Free Keep on Running by Phil Hewitt Page A

marathon aspirations. In hindsight, there was something inspiring about them, arriving back far too soon, looking tired but satisfied. There was something in what they'd achieved which appealed to me.
    Â Â Gradually, over the years, the running element had grown, and by 2001 it sat comfortably alongside the marching element in an event which had changed character. The Royal Military Police stepped back from the march, taking with them much of the services interest which had defined and driven the early years. By 2001, with the runners getting more numerous, the day had sprung its own marathon on the back of a few changes to the route to bring it up to the marathon distance. Or nearly. It was advertised as a marathon – otherwise I wouldn't have gone near it. But, confusingly, the event was promoted as a '42 km All Terrain Run', in other words almost a couple of hundred metres short of a marathon. But I decided I could add that distance in myself somewhere along the line. Everything else was in its favour. It was in the city in which I worked, and I couldn't think of any reason not to have a go.
    Â Â You couldn't wish for a marathon more different to 'the London', as we runners like to call it. In the capital, you had massive support on a fast, flat course, bringing together tens of thousands of runners in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators; in Chichester, just looking at the route, it was obvious that you had ahead of you a hilly ordeal, mostly in the middle of nowhere with only the occasional other runner for company. The course rapidly left the city behind to head out onto the South Downs. At least 90 per cent of it was going to be out in the country. A good proportion was going to be on decent roads, but a substantial part of it was clearly going to be on trails and tracks. The whole event was as low key as 'the London' was high profile – and that suited my purpose.
    Â Â Making a mockery of just about every piece of marathon wisdom I'd ever acquired, I decided to give it a go on the back of virtually no training whatsoever. And, yes, I know that does make my criticism of that celebrity just now sound rather hollow. It was the kind of rashness which really ought to have left me collapsed in a ditch halfway round; but at least, I reasoned, I did already have a marathon under my belt, even if it had been three years before.
    Â Â My initial approach was that I would treat the day as a training run, that I would run the first hour and see what happened. I did a test run on the Thursday before the race on the Sunday, running for 1 hour 28 minutes and guessing my distance to be around 10 or 11 miles. The important thing was that the run had gone well.
    Â Â I consequently broadened my ambitions for the Sunday, deciding that I would aim for a half-marathon and then walk the rest. 'You can do it' had been my mantra for London. For Chichester, it was 'Let's see how it goes'. The impact on the family was minimal, just half a day away. There was no reason not to try.
    Â Â The route was essentially a large loop to the north and north-east of the city, taking us out from Chichester, up through the Goodwood estate, past Goodwood Racecourse, down into the village of East Dean and then up into the woods and onto the South Downs Way, before curving back down south-westwards towards Chichester again. The outline was easy enough to grasp, but once we were out there, we would never really know just how far round we were. In London, the runners always had a good idea. On the Chichester route, no distances were marked. I realised I was just going to have to try to assess distance in terms of how I was feeling.
    Â Â The marathon set off at 8 a.m., as I recall, well before the walkers were unleashed on the same route, and, after all the planning and preparation which had gone into London, it was rather nice simply to drive to the nearest car park and walk the couple of hundred yards across Oaklands Park