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It’s not only the runners that get worn out

The streets of London are bathed in Lucozade tonight, in the aftermath of the Marathon. I headed up with the fair-weather commuters and made came in Canada Square so I could watch the runners plod through Docklands.

It’s a couple of years since I last did the marathon, and I’d forgotten how quickly they’re often still going at the 19 mile mark, and was impressed that even the people in fancy dress seemed to be speeding along. The rain probably helped - apart from the man running on behalf of Water Aid. He had a bucket on his head, which was very effectively collecting the rain, getting heaver and heavier as he ran. The irony probably wasn’t lost on him.

It can be quite risky for the runners. I was watching from one of the drinks stations, where sponsored kids and fatties stand handing out isotonic water. Each runner seems to grab one, take a single gulp and then throw it down on the floor. Terrible for anyone following on in a racing wheelchair, although in fairness the only accident I saw (barring the man who’d not made it to the loo in time and so had brown-streaked legs) was a guy slipping over onto his back and tearing open his knee.

Lots of bloodied t-shirts, too, from those suffering from joggers’ nipple, which looked particularly nasty.

A man on a horse on a bike

I have great admiration for anyone who can make their way around a whole marathon, whether they run it or walk it, but I can’t help thinking that if I ran it myself I’d want to make sure I finished before the first runner in fancy dress. It must be hard enough running it in a singlet, but knowing that someone else managed to do it dressed as a banana on ice skates with a 50-gallon water butt on their head managed to finish between you did must be humiliating in the extreme.

I tubed up to Finsbury Park at 13h to meet with Murat, who turned out to have overslept, giving me time to walk around investigating the strange little shops around there. I saw far more vegetables that I’d never seen before than I could have named.

When he arrived, we walked the Northern Heights, a route that takes you down a disused railway line as far as Alexandra Palace. You can see how it got its name. You climb as you walk through Finsbury Park, and never seem to go down again. Pretty soon you’re way up above the houses, looking down into their gardens.

You’d never believe you were still in London. It’s so quiet and green (and in places almost ankle-deep in mud) and all the way along you are bombarded by a wonderful collection of smells, of the woody, watery, fresh from the rain variety. The trees were alive with birds, and we were followed a little way by a robin, which hopped along a disused platform beside us. I explained to Murat what it was, as he’d never realised that Robin and Red Breast were the same thing. Then he put me to shame with my knowledge of English literature. He may be half-Turkish, half-French, and have grown up just outside Lyon, but he is far wider-read than I am.

It took us about two and a half hours to reach Alexandria Palace, allowing for time to stop and have a drink in a smelly pub along the way, and we then walked around the edge, looking at the BBC mast still on top of the older, undamaged section of the building, which wasn’t destroyed by fire, from which the world’s first so-called high definition TV pictures were broadcast in 1936. Our current concept of what high definition means is, I’m sure, somewhat different, but it retains a rightful place in history, and the view out across the city is amazing, even under a drizzly sky.

With darker clouds rolling in, we turned around and started to walk back, and took the tube from Highgate back to Kings Cross where we went out separate ways. It’s been a weekend of walking for me - a long stride out across the fields yesterday, and the marathon then the Heights today - and I was glad of a seat on the train home. The stupid fair-weather commuters, who had been literally screaming in panic of being crushed on the busy tube (clearly never been on a Central Line rush hour train) and almost falling over every time we pulled out of a platform as though they didn’t realise movement generally follows the closing of the doors, were long gone, leaving the trains blissfully empty for those who know how to use them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 10:34 pm and is filed under London, Picture story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.