Marathon Man by Rob Young

Author:Rob Young [Young, Rob with Brooks, Dustin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471152894
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

CHAPTER TWELVE

One Hundred Miles and More

4–10 August 2014

I’d kept on trying to push myself harder and harder, but now I had to get ready for the 100-mile race coming up on Saturday 9 August. That meant massage and physio, healthy eating (plus fast food) and, best of all, hot-tub breakfasts!

Hot-tub breakfasts were a treat that summer and something that really helped keep me going. Ali had a hot tub in his back garden. He and other MMUK team members (including Ben, Johnny, Paul, Dustin and Lorna) and their children would join me for the last lap of my marathon runs, on bike or by foot, and then we all went back to Ali’s for a hot tub.

Ali’s wife Lorna would make us toast and eggs and bacon while we all chatted and joked in the hot tub (she was an absolute star all year, and I couldn’t have made it without her amazing food!). The weather was usually good that summer, but even when it rained we’d still all pile in. I think we overstretched its capacity at times and I got a telling-off from Pippa and Dominika for ‘risking infection’ at one point. I don’t know what she meant. How could six sweaty men in one small pool of hot water possibly be an environment for germs?

I even did some radio interviews on the phone from that hot tub. If you can’t come across as relaxed in hot water and with jet-propelled bubbles massaging you, then you really do need a holiday.

I also saw Dr Kipps that week to have my left leg looked at, which was still sore and had become an issue. It turned out my sore knee was because of bursitis, which meant I had a sack of fluid on my knee that had built up from the trauma of running and now that sack had ruptured, leaking fluid into the muscles in my leg, which made them swollen as well. Dr Kipps opted to drain what fluid was left in my knee in the hope that would help. He said I should have an anaesthetic for this, but I didn’t have time for that, so he just put the needle into the back of the knee and drew out the fluid. ‘That’ll reduce the swelling and should alleviate some of the pain and the stiffness,’ he assured me.

Of course, I should then have rested my leg for a few days before resuming any exercise. Maybe I could have hired a cottage somewhere, with a sea view and sat with my leg up all week, watching the ocean, while someone brought me freshly cooked food and tended to my every need. In some other version of my life, in some other corner of the universe, that’s exactly what I would have done. As it was, I had marathons to run and donations to raise.

An old friend, Adam, came down that week and ran his first marathon with me. It seemed as though almost everyone I knew wanted to run one now – even Ali had pledged to run one before the year was out.

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