FORTY SHADES O F PA I N 2022 sees staff, present and former, parents and ONs making up the first RGS Great North Run team. Their goal – alongside finishing the race – is to raise much needed funds for the Bursary Campaign. When we announced this initiative, Chris Purdon (69-80) shared with us his impressive GNR journey, having completed his 40th Great North.
S
o, here I am again, on the start line at the very front of the Great North Run, the world’s largest halfmarathon, for the 40th time. I am in the first of four waves of runners starting at different times throughout the morning. It’s a welcome return after one of the most challenging experiences in living memory and the postponement of the event in 2020. It’s still only 9am, 40 minutes until the gun is fired for the off. Plenty of time to reflect on how I got here and why I’ve spent two-thirds of my life competing in the event. Where did all the years go? What happened to all those friends I used to run with? Can I get a message back to my 19-year-old self to say, “Whatever you do, keep going. You’ll still be doing this in 40 years’ time”. To which the reply comes back, ‘Oh! Do I have to?”.
24
I’m standing in the starting pen with the rest of the “All Great North Runs Club”, the 81 people who’ve completed every race since 1981. It’s an eclectic mixture of club runners, fun runners, fancy dressers and, increasingly, walkers. At 59, I’m the third youngest, and by quite a margin. Most are in their 60s and 70s; the oldest two are well into their 80s. The organiser of the club is on the telephone hotline to Sir Brendan Foster: they’re starting us on the wrong side of the central motorway in Newcastle; there are metal crash barriers in V-shapes across the road which are dangerous and give no room for the fancy dressers to pass through; and why aren’t we starting immediately behind the elite like we usually do? Not that 40 years entitles us to being snobbish or anything. Of course the organisers have had to change the procedures at the start to control the flow of 57,000 runners on the course and
reduce crowding across the event because of Covid-19. And for 2021, the route is different. It’s an out-and-back course with a turn-around point at 6½ miles, finishing back in central Newcastle, rather than the straight run to the coast at South Shields. So we’ll be passing subsequent waves of runners on the way back, and be very close to the spectators on both sides of the road: the sweets on offer, the children holding out grubby hands wanting “high fives”, the myriad home-made signs of support. But there is more grumbling in the ranks of the All Great North Runs Club: the last two miles of the course are seriously uphill from the banks of the River Tyne, through Newcastle city centre, to the finish along the old Great North Road. It’s not going to be easy. I glance down at the ever-so-expensive racing shoes I’ve bought for the occasion. They’re those new Nike Zoomfly thingies (other running shoes are available) with a carbon-fibre plate that caused all the controversy in world athletics. Not that I’m obsessed with knocking another few seconds per mile off your time. Oh no. I’ve been averaging 40 to 50 miles a week in training for the past year and a half, with all the attendant niggly injuries. So what can possibly go wrong now? I get into a conversation with one of the elite club runners. He asks what my blue-hooped number means, and I explain they are given to the runners who’ve done every race. He then asks what time I’m hoping to run, and I reply between 1 hour 30 minutes and 1 hour 45. You haven’t done any other races this year, so predicting this is a bit of a lottery. And what is your personal best? I reply 1 hour 15 minutes, set 26 years previously. He seems impressed by all of this, but I say there’s nothing special about it all, it’s just been a matter of keeping going, by hook or by crook, year after year.
