A small ripple of triumph sounded through the train as it pulled into Etoile Charles de Gaulle. Some people clapped but most were silent and nervous as the runners walked the steps to emerge at the top of the Champs Élysées.

I had been up a couple of hours because I wanted to have breakfast early enough for it not to be sitting heavy before my first marathon. Back in the room I went through my gear inventory for the third and last time.

• iPod
• Phone
• 10 Euro note
• Inhaler
• Headphones
• Spare Metro ticket
• ID card (personal details and medical info written on a piece of card in
pocket)
• Backpack hydration system and 1 litre of sports drink
• 4 chewy bars
• Race chip tied onto shoe
• Watch
• Race bib (Competitor number 43306 with my writing on the back: “Femme [wife's name and mobile number], Novotel La Defense, Allergie: Codeine. ASTHME.”
• 25 jelly sweets

I suited up.

I said goodbye to the kids.

And I set off.

At the top of the avenue, some people were running to warm up, but most were just milling around. A lot were on their phones, either talking or checking messages. About half were wearing the plastic bag shirts we were given at the expo the day before, but I threw mine away as we left the Metro because it was already warm at 8:20am.

This was a worry. The day before it had been 23 degrees at 1pm, a time of the day I was expecting to still be running, and race day was forecast to be even hotter.

I thought about the heat, then about the time – more the time than the distance, really. We made good time on the drive down to Paris from the UK. My wife and I picked the kids up from school, went to get her parents, and drive south as night fell. On the Autoroute to the city, I was making good time and I looked at the at the odometer and counted off 26.2 miles on one portion of road. At 80 miles an hour it took 20 minutes. Don’t think of the distance.

But time? Time is fluid. Times a variable and that’s under your control, you make it happen and it’s down to you. The race would start at 0845 and I would still be running at 1pm.

I tried to go back to worrying about the heat as I walked down the find the 4hr:15min pen.

“Cliff’s got the right idea.”

Two English guys in their mid thirties were looking at my backpack. It has a long bendy tube coming out of it which connects to a reservoir inside so you can take a drink without stopping.

“Do you know what drinks they have along the way?” said the other one.

“Just water until Mile 23,” I said, “I’ve been training with this and a sports drink, so I’m not changing anything today.”

They looked at my race bib which had my name and nominated finishing time, indicating which section I would be placed in at the starting line.

“4:15, eh?”

“I hope so. It’s my first one. Same?”

“First and last. 4:30.” They pointed to their bibs. 4:30 was the last sector. 4:30+. I didn’t want to be last, so I out myself in the next group up.

“Last? Really?” I said.

“Probably? It’s going to be hot. I’m not at all convinced by this. You?”

“Ask me in four hours and fifteen minutes.”

We wished each other a good race and I walked towards my gate. A lady in a marathon t-shirt let me through the barrier and wished me “bonne course” as I stepped off the pavement and into the Champs Élysées.

And that was it. I had decided to run this marathon in August 2010 – I only started running in July – and now here I was standing in the middle of the god damned Champs Élysées.

With fifteen minutes before the gun, I checked my phone for messages. I was touched to see #gocliffgo coming in on Twitter. I hadn’t suggested the tag, but it was heartwarming to see it. Messages had come in from both coasts of the US, from Australia, from around the UK and who knows where else, including my wife, her parents and her sister’s family back at the hotel, who would by that point be dressed in their matching Team Cliff and Team Uncle Cliff t-shirts which had their official unveiling the night before.

I shuffled around a bit and took this picture, which does nothing to capture the atmosphere, because the 4:15 and 4hr finishers were in the same pen and I was standing at the front so was directly behind the back of the 3:45 section in the pen ahead, which was quiet. But believe me, 32,000 people standing together has a feel to it.

On TV it looked more like this:

… with me somewhere up above the T of DEPART.

The start line was closer than I expected so I texted my wife:

It won’t take me 15 minutes to cross line. It is close, so move times fwd 10-7 mins.

There are two times in a marathon, Gun Time and Chip Time. Gun time is the moment all the runners set off. That’s the official start of the race and the time displayed on the clocks at the markers you pass is all Gun Time, and it doesn’t mean anything unless you actually set off from the line the moment the race starts. If like most people you cross the line a moment later, then Chip Time counts, because that’s your individual measure, clocked when the device strapped to your laces passes over a sensor on the mats around the course. Team Cliff was going by Gun Time, so I had given them a rough idea of how long it might take me to start the race.

Things started to charge up. The music on the PA system became louder as the announcer’s chatter took on a more deliberate sense of occasion.

“Hands up if it’s your first marathon!”

I raised both of mine along with about a third of the people around me, to our own whistles and laughs.

“Quatre-vingts neuf,” said a voice next to me. Eighty nine. It was an older guy who I don’t remember seeing but I must have looked at as I scanned the other runners. I looked at him like I didn’t understand – he didn’t look a day over seventy five. He said it in his native Italian: “Ottantanove.”

I took his hand and shook it emphatically. It was like a display of a handshake, almost Clintonesque in its conviction.

“Welcome to the Champs-Élysées!” said the announcer. “One day each year we close the Avenue and we do it for you. This is your road! This is your day!”

Determination underpinned the variety of expressions on the runners. Some people were stretching, others hugged, some shook hands. Others were still, ponderous in settled purpose.

Three women in their late twenties looked around at each other. “Susie. Ready?” A sigh, then: “Yeah.” “Good luck.” “Good luck, guys.”

BANG.

I say “bang” – I didn’t actually hear a gun, or remember the countdown, but a cheer went up and we started forward towards the line. I must have made my way while waiting to the front of the 4hr pacers, so as we shuffled forward, I waved people past until I was somewhere between the 4hr crowd and the 4:15s. I started off down the hill in a slow jog, hit my watch as I crossed the line and I was running a marathon.

The crowd lining the barriers at the side were two or three thick on the side of the Avenue, quiet almost to humility but supportive. Some clapped, a few called out “bonne course” and “allez”. None of the runners around me were talking and there was a feel of solidarity and trepidation.

I had spent the previous week winding down and tapering off from putting the big miles in and had picked up a cough and a slight fever. It was nothing serious, but I had been going to bed the couple of days before by taking paracetamol and waking up in a film of sweat. I was going to run with my brother in law the night before, just to put in a couple of miles, but had to pull out because I felt ropey, but running along at the start felt great. I mean incredible. This was it. It was like having Paris to myself, and I’m not sure if I had a million thoughts or just one when I came to the end of the Champs-Élysées, but I remember noticing we were going the wrong way around the Place De La Concorde. That was a strange feeling, having the road closed off, and it being such a landmark in the city. Having never entered a race before, I didn’t know what that would feel like, and although it was weird, it felt really good.

Into Rue Rivoli at Mile 1, the road grew thinner and we were quite bunched up. I had heard that you don’t mind your rhythm in a big race until Mile 4 or 5 because of the crowds, but it wasn’t too bad. There were a few swinging arms and apologetic waves, but we were all going the same pace. Crowds were out in greater numbers as we approached the Louvre and I got my first “Allez Cleef!”, to which I raised a hand as I passed and heard a cheer go up behind me. Even now, a couple of weeks later as I write this, I can think of no place I would have rather been at that moment.

I was here in October, running this road at 6:15, wondering what this moment would feel like. Now that I was here, I was taking in very few sights. As I tried to find my rhythm, I was concerned that someone in front would fall. We were running east in tight formation, into the sun, so I couldn’t see the shadows of the people trying to pass as they made their way through the crowd. I don’t know why anyone was trying to pass, unless they has started in the wrong group and were trying to get ahead early instead of make up the time later when they still had energy. Isn’t that what people did in marathons?

Into Mile 2, down the hill I could see the 4hr pacers I let go ahead before the starting line. I kept them in sight so I could rock up later if I had the energy, or let them slip and still make my target time of 4:15. Simple. From couch to marathon in thirty seven weeks. Sub 4hr time, 24 degree heat. It’s a numbers game.

As I came into Mile 3, I knew my dad and his wife were going to be at the Bastille, but the crowds were two to three thick and I hadn’t said to him which side of the pack I’d be on. Other runners had made better plans and were looking out for their support before exchanging a wave. Our arrangement had been: “See you at the Bastille. We’ll have our Everton scarves.” The road narrowed at the landmark and I didn’t see them, so I kept my mind on the race and took my first drink from my Camelbak. I hoped I’d see them at the second pass when I came back this way just before Mile 14.

I missed the first food and drink station deliberately because I wanted to make good time and I had both on me and I knew there would be a bustle to refresh and fuel up. Later stops were less of a struggle, but the first one was a bit of a train wreck and I’m glad I passed it by. Most runners stopped at the start of a very long table, about thirty feet long, manned by volunteers handing out bottles of water or oranges, raisins, sugar and bananas.

Even though you could run past the first two or three sections, about half the runners would head to the nearest volunteer to get their water instead of running past the hoards to the back of the table where it wasn’t busy. A lot of runners also cut in at a right angle because they hadn’t been paying attention to the signs 100 yards back that we were approaching a fuel station, so they would take a sharp right in front of everyone like they were crossing a road. This was especially annoying at the early stops when the field was crowded.

Despite the urgency and the crowd, it was on the whole an orderly process, marked by a peculiar sound of hundreds of bottle tops being dropped and stepped on. Suddenly every runner was completely silent while they drank on the hoof and the noise was a chorus of soft footsteps and the staccato rasp of a dozen snare drums left out in a drizzle. I shorted my gait as I ran on, looking on but midful of hundred of caps underfoot.

Miles 4 to 6 were steady, although glimpses of the 4hr pacers grew fewer they pulled off ahead. They were about three of four hundred yards ahead of me, and there was no sign of the 4:15s behind me. Reader, I chased them.

I know.

After setting off even considering a sub-four hour marathon, I ran the first 10k in 59:09 and then started running at a pace faster than a sub-four to catch the pacers. I know. I know now.

OK, I knew then.

It’s no excuse, but the energy from the crowd was amazing and I was totally feeding off it. I was also in danger of becoming the world’s biggest running doofus. Round about this point I saw a group of five people with Union Jacks waiting for their runner to pass. They looked bored, and their flags were furled limply around their knees. I ran past and gave them a wave. I shouted: “Throw it up UK!” and they gave me a massive cheer.

We headed over the périphérique and into the Bois De Vincennes, past the Chateau before turning south at Mile 7 to have the sun on my left. The crowds thinned in the park land and I grabbed my first water the second station and had the first of my four chewy bars, which I had planned to have every hour. The other part of my strategy was to have a drink every twenty minutes. I was alternating my sports drink in my Camelbak with the water at the stations.

It started to get hot, like a warm day you wouldn’t want to move in, as the needle climbed to 25C. I took small sips of water followed by mouthfuls which I would spit out. I didn’t want to take on too much liquid, but it felt good to feel like I was drinking, to wet my mouth out while I was breathing heavily but steady as I ran.

I remember thinking about my pace and working out what time I would come in after 26 miles. I knew I could comfortably run 10K in under an hour – my personal best is 48 minutes – and in training I’d always worked on the basis that a marathon is basically four 10K runs, each being 6.2 miles, plus some change. My longest training runs had been 20 miles, and I had done that twice. Towards the end of my training, when I was putting in 40 miles in a week, I would run 10k runs twice a week on top of a 20 miler at the weekend. 10k runs had become relatively short distances, and I would do these over the same route every time.

The reason for this is because when I got to Mile 20 in the marathon, I would have a solid physical reference to another 6.2 miles, which combined with my longest training run would be the full distance. When I was doing my last few 10k runs, I would imagine I had just run twenty miles when I was setting off. Of course, you can never picture that completely, but long distance running is a mental challenge and fooling myself was a part of the process. If I didn’t dream, I wouldn’t have been out there in the first place. Dreams are important, even if you’re fooling yourself, you have to dream. That’s what got me here – that and the subsequent realisation that there are two types of dreams: the ones you have to embrace and the ones you daren’t.

That aside, I started working out what my finishing time would be, as I did on every long training run. “OK, so if I my first 10k was pretty much on 59 minutes, and I factor in some lag, I would come in under four hours in the
marathon.”

“I would…” That was my thinking. You know how sometimes when you think, you actually hear the words you’re thinking like it’s being played back aurally? Well, I thought “I would…”

What I meant was “I will…” but I was so used to working out how my training and pace would play out in the eventual marathon that the thought process had become engrained in my thought pattern. I had been planning running the marathon for so long that when I actually was, I momentarily forgot this wasn’t training. That’s when it really hit me. Not the starting line, or the trip over on the Eurostar, or crossing the line, but there at Mile 7, when I thought to myself:

“Dude. You know how in the future, when you remember the day you ran the Paris Marathon? Yeah? Well, this is that time.”

In training, especially during the later big runs, I would wonder what it was like to run on roads. Not on pavements, but down the middle of roads. During training I had run down pavements and in uneven gutters for long three and a half hour training runs: I had become used to and tired of running along gutters where one leg extends further than the other, and the uneven feeling that gives you after an hour. I would compensate by running into the traffic for an hour, then with the cars for an hour, but it was never steady. It felt great to run down a road, right down the middle of a street, with no traffic lights, trucks or obstacles.

Unlike London and other major marathons, the vast majority of the streets in Paris are not cordoned off for the marathon, so people are free to cross the road, which they did on occasion, but in never impeded me. There are also cars parked along the route in places, but they weren’t going anywhere on 10 April. A couple of times when the streets narrowed I ran along the pavement myself to get some space. I didn’t do that much because people were out shopping and walking their dogs and although they gave me the right of way, I felt like a fish out of water, so I quickly rejoined the pack.

By Mile 9 we turned back towards the city. This started to give me and idea of how big a marathon was, because I had started in Paris and ran out of the city, then ran back into it. On the way back I would run through the city and out the other side and back in again. It’s a long fucking way, OK?

The main advantage of turning back towards the city was that we were heading west, which meant the sun was on our backs. Aside from it feeling slightly cooler, I could see shadows of any runner wanting to pass me, so I could move when I saw someone creeping up on my side. This became easier to manage and we stopped brushing up and apologising to each other. Although to be honest, I had kind of stopped caring, because things were getting a bit samey.

After my realisation that yes, I was indeed running a marathon, that kind of enthusiasm doesn’t last forever. I felt like a change, so while we were still in the park I ran on the verges for a while just for a change of footing.

Running is boring. It can be peaceful and rewarding, but it’s rarely a thrill. Have you ever wondered why there’s no EA Sports Marathon 2011 for the PlayStation? It’s because no on wants to do the same thing for four hours. There’s no thrill. Where’s the excitement in taking your game character through the winter and managing injuries and strains and stress fractures and food intake and balancing your family time against work duties and essential training commitments? It’s just not there. Kids aren’t washing cars up and down the country to earn the £5 a month they need to go on XBox Live to run with their friends in a virtual environment. It’s boring. I do it because I want to be able to know that I can do it, not for the act of doing it, if that makes any sense.

By Mile 12 we were back in the city, getting tired and hot while I thought of what my half marathon pace might be. As the streets narrowed and the crowds grew while the pack spaced out, I ran in a taxi lane behind a guy wearing a Japanese flag like a cape. He had two rising suns painted on his calf muscles with the words “Hope For Japan” written on them. The sun on my back had warmed up my sports drink to body temperature and it was like drinking warm, flat soda.

By now the 4hr pacers, even on the long straight boulevard stretches, were completely out of sight, but there was no sign of the 4:15 markers when I crossed the half marathon marker at 13.1 miles at 2:03:06. I knew there was no way I could run a negative split.

A negative split is where you run the second half of a long race faster than the first. Athletes do this so they can use up anything they have left in the tank to produce their best overall time. The trick to it is not going out to fast, and being tired at the halfway point, because you’re not going to have the energy to finish, let alone speed up and improve your time. If you’re tired halfway through, you’ll run the second half slower.

My personal best for a half marathon is 1:56 and I ran my first one in January. Admittedly I had never tried to do a half marathon quickly because it was always a waypoint on my training and once I could run that far I ran further, so there was no point during training in running that distance as fast as I could and having no energy to bag a longer run and get the miles in. Even so, I knew at that point I wasn’t going to shave three minutes off the second half of the marathon to come in under four hours.

The halfway point felt like a half. I didn’t have an internal balking of: “I have to run that again?!?” 13.1 miles is a marker, where a long distance runner takes stock of how they feel. You look at your time, you listen to your body, you see if you’re less than halfway through your food if you’re carrying it because you’ll need more than half again to get round, you look at other runners and see if they look like you feel, you look at other runners and see if they have more energy than you and if not you wonder if they’ve done this before. You get your signs from all of that stuff.

Not that I knew anything, of course. One veteran near me looked tired, but I didn’t know if he was conserving his energy with a shuffling gait, or if I was wasting reserves with good form.

After the halfway point, the crowds grew in number and noise while it continued to get hotter while the streets narrowed into almost alleys which offered shelter but stifled what little breeze there was. The sun rose higher and I emptied most of my next water over my head. I ate half an orange I grabbed from that station and it was cool and glorious.

Having already praised the crowds, I’d like to throw one out for the organisers. Every bottle of water I had was cold, every orange quarter seemed to have been sliced the minute before. I look back with regret that I didn’t thank one person who handed out the refreshments and I can only hope others did, because they gave up their day to sustain our folly. In the unlikely chance any of them read this, I would like to say what a great job they did and to thank them for their enthusiasm and encouragement. If you’re tempted to help out at a race, runners do value your charity and you really should volunteer. Just don’t expect and gratitude on the day from wankers like me.

At Mile 14, I was heading back to storm the Bastille. Well, storm’s a strong word, but that’s what my dad had called it, and I knew he and his wife would be somewhere in the crowd. I didn’t expect to see them and I was worried for them in the heat, because I knew they would be there and with the crowds so thick, I knew they wouldn’t give up their spot if they had managed to find a decent vantage spot by the roadside even if they had been there for well over an hour in the sun.

Suddenly to my right I saw a flash of a blue scarf being held overhead. I shouted “EVERTON!!!” My dad’s eyes lit up and scanned the throng of runners while my stepmother pointed right at me and said something to my dad.

As I pulled level I was about four or five baked torsos away from them, but they saw me. We all waved to each other and I sped up, because, you know – he’s your dad.

After the Bastille we turned towards the river and wider boulevard along the Seine. The city’s pompiers had opened up firehoses to a fine spray for us to run through and cool off. It was a relief but immediately afterwards I felt heavier with the weight of the water. Small things started making a big difference. Pouring water over my head made my head feel heavier, wet roads by the hoses felt more uneven. Trifling matters became more exaggerated. I walked the next water stop and took stock of my condition.

I was tired – but nothing hurt. I was grateful that I was not injured or in any pain. My joints and tendons felt good, but I was tired, approaching exhaustion. I passed a massage station where people were getting roadside physio because I felt ok, but god I was tired. The restorative effects of an orange would burn off in ten minutes. Jellies would wear off in about six or seven and I was restricting myself to one every twenty minutes.

Everything tasted too sweet. I’m not a big fan of sugary foods, but I knew I needed the energy at that point. From then on I knew I was running my own race. I stopped hearing the crowds which grew bigger as we passed Notre Dame Cathedral. Which I never noticed, thinking back on it.

And I started walking. During Mile 15 I pulled over to the left and was motherfucking walking. I cursed myself and my stupid, shitting sub-four notion. I knew my family and in-laws would be between Mile 22 and 23 in the Bois De Boulogne, wearing their Team Cliff t-shirts and I wanted to get there, so I made the strategic decision to take a break and started bastard walking. With more than ten miles to go it was a tactical necessity, and I consoled myself that I was ahead of the 4:15 pacers.

To be fair, a lot of people were walking and just as many were overtaking slower runners who had abandoned their negative splits, but at least they were still running. I hated myself at that point, but I zipped up my man suit and vowed to finish, and finish running. There were people out here worse off that me. People hotter and with no food. People with fewer limbs and bigger dreams. In all, I must have walked a couple of minutes before I started running again. Apart from tiredness and mutinous limbs, I couldn’t think of a single reason to not get going again and tiredness wasn’t discouragement enough. I realised the only person out there who could have told me I couldn’t do this was me. And I don’t tend to listen to that guy.

I got going again and raised a hand to my crowdside ear. Someone yelled “Allez Cleef!” and I raised the arm and got back to work.

Along the Seine there are underpasses, the longest of which is about a kilometer and unless you’ve run the Paris Marathon, you’ve probably never gone through them on foot, but they are dark, hot and further underground than you realise.

No sooner had I dug deep to run again than I encountered these and had to start walking out of them. After the heat of the tunnels, emerging into the sunlight via steep inclines were further wasting me, sapping me of my newfound resolve.

The crowds, I have to say again, were incredible. Their energy was amazing. By this stage, many runners were pulling up with cramps, some were dropping out completely, but I was still running, spurred on while others dropped out. I wondered who in the tunnel would hit the wall at the same place that Diana and Dodi did. Gallows humour. I’m running a marathon out here. And if you can’t use gallows humour in Paris, where can you?

A body holds about 2,500 calories worth of energy. Right now, as you’re reading this, if you’re reasonable well fed and if you had to, you would be able to expend that much energy until you had nothing left. That’s not just tiredness, that would mean you literally wouldn’t have any more fuel left and you’d either have to stop or your body would start to pull on glycogen reserves in your muscles, which is exhausting. This is known as “the wall“. Once you hit the wall, you can’t refuel fast enough and keep moving because it doesn’t work like that – you can’t get the calories into your stomach and working around your body while you keep moving, and your race is over. If you’re running, 2,500 calories will burn up in about 17 miles, which at a slow pace is between two and a half and three hours.

A well-versed marathon runner is different, because not only do they have more calories in their system (and the right kind of slowburning food like pasta, potatoes and rice), but they have been fuelling all the way around. So at three hours when I passed the Eiffel Tower (which I barely noticed), I had no idea how much further I would be able to go.

But I was running. I was tired but nothing hurt, I ignored the crowds and I ran my race. I knew at this point if I was still going I would finish, but I didn’t know in what state. The deeper I withdrew further into myself for motivation, the more often I had the urge to help others find their second wind. I started passing people – one guy in a black American football shirt ahead of me on the Avenue Kennedy. It was a Pittsburgh jersey, and I recognised it from my Pennsylvanian childhood. It was a strange sight in the middle of Paris, and as I ran past I said: “Go Steelers.”

An American voice thanked me, but sounded disinterested, like a version of myself 25 minutes earlier. Or 25 years.

Around Mile 19 I started chasing orange quarters with sugar cubes. It worked, too – briefly – but I hated the sweetness although I forced this cocktail down at the drinks stations which were three miles apart. I could feel the boost of glucose after a couple of minutes and it lasted for about twenty before I dropped again to almost no energy. Avoiding the wall became literally a hand to mouth thing and it was taking me thirty minutes to run the distance between the water stands.

By now I gave very few fucks for anything apart from finishing and staying ahead of the 4:15 pacers.

I had gone through six small bottles of water, four whole oranges, half a litre of sports drink, twelve jelly sweets and three chewie bars and I didn’t feel hungry or full, thirsty or bloated. Nothing. Almost nothing. Tired. But not injured. I walked a minute up to Mile 20 as the 4:15 pacers reached me.

Seeing them got me going again, and I kept up with the pacesetter, a woman in her late thirties, flanked by a thicker crowd of devotees intent on finishing within their target time. She looked perky. Almost jovial. She was encouraging those around her, clapping along to the bands. She looked like she had just started, even though I recognised her from the staring pen.

That’s a weird thing. You know how if you’re at a festival or something and the crowd is huge, you can keep seeing the same people all weekend? It’s the same in a marathon. I kept seeing the Hope For Japan guy, or the man in the Tricouleur wig, or the Macmillan Cancer girls, even though I was one of 32,000 participants.

I kept up with the pacer through Mile 20, but that became too much and they sped on at a pace I could neither sustain nor fathom. But I was proud to still be in the race. I was on my feet and running. Running.

Running means something works. Your fridge is running. It’s an operation. You run a team. Risks are run. It’s how we instinctively flee from danger. It’s what we do towards a dream.

I ran through a firehose mist and into a puddle which soaked my foot. My family waited three miles ahead and the finish line was three beyond that as I took odd, sodden steps towards the end. That was 6.2 miles away, or 10k. Those were my evening runs. I remembered when 10k was a goal and how the first time I completed it, my lungs were burning and my legs wanted to kill me. I told myself than now I was in no pain and my lungs didn’t ache. I was just tired. Very tired, but not hurt.

10k is out the front door and around the industrial estate, in the cold and the ice and the dark and the rain. I wanted to think that if I could run 10k in 48 minutes, I could run it at any pace after 20 miles.

By now, every step was further than I had ever run before.

People started collapsing. Teams of medics were running past me in the opposite direction with defibrilators and stretchers. Some ambulance crews at the side of the road were wrapping people in foil blankets. A few runners had folded themselves into doorways, wearing soaked clothes and looks of pain. Or emptiness. I tried to wonder which would feel worse: agony or nothing.

Despite everything, I didn’t feel uncomfortable. If that’s an important distinction, it’s one I had never heard about over all my training, but it mattered enough for me to make. I felt OK. Of course I wanted to stop, but I didn’t have to. I also thought that if Pheidippides had died at this point I’d be done by now.

I ran on exhausted, looking for people who didn’t look like runners. Muscle-bound guys, old folks, pear-shaped women – just to tell myself that if they could do it, if they could keep going and rock for 26.2 miles, then so could I. But there was no pattern to the other athletes; no success or winning, only different shades of failure and determination. Some people who looked like runners were doing a death march, while other unlikely figures pushed on and I tried to count myself among them.

Into the Bois De Boulogne at about Mile 21 I staggered into a walk for about five minutes as the shelter from the trees cleared and the sun beat down on these fools.

The thin crowd in the park were there purely for us. No one was buying their bread, getting something from their car, visiting the pharmacy across the road. They had come out into the countryside away from the city for us. I was so glad I spoke French. I think without that I would have been wrapped in foil somewhere on the Rue Molitor.

At Mile 22, a man cycled alongside us: “It hurts! Of course it hurts! If you stop it hurts even more!”

I never challenged his theory, although I had serious doubts, because he was my new best friend.

I wondered where Team Cliff would be and the first time it entered my head, I saw them, ahead and off to my right. I gave my signal, which I had arranged carefully in the hotel room with my eight year old daughter the day before: arms raised in a V, index fingers as number ones. Despite that being the signal almost every other runner had given their support over the previous twenty two and a half miles, someone saw me and a cheer went up to rival a hundred oranges.

I ran past at a deceptive pace, having agreed that I would stop only if needed to grab any of the supplies my wife had ready – a bottle of sports drink, extra chewy bars, a hat, or if I wanted to dump my backpack. But I ran on to the water stop just past them, the words of the bicycle man echoing above their encouragement.

I can’t tell you much about the next two or three miles. I was tired even of eating. I couldn’t face another bite forced down. I had grown weary of energy.

Somewhere after Mile 25 the park faded into buildings and my time drifted past 4:20. As crowds grew, hands reached out, along with calls of distance updates: “Just another 1500 metres, that’s seven laps of a track! Go, you heroes! Allez!”

We were back on streets. There were bends; I’m not sure how many – there was a finish line behind only one, but never the next and the voice in my head saying “You’ve got this.”

4:27

More palms outstretched. Now crowd barriers. An announcer’s voice over a PA system.

4:28

The Mile 26 marker and the final bend and the road opens up broad as a river.

I can beat 4:30. There’s the line. If I keep running from here I can do it. I have the time if I don’t walk.

4:28:30

No one walks the end of a marathon. Run. For the glory.

Screams. Flashbulbs. Stewards.

4:29. No one walks.

I start sprinting.

4:29:15

I see runners cross the finish. They lean into hugs…

4:29:20

….ushered towards medals.

Medals.

For the glory.

…25

Run.

…30

No one walks.

…35

The end of a marathon.

4:29:37

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