This is not a story about running. This is plan B. Actually it was plan A before plan B, which was running until running became plan A. But there is life after running, or at least until running becomes Plan A again.......

Buzzard 25.3.10

I guess everyone at some point or other has the Redgrave moment. You know, that one at the end of a particularly gruelling event, one which has required the investment of months and months of training through really bad conditions. The "Never Again." moment: Not necessarily brought on by a feeling of dissatisfaction or disappointment, more a sentiment that you couldn’t again put yourself or your family through the early morning starts and weekend sacrifices to make your goal attainable.

I think I’ve had several. For the most part they pass in a week or two while the body winds down and recovers, and then the muscles miss the training, the brain craves the endorphins and the buzz, and then things start to crunch slowly back into gear. You find a new focus, a new goal, and things kick off again.

However, the big moment was thirteen years ago, a year after Steve’s, and it wasn’t in a pair of running shoes, but a pair of wetboots. The race was the Devizes to Westminster Canoe Race, and the reasons were twofold: I’d had to promise before doing the event that it was going to be the last one I did –it was only the second. And it had not gone to plan.

That plan was thus: Team up with an elite paddler friend from France whom I’d done a bit of kayaking with over the previous few years, start out from Devizes and arrive in Westminster about 20 hours later. In meerkat terms: Simples! Training had to be in a single seater as he was in France, but no worries –we knew we worked as a team. Backup crews were to be shanghai-ed in at the last minute from family and friends and given bananas, water and cereal bars to shove down our gullets at regular intervals. And the training went well. Easy winter. A bit of wind, but not particularly cold. I could handle twenty hours. No problemo.

It all started to go awry five days before the start. My French friend surrendered to a muscle tear and pulled out. Having made that damn promise the two man race was paramount and I was desperate. Some calls around put me in touch with Mick, a fifty year-old kayaker from Nottingham who was signed up for the four day event. One grovelling phone call that Monday and I tentatively had a partner.

We had a practice run on the Tuesday in Nottingham. Now it’s important to mention at this stage that the boat I had lined up for the event is a proper marathon boat: It is fast but has no lateral stability. Mick came from a military background and was used to scooting along in something more akin to a tank, I imagine with all sorts of guns on the decks. I’d have loved to have been a spectator for what happened that evening: We wobbled our way from one side of the Trent to the other, down a stretch of canal and back. We swapped seats so I had more of a handle on the boat balance, handling the steering to Mick. You could almost hear the onlookers in the club laughing and thinking “They’ll never do it”. Fair sentiment: we were breaking the golden rule of the race: Never do it with someone you haven’t trained with. But I was desperate, Mick was three stops short of Tooting, and we figured that we could learn how to work together during the race.

I slept very badly the night before. Being an overnight event this was bad. And then we were late getting to the start. Mick couldn’t remember what I looked like and, having stayed down the night before at the start, was asking every tall thin geek if he was me. We signed in, got the kit on and put the boat on the water. The Tuesday night repeated. For a minute it looked like we’d suffer the ultimate humiliation of a capsize before the start line. We wobbled over it and off we went.

It wasn’t pretty. We pulled up after five miles for Mick to adjust his seat. I got out on the bank, and he got out in the canal. Crews came past shaking their heads. I think that was what really did it. “I’ll @£$&ing show you, you b@$t@rd$”. The stubborn gene kicked in. However, I was spending too much time just keeping the boat upright rather than propelling it forwards, we still weren’t gelling, and we were an hour down on time after two and a half. And I knew it, and missing the expected target was already getting to me and psychologically I was already in trouble.

You have to start the race knowing roughly when you are going to hit the tideway in elapsed time, as there is a two and a half hour window in which you can get on it. By Reading and fifty miles this had gone. And to a large degree physically and mentally so had I. My legs gave way at Henley lock, and at two a.m. I had a three hour enforced pitstop to recharge. We kipped in sleeping bags on the pontoons in Leander rowing club until six, well, in a hellish sort of way. Then I came to, threw up, had a bacon buttie and we carried on.

We got better on the second day but not faster. Mentally I was in a horrible place, and I must have been a sod to have had in the back of the boat. We were still not gelling. Our stroke styles were so different, mine languid and long, Mick’s a quick dip, that working as a team was hard. I was ready to kill Mick in places. I’m sure the feeling was mutual, but he was brilliant. He talked, cajoled, and above all was positive. The words “This is bliss” emanated from that front seat frequently (which got bloody annoying). What a contrast to the back seat. I’m not proud of that, but we hung in and carried on.

 

Ironically we hit the tide nearly spot on, but the one later than planned. My parents were the main support crew and it must have been a difficult decision to let me do the tideway because I was in a pretty bad way, but I think they realised that I’d not have spoken to them again had they pulled me out. My right wrist had packed in and my butt was killing me from sitting on a wooden seat for nigh-on thirty hours. My fingers, which had callused over the months of training had disintegrated between the hardened skin. But there was also, for once, a feeling of euphoria. We’d cracked the Thames section, and there was only seventeen miles to go on the tideway. At about 6:30 we were off again.

 

That euphoria soon went. After all, there were still seventeen miles to go, and all of it on the tideway.

 

The tideway had the positive of a bonus current taking us out, but an added downer of river traffic from the Boat Race which had taken place that afternoon. We had improved to such a level that we survived going over the wake of a particularly big spectator oat upright. But I was flagging. The pain in my right wrist was excruciating and my arms were spent. About two or three miles from the finish I could no longer lift them, and I was reduced to keeping the boat upright, just a passenger in the back.

 

I was now looking for Big Ben. Thames bridges all looked the same to me, but I couldn’t miss the clock. I was wishing it on as my ar$e was toast. It seemed an age before it arrived, and then we were at the steps. I put my paddles down and went to get out of the boat. Despite a desperation to be out I couldn’t move. I vaguely recall being carried up to the top, and I must have been dropped at the top as there is a picture of the pair of us sprawled outside Festival Hall.

 

But we did it. In doing it though, it did me. The subject of Redgrave moments came up the following morning as I tried to wrap my fingers hands around a knife and fork (I couldn’t - they were locked around an air paddle). As soon as I was able to write I was coerced into a written statement to the effect that I would never do this again. I did this gladly, although you’d never guess it was my writing, and it was easy given I’d had to make a promise that it was the last time beforehand.

 

However, unlike other events the Devizes to Westminster is bit of a pot-boiler on the psychological front. After a week or two it began to sink in what we had done. We had broken the unwritten rule and still done it. It’s hard to explain but it engendered a positivity which crossed over into everything else I did: “If I could do that at DW, I can do this.”

 

And it had been a tortuous experience. So much so that I only set foot in a boat once in the next twelve years. It wasn’t until last summer when running was ceasing to be an option that I felt forced into reconsidering getting back in the two man. There has always been that tinge of disappointment that we failed to meet the time expectations, and as things started up again I realised that I really enjoyed the sport and I did, in fact, want another shot. There were three problems: The letters, that promise, and a partner.

 

On the last front I have been really lucky. Cheeky Chunky Funky Monkey (he of Tough Guy) showed interest, and despite not having set foot in a boat before last summer has progressed to the point of solid technique, albeit with a few impromptu baths on the way. He also has the strength of a racehorse, stamina of a carthorse, brains of a rocking horse, and stubbornness of a mule, which according to the Times are the four main requisites for the race, and especially for the training through this winter, which makes marathon training look like a cakewalk. Most importantly, we function as a team.

 

Further to this there’s Gromit. Gromit sort of fell into the boat at the early stages and has been a fantastic training partner throughout. We have just completed the Waterside Series (4 races, 86 miles, 110 locks) and came 6th in the K2 mixed class, and as well as being an achievement in itself has been invaluable to learning the course. Amazingly, Gromit holds a record which none of us can hold a candle to: she has never fallen out of the K2. This is not normal, as Chunks and the fisherman at Gorilla Lock will testify. Gromit and Paul are one of two teams supporting us from the bank with food, clothes, moral support, and having these guys on board with the experience they have is invaluable. (If anyone else want to come and run along to support for a bit, you are more than welcome – as long as you give crews space at locks!).

 

The training also made me reassess me and Mick got on in the original race, and I have come to the conclusion that if it had been anyone else in the boat that weekend we’d have failed. I’m also reassessing and working on my mental approach to the boat, because it turns out from video footage that I’m a bit of an Adolf in the back. Chunks and Gromit just put up and didn’t say anything, but the video footage doesn’t lie.

 

The letters and the promise are a different proposition. Hopefully I’ll be released from the promise before Saturday, and I fully intend to have a letter burning ceremony after the event.

 

So, we're ready, backup teams and all. 9am Easter Saturday we’ll be on the canal at Devizes, going at about 5mph in an Easterly direction. If you’re lucky you’ll hear the sounds of the theme from Hawaii-5-0 coming from the boat sound system, or at least see the sun’s reflection off the bald patches. And if it does go to plan as we hope we’ll be at Festival Hall under Westminster Bridge just before 9 on Sunday morning.

 

There’ll be no Redgrave moment this time though. I’ve already signed up for next year. Bring it on.

Update at 10.04.10:

Buzzard and Chunks finished the race in 24:20. Everything went pretty much to plan, in no small amount due to meticulous planning and preparation, and two superb backup crews. There'll be a fuller update when the fingers are fully working again....