Milan, Italy. Sunday 06-April 2025.
Letting the cat out of the bag (25-March-2025).
I know I said “Never again!”, but I am doing another marathon, this time for men’s mental health. I am entered in the Milano marathon on 06-April-2025 raising money and awareness for Andy’s Man Club.
Why did I change my mind?
It was a combination of factors that aligned. I knew after the London Marathon 2019 it would have to be something serious (or a bonkers amount of money) to make me ever even consider a repeat. In spring 2024 I had been gestating in my mind a series of posts about my time at Oxford which reminded me just how miserable I had been there. I used to say I would trade three years off the end of my life to be able to splice those three years out of my past and never have lived through them.
Extract from [Oxford Life 02 - Social]
"All this had a detrimental effect of my cheerfulness, what nowadays would be termed mental health. By the third year I was not in a good place. There was no obvious pastoral care provided by the university, so I went to the doctor to explain the depth of my unhappiness. They asked a few questions: Do you get on okay with your parents. Yes. Are you managing okay with your studies. Yes. Do you have a girlfriend? No. Do you have a boyfriend? No! The outcome: “Nothing really to worry about. Off you go”. Thanks a bunch pal (sarcasm)! These days I am sure I would receive a more sympathetic hearing."
My state of mind was such that I didn't go to a single lecture in my third year. No one noticed! No one asked how come, how was I, how was it going. It was like I was invisible.
Extract from [Oxford Life 06 - Academia]
"Oxford turned a keen, hard working pupil capable of getting a First into an unhappy, disillusioned student who scraped a Third. All this for a piece of paper that has sat in an envelope for 50 years. No one has ever asked for it or even for proof that it exists. Am I bitter? Too f***ing right I am."
Around the same time as I was drafting the Oxford posts I read about Dave Lock running his 25th marathon for Samaritans at the age of 62 [BBC Sport]. That planted the seed of the idea in my brain. There was a cause that might provide the motivation. My 22-year old self could really, really have done with someone to talk to back then.
Here was an opportunity to do something for that 22-year old me.
Also a friend had just run his first marathon, the Manchester Marathon 2024, so I thought it does no harm to buy a discounted early bird entry for 2025 and if I don't feel like doing it I don't have to. I prudently took out the cancellation insurance so I could get back my entry fee back if I did not go ahead.
And there the idea sat in the back of my mind for six months. No one knew apart from Mary that I was even contemplating such folly.
Training.
After London Marathon 2019 I realised that what people are actually sponsoring is the training. That is where you put in the hours and miles that make the marathon possible.
Some time around September whilst in Italy I decided I might possibly go ahead so started upping the mileage with midweek runs, previously notable by their absence.
At this point I decided to engage a personal trainer to help with the preparation. I was recommended Jo at Fellside Active. I had a number of sessions with Jo doing exercises I would never has done off my own bat like hill reps and fartlek / interval training. I am convinced that helped.
The training continued back in the UK in November and December and even while we were in New Zealand in February. I would find a park or path or city block and run round and round until I had done the distance or the time.
As with previous marathons I plotted all my training runs (65 runs, 535km) in Excel and plotted a best fit line, applied a fudge factor to predict a finish time of 5hr 38min.
So that was my plan: Jeffing aka Run/Walk: trot an 8 minute kilometre followed by 8 metre walk, rinse-and-repeat, to get me over the finish line in 5hr 40min.
Switch to Milan.
Having decided I would go ahead, I still had told no one apart from Mary and a couple of very close friends. Looking at our travel plans it would have meant flying out to Italy and then two weeks later flying back to the UK for the weekend to do the marathon and return to Italy. The flights were looking very expensive to get to Manchester and back when Mary asked the question “are there any marathons in Italy you could do?"
As luck would have it there were several including the Milan Marathon on the weekend we would’ve been heading to Cisternino. That meant we could break our journey to Puglia in Milan with the added bonus of visiting my nephew, his wife and their son, my great nephew, who I had never seen although he was born in December 2023. So I booked myself a place in the Milan Marathon, Mary rearranged the flights and I got my refund for Manchester.
Switch to Andy’s Man Club.
The original plan was to raise money for Samaritans but there are other men's mental health charities; CALM springs to mind. Then I learned that Andy’s Man Club had started a branch in Penrith, so not just national but with local flavour. I popped along on a Monday, early so as not to intrude on the actual meeting, and asked the lead facilitator to give me his sales pitch which he did. What I like about Andys Man Club is that it is face to face and helps build a support network. All the others are primarily telephone help line providers but there is no substitute to meeting in the real world.
Dry March.
Not drinking is supposed to have all manner of benefits. It is conventional wisdom that if you lose weight you can run faster because you are not carrying so much weight. There is even a calculator that works out how much faster you can run for a given weight, distance and time: Weight vs Pace Calculator. I thought I would try going dry for a month in the run up to the marathon to see if a) I would lose weight and b) run faster. The answer for me was "No" for both.
I did have two nights back on the booze when we hosted a dinner party and when we went to a wine tasting. After a month having noted no benefits in terms of weight, speed, sleep, complexion, energy levels or anything else I allowed myself one glass per night on the two days before the marathon.
Marathon Fair.
For those of you who have not done a marathon this is how is works.
You have to pick up your race pack prior to the event. This is a like a trade fair in an exhibition centre designed like Ikea or duty free at the airport in that you have to walk a labyrinthine path past stalls promoting services and selling merchandise: shoes, sportswear, nutrition, etc, you get the drift. The important part is the pack containing your bib (runner number) and chip. For this event the chip was on the back of the number, previously it was a small plastic rectangle that you attached to your shoelaces.
The bag can also be used to drop off your personal effects in the bag drop area before the race to be collected afterwards.
Then there is a goody bag of freebies from the sponsors, some a bit "random" (sponges and dry rusks) although the hand gel and shower gel will be useful.
An opportunity to take a selfie that you can share on social media - coincidentally promoting the Wizz Air brand!
And there is an app that your friends can use to track you on the day.
Race day.
Given the range of abilities they assign you to a start pen based on the predicted time that you provided at registration. I said 6 hr as that was at the upper end of my hoped for time. Even if I'd said 5 hr I would still have been in Group 10, right at the back.
On the day I am standing just behind the 5:30 pace runners with their green balloons and in front of the pink 6:00 pacers out of shot.
Me in my Andy’s Man Club t-shirt which arrived just in time for me to pack it before we set off for Italy.
The course is very convoluted, starting and ending at the Duomo (Cathedral).
The start time was 8:30 for the elite runners; it was closer to 9:00 before I crossed the start line. At the halfway point I managed a selfie to post live to FaceBook. I am not sure if I am gasping for air or just not good at selfies!
At the end you get a medal and a t-shirt. They had run out of M so I settled for a S rather than XL. Seems to fit OK.
This is what the tracking app showed as my time and splits. The final published results always vary slightly from the live timing - in my case 05:45:04, but who’s counting 4 seconds.
They kindly provide a video of me passing through various key stages. Look out for the white baseball cap. I look bow legged but, honestly, that is just the shorts packed with jelly babies and a 330ml bottle of isotonic drink.
How it went.
Well, I crossed the finish line but I made the schoolboy error of going too fast at the start. Not helped by being hotter than predicted, 20 degrees instead of 16. My plan was 8 minute kilometres but my body was jogging along at 7:25. I should’ve eased it back. I paid the price in the second half but still finished within the timeframe I was hoping for. However, I had to dig deep. The last 10k were seriously hard work and I was definitely wobbly the last couple of kilometres.
Mary met me at several points round the course to hand me a refill bottle of isotonic drink. She reminded me of my wobble on the Brighton Marathon 2017 which acted as a timely reminder to keep hydrated.
My official pace was 8:11 per kilometre - not far off my planned pace of 8:00 but badly distributed.
At the end I had to sit down for half an hour during which I threw up what seemed like most of the isotonic drink I had consumed. I then started shivering, Mary had to lend me her hoodie and we went to sit in the sunshine.
On the way back to the apartment on the Metro my Reynauds kicked in which took me by surprise. Normally it is associated with chilly Thursday Social Runs around Lowther Castle grounds with Eden Runners. Here it was 20 degrees. It obviously has to do with core body temperature being out of whack not just cold. Now I know why you see runners being given space blankets as they cross the line.
Went for a lie down after the marathon and this is what my Garmin watch told me about my stress levels. No sh*t Sherlock!
Thanks to Mary.
Mary has been a star through the whole journey. Making sure there were slots in our hectic schedule to fit in the long runs and prompting me to go out for a training run when required. Plus the logistics support on the day. I could not have done it without her!
Smugness and Revenge.
I was once quoted as saying, whilst "in my cups", that the only two motivations I understood were "smugness and revenge". Well, running a marathon at 72 certainly fits the former. As for revenge, they do say that "Living well is the best revenge" [George Herbert] - so take that Oxford University and Hertford College!
Money and Awareness Raised for Andy’s Man Club.
Well that was both objectives achieved. It's not too late to donate: https://www.justgiving.com/page/mark-mclellan-milan.
Never Again.
Now I really mean it. In the words of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon “I’m too old for this shit!”
