Roger Chamberlain

I've been a helper at the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 24-hour race at Tooting Bec track for many years as a volunteer for the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.  Usually I count laps on the overnight shift, but this year I had a different experience and saw the race from a different angle - trackside!

I was helper for my husband Roger from midnight to 12-noon.  In his debut 24 hour race he covered 106.861 miles, and puts his success down to "meditation and mashed potato". You can read his own account of the race on his personal web site.

I arrived at the track at 10 to midnight after working on Saturday, slightly later than planned due to Diane and  myself having a double accident of the spillage kind at the coffee shop at Paddington Station.  This left only a short handover time for Ed, Roger's helper for the first 12 hours, to explain what was what.  Luckily it was all fairly straightforward, and Roger had pre-written an instruction sheet.

He said that after the first 2 hours he would take an isotonic energy gel every hour, or an energy drink.  Then mashed potato every 2  hours, on the hour.  He also had power gels and an assortment of energy bars for variety.

He'd packed two flavours of energy drink, but inexplicably had found himself unable to take the lemon-lime flavour, despite having trained and raced with it many times in the past.  And the pile of energy bars also sat untouched, despite having been a mainstay of his various mountain-running escapades.  Which just goes to show that you never can tell, and it pays to be prepared for any eventuality.

So we settled into a routine of GO gels, 1/2 strength tropical GO drink, and bi-hourly hot instant mash washed down by tea with soya milk and 2 sugars.  Instructions were passed by hand signals from along the track so that Roger would not have to stop and whatever he needed would be ready in time when he went past.  The helpers in the refreshments hut got quite used to my regular visits to their hot water urn to make up the mash.  I was always happy for the chance to warm up a little, and even managed to serve a few coffees and teas through the hatch while I was in there.

Roger barely left the track for the whole 24 hours, except for a few moments to change his shoes or clothes or visit the loo.

At around 2am he was in quite a bit of pain with the front part of his feet feeling bruised.  This may have been in part due to most of his long runs having been done off-road, the Tooting track being quite a hard one.  Also, his shoes were fairly lightweight, and while this had proved a success in terms of a fix for a previous long-term injury problem in training and in shorter ultras, it seemed they just weren't cushioned enough after 14 hours on the track.

Scrabbling around in the boot of the car in the dark I found a selection of insoles in a variety of states of wear.  We decided to try a double strike sorbothane and I put them in a spare pair of shoes ready for a quick change next lap.  This helped a bit, plus a couple of paracetamol.  I made sure I wrote down what time he took the paracetamol because it was getting hard to keep track of time after being up all night, and I didn't want him to take too many with his system probably being a bit sensitive by now.

In the small hours it got quite cold.  Most of the runners had put on full length leggings of some kind, but Roger didn't want to stop and change - he said he was comfortable and didn't want to change anything, and later admitted he hadn't wanted to take his shoes off again.  He was looking stiff though, and slowing down.  Finally I bluntly told him it was only 6 degrees, at which he seemed to wake up to the fact that it was cold and at least put on a thermal top under his jacket.  Within two laps he was moving more easily again.

A 24 hour race always has a time and motion of its own.  It's as if for those hours runners and helpers alike enter another sphere.  We are all on a journey together, through the highs and lows, as the hours pass.  At one point the cold, dark hours of the night seem to go on forever.  Then all of a sudden the light has crept across the sky unnoticed, and, after an interminable wait for its arrival, daylight has suddenly established itself, catching us unawares.

As the hours tick away, Roger reaches 100 miles just after 22 hours.  The counters go wild - most of them have known him for years, and they have all had little or no sleep and are easily tipped over the brink.

Now we are just counting down to the finish.  Having passed the 100 mile mark and still suffering painful feet, Roger has less impetus to push quite as hard and slows to an easy jog interspersed with a fair bit of walking.  He is still moving forwards however and determined to stick at it to the end (reminding me of Abraham Lincoln's quote -"I may walk slowly, but I never walk backwards").

Knowing that no more mashed potato will be required I can relax a bit.  I enjoy an easy half hour in a chair in the sunshine, soaking up the warmth and also the peaceful feeling now generated around the track.

For the final few minutes each runner has a marker so that when the whistle goes the runner can immediately go and sit down, or shower, or whatever, without having to wait for their final yards to be measured.  I am Roger's marker and so am able to take a nice photo of him smiling and clapping at 3 seconds after 24 hours.

Fran Chamberlain