Short Fat Chick in Paris

Chapter One

Failings of a marathon runner

Inever get tired of landing at Heathrow. Even though the planes always seem to arrive at dawn’s crack, and there’s a queue of weary travellers waiting to be processed that stretches back almost to New Zealand, landing in England always brings back those same feelings of exhaustion, exhilaration and excitement that I experienced on my very first big OE.

My OE wasn’t the traditional Kiwi experience though. I didn’t head off to Blighty with a pack on my back and the names and addresses of three distant relatives who could probably put me up if things turned to custard. I didn’t end up in a squat in Earls Court, sharing a bathroom with seven Aussies and half-a-dozen Kiwis. I didn’t work as a barmaid in The Spanking Roger, and I didn’t have my heart broken by a Greek waiter in Santorini.

In fact, I didn’t see the world—well, the world beyond Australia and the Pacific Islands—until I was nearly 30. While my friends from school were working at menial jobs to get the dosh together for the international airfare and three months’ emergency supply of baked beans, I was working as a cadet at Radio New Zealand. I wanted to concentrate on my career; my school friends weren’t sure what they wanted to do and were quite happy to travel and see what turned up. I envied them, and whenever their postcards would turn up from Spain or Greece or Africa, I’d stare out of the nicotine-clouded windows of the RNZ newsroom in Palmerston North or Rotorua or Tauranga onto the grey, rain-drenched streets below and wonder whether I’d made the right decision.

Then when my daughter Kate came along when I was 23, I thought that was it—I’d be an old lady in support hose before I saw the places I’d only ever read about. Travelling the world seemed like an impossible dream. Oh sure, like many of us who’d grown up in small towns in the 1960s and ‘70s, I’d harboured a flicker of hope that one day, after many years of tireless employment, and if I managed to tuck away a little bit left over from the housekeeping, and once my yet-to-be-met husband and I had retired, and if we were certain of our civil service pensions, we might be able to take a six-week grand tour of Europe on a coach with other like-minded 60-pluses who’d been waiting all their lives to see St Paul’s Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice.

Travel was incredibly exotic back in the ‘70s. Remember, New Zealand had one of the most protected economies outside of the Communist bloc and we were a remarkably compliant little nation. When the oil crisis hit, we obligingly agreed to car-less days. Shops stayed shut on a Sunday and New Zealand-made goods were protected from cheaper imports by the imposition of ruinous taxes. Very few people holidayed overseas and those who did were regarded as fantastic creatures. To even be in the same classroom as someone who’d been to Disneyland (!) in America (!) lent you an aura of sophistication.

Then in the ‘80s, along came the Lange/Douglas government; it was hoots wah hey and all controls were off. Champagne flowed in the streets, imported clothes and make-up filled the shelves and money-market dealers and their leggy girlfriends flew across the Tasman for the weekend as if they were catching the bus to the beach. Those were heady times, but even then I wondered whether I would ever get to see the world. I wasn’t leggy enough to be asked as a companion and I didn’t earn enough to pay my own way. Even though my friends had found the nerve and the dosh to head away for a couple of magical years, I couldn’t see how I was ever going to do it, given the direction my own life had taken.

Then out of the blue, I was asked if I’d like to front a travel show on TV3 called Destination Planet Earth. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t entirely out of the blue, because I’d accompanied a friend to a tarot-card reader at the Courtenay Place market in Wellington. My friend was a big believer in the ooky-spooky side of life and had persuaded me to have a go after the reader had done her—so to speak. The reader looked at my cards and said, ‘Oooh, lucky you! You’ll be in Europe by the end of the year. I see London and…somewhere else…Spain? Italy? Do you have any plans to travel?’

I shook my head and thought what a waste of 20 bucks that was. As a waitress earning 15 bucks an hour, I’d only just managed to get together the readies to get the electricity put back on in my flat after it had been disconnected for non-payment of the bill. Life was a hand-to-mouth kind of existence—there was precious little left over at the end of the week, if any at all—and I didn’t have any wealthy rellies poised to pop off their perches any time soon, so travel to exotic destinations was not an option.

But like I say, just a few months later, the call came in from an old mate of mine who was now producing a new travel show. He wanted me to help break in a young presenter they had lined up, and how did London and Rome sound for starters? I couldn’t say yes quickly enough. I sent a mental apology to the tarot-card reader for doubting his prowess.

It was a busman’s holiday, and it was everything I dreamed it would be. I think I bounced the whole way from Auckland to Heathrow, chatting to every person on the plane, be they staff or passengers. The excitement I felt landing in the UK and exploring London I still feel today whenever I return. Everything was so exotic and yet somehow familiar—probably from years of watching British television dramas and from long summer holidays playing Monopoly at the bach.

And then Rome—oh, what a city! The first night we were there the crew decided to eat at McDonald’s because they felt like something light and familiar. I couldn’t believe it. We were in a city with so much history and so many great restaurants, and they were heading for Maccas? I wasn’t having a bar of that. Putting on my best frock and my highest heels, I strolled the Via Veneto and found an appropriate café. The waiters looked askance at me when I asked for a table for one, but when I explained about my Philistine travelling companions, they couldn’t have been more helpful. Beautiful silky rounds of buffalo mozzarella were delivered to me; steamed artichokes served simply with garlic and the fruitiest of olive oil arrived; a bottle of red wine made by the cousin of the uncle of the owner of the place was opened. It was absolutely everything I’d ever dreamed of.

Even the old lech who wandered over in his cream pants and tasselled loafers and asked if I wanted to come up to his gallery to see his Modiglianis seemed to be straight out of central casting. Given the tightness of his pants, I felt I’d already seen as much of his Modiglianis as I wanted to see, so I demurred, tipped the waiters generously and returned to my digs, utterly enchanted with London, Rome and Planet Earth in general.

I could see why people had raved so much about the world. Travelling was pretty cool, and perhaps because I’d left it so late to experience the wonders of the four corners of the earth, I’ve never lost that thrill of arriving in another country, no matter the hour and no matter how long the flight.

On this trip, however, the thrill of being in London was somewhat tempered by the thought that in few days I was going to have to run a marathon. This was to be my third marathon—Auckland in 2006, New York in 2007 and now London in 2009—and so you might think I would have been well prepared and raring to go. But oh no—I was dreading this one. I was ten kilos heavier than when I’d run the Auckland Marathon, I’d done bugger-all training, and yet I felt unable to pull out.

As I waited in the slowly moving queue at Customs, shifting from one foot to the other, I felt a sick feeling in my stomach that could not be explained by the obscenely early hour or the airline food. I was not looking forward to this adventure one little bit—and I only had myself to blame. It took 37 minutes from the time we landed until my toes were lined up against the yellow line that meant I was next to be processed. Finally, I handed over my passport to Dave, a particularly pink and splendid example of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise representatives.

‘Here to see family, are you, love?’ asked Dave as he checked that my face matched the image in my passport. I should explain here that in my passport photo, I look like Charlize Theron. Sadly, it’s Charlize as the overweight lesbian serial killer in the film Monster, but Charlize Theron nonetheless. Clearly, 26 hours’ flying and the thought of the impending marathon had combined to make me look exactly like an overweight lesbian serial killer, so I passed muster.

I told Dave I was here for the London Marathon and with that his head shot up, his wee pink face got even pinker and we became new best mates. He was entered too, he told me. He’d given up the booze for the last six months, he’d lost 23 kilos and was hoping to lose 12 more. This was the beginning of the new Dave. He loved running, he loved the buzz he got from it, and although he didn’t yet have a girl, there was this great lass who’d promised she’d come out to support him. ‘Here’s hoping,’ he said wistfully.

I responded with genuine enthusiasm. I love hearing stories like Dave’s. If you meet real people who have turned their lives around, it gives you hope too. I told him that I was woefully unprepared, but if the gods of the marathon would just let me get through this one, I would train like a Trojan for the next one, drop all the extra weight and do Pilates every day. Dave launched into the diet that had helped him shed the extra pounds, but sadly I didn’t get past the lemon-juice-on-waking tip, as the rumblings of 17 plane-loads of pissed-off passengers queuing behind me were getting louder, and the fidgeting and sighing were about to escalate into a fully fledged riot if Dave and I didn’t break off all contact immediately. An officious-looking supervisor was heading towards us, so with a ‘Good luck!’ and a ‘Maybe we’ll see each other on Sunday!’ my new best friend and I parted company.

I took my meeting with Dave to be a good omen. To be honest, I was looking for them everywhere. I was trying not to step on cracks, I was counting black cats (I told myself that if I got to 42—one for every kilometre—I’d be fine), and I was repeating positive affirmations to myself (‘You can and you will!’) every time I thought no one was looking. If I’d put the same effort into my training as I’d put into trying to invoke good karma, I’d have been sweet. But as it was, I knew it was going to be my toughest challenge yet.

I emerged blinking from the depths of Heathrow into a beautiful spring morning, and searched for a taxi. The sky was cloudless and the temperature had already climbed into the early 20s. It was one out of the box—and utterly wasted on me. My London cabbie, however, was ever so proud. ‘They reckon it’s going to be hotter than Rome today,’ he said. I yawned as I struggled to find my manners through the fog of jet lag and said I could well believe it. He beamed and began whistling along to the radio. I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the soaring mercury, given that I was knackered after flying halfway around the world. I was also lugging a suitcase full of woollies and overcoats, having been warned by friends and family already ensconced in London that the temperatures were near freezing point and to be sure to bring plenty of thermals. I should have remembered that London in spring is capricious—blizzards one day, balmy sunshine the next. At least I wasn’t so jet-lagged that I failed to remember how proud Londoners are of their fine days, and I exclaimed once again over the gorgeousness of the blue sky.

My cabbie asked me why I was in London, and I told him I was running in the London Marathon. ‘Really?’ he said incredulously, glancing in the rear-view mirror. ‘Done one before then, love?’

I told him I’d run two, and his shoulders relaxed a little. He said that every year, for as long as he could remember, he’d gone out to stand on a footpath to cheer on the runners. It never ceased to amaze him, he said, how many people turned up to run without having done any training whatsoever. ‘It’s as if they think they can run 26 miles on sheer desire alone,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Are they mad? Anyone with half a brain would realise you’d have to actually do some training.’

I have got half a brain, and I’d run two marathons before, and I knew, more than anyone, just how important it was to train. Auckland in 2006 had been easy, because I’d trained for it—just as the cabbie had recommended. The New York Marathon in 2007 was a whole lot harder, because I’d faffed around and not really taken it seriously. I figured I’d done one before—how hard could it be? I’d found out over the last six miles through Central Park. It was tough. Bits of me I never knew I had were aching, and I’d wanted to lift up a subway vent, disappear into the steam, descend through the gates of Hell, and die.

Despite that experience, I’d put in even less training and preparation for this, the 2009 Flora London Marathon. I’d meant to—I was always going to get around to it—but it was almost as if I was trying to sabotage myself. Now the London Marathon was just five days away and I was royally screwed. I stared glumly out the cab window as a chorus of ‘if only’ played through my head—if only I’d given up the booze and forsworn fine food…if only I’d trained more…if only I wasn’t ten kilos heavier than when I’d done Auckland…if only I’d got injured.

There were no two ways about it—this was going to be ugly.

The taxi driver dropped me off at the hotel where we’d all be staying, a nasty ’70s monstrosity, but it was right in the centre of London—you could walk to Oxford Circus in 20 minutes—and the rooms were clean enough. Everywhere there were signs welcoming runners from all over the globe who’d come to London specifically to do the marathon.

It’s a very famous marathon, the London one. People are desperate to get a place in the race, and are willing to dress in any manner of outlandish costume to raise money for a worthy cause and participate in one of the great athletic events of the world. Gaining guaranteed entry in the London Marathon is the runner’s equivalent of finding a golden ticket in one of Willy Wonka’s chocolate bars. I, however, was not feeling like one of Willy Wonka’s chosen ones. I was feeling tired and grumpy, so in the interests of international relations I took myself off to bed for a bit of a nana-nap before I met up with the rest of the team and Kate, my daughter, with whom I was sharing the room—she’d flown over a couple of weeks earlier to catch up with some old school friends and was going to be my one-woman support crew during the race. I had a shower, set the alarm for lunchtime and crawled between the crisp cotton sheets. London had been around for nearly a thousand years. It could wait a couple more hours before I set off to explore it.

The sleep did me the world of good, and the arrival of each member of our team was a joyous one. The camaraderie you feel from training together as a team is wonderful, and you learn a lot about people very quickly. You’re there for each other’s highs and lows. You celebrate each other’s strengths, and try to help each other overcome weaknesses. You share the joy of each other’s triumphs, and commiserate when one of the team is injured, or struggling, or just low. So it was like greeting members of the family when Jon, Rachel, Anouska, Rowan and Cherie—and, of course, our intrepid leader, Gaz—arrived at the hotel.

We had a couple of days before M-Day—marathon day—so we took the opportunity to catch up with old friends and explore new haunts, getting together for a meal each night. Kate and I had to buy some summer clothes and a couple of pairs of jandals. London was sweltering in an unseasonable heat wave, and every park in the city was crammed with Londoners exposing acres of vulnerable white flesh. Global warming was alive and well in the Northern Hemisphere, and we were loving it. Kate had a selection of art galleries she wanted to visit and I had a couple of mates to catch up with, so I tried to put the marathon out of my mind for a while and enjoy my time in London.

However, it was hard to forget about the 42-km run that I was going to have to endure in 48 hours. It loomed like a monster on the edge of my mind every conscious hour. I was dreading it. I kept beating myself up for my lack of training and for wasting such a wonderful opportunity. The sooner it was over, the better, and perhaps then my normal life could resume.

Getting up at 5 a.m. never gets any easier. And getting up at 5 a.m. to run a marathon that you don’t want to run and you know you’re not ready for is even worse. All around London, thousands of men and women, young and old, were waking up, thrilled to be them and beside their wee selves at the prospect of running the 2009 Flora London Marathon. I wasn’t one of them.

From the time the alarm had gone off, I’d been lying in bed cursing the fact that I was a lazy, useless git. And while I was cursing, I cursed the fact that we were in London on one of those rare occasions that the city experiences a warm day in April. I’d been praying for a devastating spring storm that would have seen the marathon cancelled for the first time in its history. As the sun’s rays forced their way around the hotel curtains and I lay in bed, willing myself to move, I knew, with every fibre of my being, that I was in for hours and hours of pain before the day was over. I couldn’t blame Gaz, my trainer, for this one.

Unlike Auckland and New York, where he’d dragged me kicking and screaming through a training programme and then through the marathons, London had been solely