9 minute read
FORTY SHADES OF PAIN CHRIS PURDON
FORTY SHADES OF PAIN
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.
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So, 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?”.
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.
Now there are only 10 minutes to go. Time to take off the old clothes and the bin liner I’ve used to keep warm and throw them to the side. And then a token attempt at some stretching. I think it will do me good, but deep down I know it won’t make much difference. I wish some last-minute expressions of “good luck” and “see you at the finish” to my compatriots in the All Great North Runs Club. The marshals walk us forward to the start line. One minute left, and silence. Everything around me disappears. It’s a moment of complete stillness as my mind switches from nervous tension to concentration. The only way to describe the experience is “transcendental” because it feels as though my whole running career has led to this moment. That final minute seems to be longest and the shortest at the same time.
Boom! The explosion of the artillery gun brings me back to reality. We’re off and running. All around people are jostling for position. Must sprint the first mile as quickly as possible to get clear of the other runners and earn some space on the road. I’m only vaguely aware of the crowd on the side cheering. But we’re free, and the left-hand side by the gutter is clear. How does the sprint feel? Bearable. Can you keep it up for the first mile? Possibly. Which is the correct answer because it means I’m going neither too fast nor too slow. Down the underpass on the central motorway we go, still sprinting. It’s all downhill, which helps. The first mile marker approaches; 6 minutes 10 seconds and it still feels comfortable. A short, punchy climb up to the Tyne Bridge and we rejoin the crowds. There’s so much noise now, from both sides of the road. Across the bridge we come to the first real climb of the race, through Gateshead. Now it begins to hurt. Despite all that hill work I did in training, my legs are starting to feel a bit lactic. Don’t think about that. I divert my mind onto something else: the steel band at the side of the road that’s playing Blaydon Races; I look to the faces in the crowd for some sign of support; try to remember that if I can just get through the next couple of miles, the road will even out.
I go on. It feels like a plod but my watch tells me the pace is still 7-minute miling. I pass the 4-mile marker. My friend who promised to be there with a drink isn’t; I silently curse him. But I convince myself that I’m making good progress. Recovering somewhat, I settle into steady running. This is good because I can run along in autopilot mode: my brain doesn’t have to think too hard and I can leave my legs to it as they engage a relaxed, metronomic rhythm. I run like this to the turnaround point, reached almost exactly in 45 minutes. This is good! I’m on for 1 hour 30 minutes. The next 2½ miles are slightly downhill, so I up the pace a bit. I slowly pass a few of the other runners around me. This is very good! I tell myself to stop looking at my watch and keep it going! The 10-mile mark approaches, and I pass it exactly on 70 minutes. Then the course diverts off up an almighty hill that is a slip road on the dual carriageway through Gateshead. This is bad! It really is long, steep and an awful grind. But everyone around me seems to be suffering too. My watch shows a pace of 10-minute miling. Really? You’re joking? This is very bad.
I reach the top, am guided around a U-turn by the marshals to the other side of the road and start to descend to the Tyne Bridge. Come on, come on! Less than 3 miles to go. Keep pushing, keep working. Onto the bridge and the crowd is going nuts. Wow! Such fantastic support. I really cannot let them down now. So I try to sprint over the bridge, and then are diverted off into central Newcastle and final big climb of the last 2 miles. This is getting really hard. The fatigue becomes so great that familiar sights I’ve been to and enjoyed over so many years have no meaning now, they’re just random places that have to be reached and passed. Going through Newcastle never felt like this. Junction after junction, dog-leg after dog-leg. Is there no end to the twists and turns the organisers have devised? Then 100 yards ahead I see the marshals starting to rope runners onto different sides of the road. I know I must be nearing the end when they do this. As I approach them, they move the rope which switches me to the side of a tight bend and saves a few metres of effort. Yes! Thank you! One of them says “Only half a mile to the finish”. My brain is confused with the fatigue. “Only half a mile” might as well be another 10 miles; and yet a small part retains some semblance of sanity and tells me that’s only two laps of an athletics track. The debate continues to rage in my head. And what a splendid amount of time that takes, because suddenly I reach the top of the final climb and can see the finish line a couple of hundred yards ahead. Runners are beginning to sprint around me. How can they do that? How do they have the energy? What have they been doing all race? No matter, I’m going to finish now.
The clock on the gantry above the finish line says 1 hour 32 minutes. That’s good; it’s about what I thought I’d get. I reflect that in 2019 I hadn’t done any training and consequently my time was 2 hour 53 minutes. So I take quiet satisfaction from all of that. I move through the funnel and out onto the Town Moor. I collect my finishers’ medal and T-shirt, and move off to have photographs taken against a printed backdrop of the Tyne Bridge and the Red Arrows. I cool really quickly, so break into a slow jog back to the baggage tent to dress. Then it’s another jog back through Newcastle to the hotel to get changed and showered. I’ve arranged to meet some old running buddies in a pub, so it’s yet another race to ensure I won’t be late. Until next year.
