Staggering back to oblivion

To run a marathon you need to build up your long runs over several months before the event. If this period includes a three-week stay in an infernally hot place, then you need to include at least one very long run during this three-week stay.

This was the problem that had long been on my mind as I was building up my training for the upcoming Brussels marathon in October. This July I'm staying in Malta, where the temperature rises from 23 C early in the morning to the high twenties by 9 am, reaching a maximum above 30 C practically everyday.

So how would I be able to run for 2 hours 45 minutes without dying of heatstroke? To solve the problem I decided to start extra early in the morning, at 5:15, and devised a plan whereby I would remain sufficiently hydrated throughout the run. I filled four half-litre bottles with water and chilled them overnight. Three of these I placed on the ground behind my car, which I parked next to the Exiles beach car park. The plan was that I would run for 12 and a half minutes away from the car park and then back to the starting point, where I would pick one bottle and run out again for another 25-minute loop, drinking the life-saving fluid along the way. I would run three such loops for a total of 75 minutes, and then at 6:30 I would pick up the third half-litre bottle and join my running mates, who at that time were to kick off their 90-minute run from the same place. This added up to the target total of 2h45m, which I would run in relatively cool temperatures.

The Sliema seafront was surprisingly busy for such an ungodly hour in the morning. In particular, there were late night "revellers" staggering back to oblivion, and several cleaners clearing up the mess left overnight by the masses. But the air was fresh, and my long-awaited run kicked off extremely well. Coming back from my first loop I met a group of runners who are training for the Berlin marathon this September. In fact it was one of them, Sylvana Ungaro, who had given me the idea of starting my long run very early in the morning, before sunrise. I greeted them cheerily, and proceeded back to Exiles.

But then, at the end of the second loop, disaster struck - the water bottles, which I had carefully placed on the ground behind my parked car, were all gone! Probably, some well-meaning cleaner picked them up thinking they were rubbish left behind from the previous night, and I was left with close to two hours still to run in the sweltering heat of the Maltese summer, with no water at all to consume...

Drat, drat, and double drat! Well, sort of. The words in the early dawn at Exiles beach were different, but the gist was the same. I ran around the carpark for a couple of minutes, almost like a headless chicken, looking around in the forlorn hope that the life-saving bottles had been placed somewhere close. No such luck! But I remembered that I had a fourth bottle locked in the car, to be used at the end of the run. I opened the car boot, grabbed the bottle, and went off again, this time towards home with the intention of refilling there. On the way I met a sizeable number of my prospective running mates, all riding a mountaine bike with clearly no intention at all of going on a long run. Good luck to them, I'll work this one out on my own as I always do when I'm in Belgium. Then I remembered that at the promenade on top of the Exiles beach there are drinking water taps, which I could very well use to refill my one precious surviving bottle.

So I ran back towards the starting point, as planned in the very beginning, and my heart sank as I noticed that where previously there had been a drinking water tap, there was... nothing. More drats. Last resort, another drinking water tap that I remembered was just behind the corner after the Sliema tower, and - eureka! - the magic fluid spluttered out into the empty plastic bottle. The water even turned out to taste good, without the iodine flavour that it used to have in the past.

At the Exiles car park there were Antoine Attard, Peter Barbara, Alfred Demarco and Savo Ristic waiting for others, who would never arrive. We started off in the direction of Tigne', then always following the coastline to Gzira, Ta' Xbiex, Msida, Floriana, the Valletta bus terminus and all the way back, without too much effort, at a calm, sustained pace.

That was it - I had done it! Two hours and 45 minutes, in the middle of the Maltese summer, my longest run ever in July, and now I know exactly what I need to do today week to repeat the session, in what will probably be more severe weather conditions.

Brussels marathon, here I come!