Redbrick

Birmingham Half Marathon: A Competitor’s Story

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Written by Jonathan Gilbert

Silence fell. The up until then noisy swarms of spec­ta­tors and run­ners became sud­denly anx­ious. There was a brief wait, and then the gun sounded. After months of tough train­ing and fundrais­ing, the EDF Energy Birm­ing­ham Half Marathon had begun, and the route’s roads were being pounded by thou­sands of soon to be exhausted legs. Grad­u­ally arriv­ing at the finish-line, the not quite so exhausted world’s best road run­ners had set out an hour ear­lier, on an iden­ti­cal route, in the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships.

The two weeks in the build up to the race hadn’t been the most con­sis­tent in my train­ing sched­ule and so, defy­ing all advice that had come my way about not burn­ing out in the days lead­ing up to the com­pe­ti­tion, on the Thurs­day night before the Sun­day I was due to com­pete, I set out on a ten mile route through the streets of Selly Oak and its neigh­bour­ing wards. Whilst one would not expect rush-hour to affect some­one con­strained to a city’s walk­ways, there seemed to be more con­ges­tion on the pave­ments than on the roads. A change of pace, a quick step to the side — tech­niques that were to be of ben­e­fit when in amongst the crowds of com­peti­tors dur­ing the half marathon itself — would give me a clear pas­sage to con­tinue running.

Race-day did finally arrive, although the night before one con­fused dri­ver felt that I was gain­ing an unfair advan­tage. ‘Stop cheat­ing! It starts tomor­row!’ he shouted as I jogged my way along part of the Selly Oak sec­tion of the fol­low­ing day’s route. On return­ing home I felt pre­pared. I had my kit washed, my race chip laced into my right trainer and the Usain Bolt cel­e­bra­tion perfected.

With an inspi­ra­tional hand­shake and a ‘good luck’ from dou­ble Olympic cham­pion Dame Kelly Holmes, I crossed the start-line. There was so much adren­a­lin pump­ing through my body that I was at risk of run­ning a Bolt-like time over the first few hun­dred metres. But com­po­sure pre­vailed and my pace stead­ied. The first half of the race was a sheer joy to run. Cold, wet, over­cast and mis­er­able; the weather may have dealt the event an unfor­tu­nate, if not expected, hand, but the peo­ple of Birm­ing­ham united in their thou­sands to sup­port it.

As the route made its way through inner city wards, the hoards of spec­ta­tors were an over­whelm­ing and con­tin­ual moti­va­tion. Each high-five from a grin­ning child; each friendly smile from a local res­i­dent; each cry of ‘well done’, ‘you can do it’ and ‘keep it going’ spurred me on and, I’m sure, the mass of run­ners that encir­cled me. One elderly lady stood defi­antly by the side of the road, jug of orange juice in one hand and plas­tic cups in the other, as the mul­ti­tude of run­ners flew past.

For the first time in my life I felt proud to be British. Immi­gra­tion is so often a del­i­cate and debated issue in the UK, and argu­ments about migrant num­bers and their inte­gra­tion into British soci­ety will per­se­vere. How­ever, on Sun­day, stretched out over the full 13 miles of the half marathon route, Birmingham’s assim­i­lated, multi-ethnic soci­ety illus­trated the immi­gra­tion suc­cess story of the last 50 years in this coun­try. Such com­mon bar­ri­ers of race, colour, creed, age and socio-economic sta­tus were smashed down, and it was the sense of com­mu­nity and togeth­er­ness, some­thing that is so starkly miss­ing in our ‘devel­oped’ and mod­ernised soci­ety of Today, which made the atmos­phere so extra­or­di­nar­ily unique and memorable.

Music brought great style and per­son­al­ity to the event. Run­ning through Can­non Hill Park, a sax­o­phon­ist soloed the hours away. Hands above my head, I gave him the most ener­getic clap my ener­vated torso could muster and I received a thumbs-up in return. He was as much a part of the event as the 12,300 run­ners in the mass race and the 200 élite ath­letes of the World Half Marathon Cham­pi­onships. A steel band on one cor­ner, a reg­gae trio at the next. In Bournville the church bells rang out, not with hymns, but rather with Cliff Richard’s 1968 Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test clas­sic Con­grat­u­la­tions. In Selly Oak, com­peti­tors were not let to for­get that they were in the stu­dent heart­land of Birm­ing­ham as the Bay­watch theme tune blasted out from the speak­ers of one Bourn­brook Road property.

The last quar­ter of the race was painful. My pace slowed con­sid­er­ably from the con­sis­tent eight-minute mile I had been achiev­ing up until that point. I felt my legs start to ache and my body start to fail me. 11 miles was the far­thest I had run in train­ing, and it was begin­ning to tell. Banana­man con­fi­dently over­took me. It was mind over body. Some­how, despite a steep and pun­ish­ing uphill sec­tor in the last mile-and-a-half, I made it to Broad Street; the final leg of the race. The most enthu­si­as­tic spec­ta­tors had crammed them­selves between the build­ings that align Birmingham’s show­piece street and the adja­cent metal rail­ings that sep­a­rated them from the road. Using what­ever reserves of energy that were left inside me, I unfath­omably man­aged to extend my stride for the last 60 metres, and I crossed the finish-line in one hour and fifty min­utes. There is no superla­tive that could describe my level of exhaus­tion. My planned Usain Bolt cel­e­bra­tion did not materialise.

The route had not been glam­orous. There was no Tower of Lon­don, no Cen­tral Park, no Bran­den­burg Gate, but there was a mar­vel­lous spirit; one that engulfed the entire event and all the peo­ple involved in it. It couldn’t be seen, but it could be felt. Deriv­ing from the cit­i­zens of Birm­ing­ham itself it per­co­lated through the whole of the com­pe­ti­tion. Run­ning through the city’s res­i­den­tial areas had brought a sense of char­ac­ter to the race that would not have been pos­si­ble oth­er­wise. Birm­ing­ham can be proud of its peo­ple and of a great event. I, for one, will cer­tainly be back in 2010.

This article was posted on October 13th, 2009 at 6:05 pm.