Call the Midlife (24 page)

He was taken there by a couple of record company guys, one of whom excused himself to go to the toilet halfway through lunch when in fact what he was actually going to do was jump in the canal, swim up to the porthole by the table Kenny was sitting at and tap on the glass, brandishing the seven-inch single he wanted Kenny to play.

The next day Kenny went on the air, told the story and played the song.

Job done.

Today was special for us because it’s the first time we’ll have ever been out for dinner as a family. Sure, we’ve eaten out together before, hundreds of times – pizza, fish and chips, or a pub lunch – but this was our first time, just the four of us of going out purely for dinner.

The greatest meal of my life to date.

Distance: 0 miles. Who cares?

Friday, 20 February

66 DAYS TO GO

A friend has taken over the Kensington Crêperie. We decide we have to go and make it the bookend family lunch to the family first the night before. The thing is, I don’t even like crêpes, or at least I thought I didn’t. Turns out I not only like them, I love them.

This place is so busy, they are turning tables every five minutes. Even though it’s freezing cold outside, there is an ever-present and enthusiastic queue. Jeez, why aren’t crêperies as big as Domino’s?
The menu is amazing, sweet and savoury, simple, tasty and of the highest quality. And the sheer energy in the room is electric: kids, parents, grandparents, young couples, people on their own grabbing a quick bite, everyone smiling, laughing, chatting away furiously. Magnificent.

I have a little bit of everyone else’s savoury main as well as my own, plus a rum and raisin (with real rum – woohoo) and homemade ice cream as a dessert. Why? Because I can. Because I am going to run back to work, by which time whatever calories I have taken in will have been burnt up in the fuel tank again.

I LOVE RUNNING.

Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes.

Distance: 6 miles.

New record: fastest mile – 8 minutes 46 seconds. The crêpe diet may well be the way forward.

Saturday, 21 February

65 DAYS TO GO

Another muscle and joint-saving mercy mission to St Phil the chiropractor at 8.15. Phil is working wonders. Without him, there’s no way I could be putting my forty-nine year-old bag o’ bones through anything close to what I’m getting away with. Every weekend he straightens me out to fight another day.

Today, as well as the usual glorious neck, back and hip adjustments, he’s working on my leg length and the arches of my feet. ‘We all have confused feet as nature gave us arches to cope with rough terrain but then we all started wearing shoes instead and messed up her design. Now when we do walk barefoot, most of the floor our feet come into contact with is flat, which causes our arches to move the keystone of the bridge of each foot so it’s out of line from where it was when we were born. This in turn can throw our ankles, knees and hips out of kilter and ultimately the whole of our skeleton. Another case of us being our own worst enemy. Shoes are like porn: good up to a point but detrimental thereafter.’

The thing about running is how little gear one needs to do it. That’s what I love about it, as well as the honesty. Which I suppose is part of the same thing. You can run almost anywhere, anytime, it’s a fantastic way of seeing and appreciating wherever you are. And the most important thing for me is running comes from within, a direct reflection of who we are. It brings out our natural rhythm, what’s on our mind, how much fuel we’ve got in our tank, how tense or relaxed we are, the you of you.

I’ve noticed more and more, when I get home from a decent run, say an hour or more, all I want is a glass of water or a glass of milk, which tastes better than any glass of champagne or wine I’ve ever had.

The only feeling I can compare it to is when I’m with my children, watching them laugh uncontrollably or seeing their furrowed brows when they are giving something 110 per cent of their concentration. It’s that golden moment when nothing else matters, when for a fleeting few seconds life feels the absolute best it possibly can. When we come closest to realizing why it is we’re here.

I am almost certain that from now on, for as long as I can, I will run. I love it. Oh absolutely bloody love it. God knows why I started running that December afternoon back in 2014, but rest assured I will be running most December afternoons from now until my legs and the rest of my body have had enough of me.

Monday, 23 February

63 DAYS TO GO

The target is 18 miles. And it has to be running all the way with any cool-down taking place afterwards. Taking my GPS watch and making the route up as I go along. After setting off at the lake – good karma: where it all began – I follow my nose cross-country towards Windsor. I have a vague idea of the general direction I need to be going, buoyed by the fact that after four and a bit miles I come to the giant statue of a horse at one end of the Long Walk.
Stretched out in front of me, there it is, leading all the way downhill before it levels out and leads right up to the gates of Windsor Castle: a truly beautiful sight, a wonder to behold.

I run all the way up to the gates, touch the wall, turn around and come back again. It soon becomes obvious why it’s called the Long Walk – it’s 1.7 miles from castle to statue. I begin to calculate how far I will still have left to run once I’ve doubled back to the copper horse. The answer is 9 miles. Half of my required mileage.

As I run, I’m constantly checking the legs versus the lungs, versus the head, versus the arms. I make it to the half-marathon point of 13.1 miles for the first time ever without stopping. As my watch buzzes the news of my fifteenth completed mile, I’m still going. This is also now the longest run of my life. Suddenly the prospect of only 3 miles left feels like a walk in the park compared to what I’ve already achieved. Two months ago, anything over 3 miles would have had to include a walk in the park.

But not so fast, sonny. Here we go again: things begin to seize up. All the trouble is below the waist, as usual, with my breathing still as calm as if I were inback home watching
Chariots of Fire
with a cup of hot chocolate on the go. I head back towards where my car is parked, just in case. No point in overdoing it. Never any point in overdoing it.

Seeing the car relaxes me. I’m a mile short of my target so I run round the car park praying for my eighteenth mile to buzz up on my wrist.

Eventually it does.

I grind to a halt.

I fall into the car.

It’s all I can do to lean out of the window and put my ticket in the slot. I’m home within three minutes, but Jesus Christ, my legs. It’s like someone has swapped them for concrete. I have to keep them moving: ten minutes of a good session of post-run stretching can offset days of needless aching.

I decide to jog back out of our gate to the local shop. By the time I get there, it feels as though my legs might actually snap. I buy four
bottles of Lucozade Sport – the ads claim the electrolyte aids recovery. That’ll do for me, I can always sue later.

Duration: 3 hours 30 minutes.

Distance: 18 miles.

YES!

Tuesday, 24 February

62 DAYS TO GO

Not running ever again! Joking. Actually feel quite OK. I mean, everything’s a little tender, and there’s evidence of virginal nipple rub and two quite serious blood blisters on my toes, but I thought I’d feel a lot more broken than I do.

Rest.

Yes please.

Wednesday, 25 February

61 DAYS TO GO

Was going to run today, just a short recovery run – helps flush the system, or so I’ve been reading. Actually went out but stopped after a few yards. Legs are much more tired than I realized. I am much more tired than I realized. I’m not hurting but I’m empty.

Thursday, 26 February

60 DAYS TO GO

Feel similar to yesterday. Lots of articles advise against pushing after a big run but I’m going to see how it feels.

I stay out for almost exactly an hour. Not great but not terrible either. I’m very careful to listen to my body the whole time just in case.

Duration: 5 miles.

Friday, 27 February

59 DAYS TO GO

First run between the production meeting for
The One Show
and the show itself. How times have changed! When I did
TFI Friday
we’d be in the pub all day, kicking our heels over six or seven pints of Guinness with a whisky chaser after every one. Now here I am, throwing in a quick hill-run to North London before the dress rehearsal.

Duration: 1 hour.

Distance: 4.5 miles.

Saturday, 28 February

58 DAYS TO GO

As I run to the curry house where we left the car last night, I reach the conclusion that curry is not a meal I’ll be having the night before the marathon. When curry wants out of your colon, it doesn’t mess around, nor does it give you much warning. I get caught properly short.

But it’s 9 a.m. I’m in well-to-do Sunningdale for crying out loud. I look for a bush or a back alley, an involuntary exodus is only seconds away and I’m definitely going to shit my pants. I can see our car in the lay-by on the other side of the level crossing opposite Waitrose, but there is zero chance I’m going to make it.

I am walking extremely uncomfortably and awkwardly in an attempt to assuage my quickening contractions and deny gravity, but it’s too late; exponentially the situation has intensified from a code red to a full-on code brown. Movement is taking place, I am my three-year-old, late for the potty. Thank Christ I’m wearing my running leggings, otherwise this would be even more of a disaster. I was about to find out their resistance threshold with regards to human excrement.

I gingerly squelch into my car seat. The stench is overwhelming, I feel like I might pass out. What else can I do, though? I just pray
when I arrive home that my wife and kids will have already left for Saturday-morning football club.

They have, thank God. I begin the clean-up operation: it’s horrendous and gets a lot worse before it gets better. No more running after a curry. In fact no more curries at all until after 26 April.

Duration: what seemed like forever.

Distance: 3 miles running, including the last 200 yards of strained grimacing, 3 miles back home trying not to pass out at the wheel.

Sunday, 1 March

57 DAYS TO GO

No run.

Monday, 2 March

56 DAYS TO GO

I’ve been contemplating how far to run today. I know I can do 18 miles without stopping and technically I’m a week or two ahead of that distance. Seriously considering giving myself an easier week all round. Lots of experts recommend this. It seems to make sense, so I decide to run 10 miles as quickly as I can.

Except then I remember reading a few articles that point out a shorter, quicker run can be harder to recover from than a much longer, slower one. I check myself with this fact and decide instead to run a fast-tempo 10 miles but quite a way off my limit. Suddenly, I’m looking forward to it much more. The decision feels right . . .

TWENTY (!) MILES LATER

. . . Hang on, that didn’t pan out as I intended. After a couple of miles I found myself running past the house in Camden where Amy Winehouse died. It’s in the same square where my wonderful
ex-wife Billie Piper now lives, which in turn is only a few hundred yards away from the flat where I first lived in London after I hopped off the train at Euston way back in 1989. A day I’ll never forget, armed with little more than an old army bag stuffed with several pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts and a heart full of hope.

Invigorated by thoughts of the past, I looked up: the sun was shining, I had the rest of the day untouched and suddenly I changed my mind. Fuck it, I thought, let’s go for the 20-miler, taking in the houses I’ve lived in since arriving in London.

I’ve always been a North Londoner. You either are or you’re not. I’ve lived in North London longer than anywhere else since I was born, something else I only realized during this run. Now I had committed to 20 miles, I would be out for at least four hours so I would need all the thought material I could muster. That’s one of the challenges of a long run: what do you do with the head time available? I would run a sightseeing tour of my own past. After Camden I would need to turn left and head down into Kentish Town, before veering right and directly north again to Parliament Hill and Highgate.