness, yet she competes as an Ultra runner for the Isle of Man and works for several charities including homeless charities. She also ran both days of the weekends Ultra-Marathons and ran well.
What inspires me about these people isn’t that they can run very fast or very far but that they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Even the general public inspire me, during the weekend people both ways stopped to take time to encourage total strangers to do something that most thought mad. Some people even took it on themselves to go and buy some jelly babies or mars bars to give to us as they saw us running past.
Ordinary people doing something extra ordinary, people are fantastic, we can all accomplish so much all it takes it the decision to do so.
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