The morning after the race I woke at about 5:30am. My body was tired but my mind couldn’t rest. I got up and walked, slowly, around the deserted Olympic village, and then out on to the street. This was the first time I had been alone since attempting to calm my nerves before the race started. My legs were stiff and sore, which was inevitable after running twenty-six miles, and I didn’t mind the soreness, because I expected it. However, I had not expected to feel the way I did mentally. I was still feeling numb, as if all the emotion had been sucked out of me. I felt happy, but I had a strange feeling that something was out of place.
After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I bought a newspaper, and read how three European runners had confounded the experts with a clean sweep of the marathon medals. With only three previous marathons between them, a Portuguese, an Irishman and an Englishman had overcome the heat, and their more experienced opponents, in a thrilling climax to the Olympic Games. I felt as if I was reading about the sort of people I had marvelled at for years; the sort of people who I had always believed were somehow different to ordinary mortals. When I read my name among them, I realised what was out of place. I had always assumed that ordinary people like me didn’t win Olympic medals. If it was such a great achievement, how come I had done it? I had been able to produce a supreme effort because the Olympics were so important to me, but I had always held it in such high esteem that my new status was very hard to come to terms with. Would I have to change, or was it just the image I had of myself that would have to change?
When I got home I realised that I was still the same, but other people thought I was different. I was in demand, and a lot of people wanted some of my time. My success in Los Angeles coincided with the running boom. The London Marathon and Great North Run had both started three years earlier, and thousands of people who had never run before were attempting half marathons and full marathons. They were all full of enthusiasm, but short of knowledge, so a lot of the races held seminars and invited people like me to talk to the runners.
I spent a lot of time travelling the country to attend these events. Some of them were big occasions and some were small. One of the largest groups I spoke to was in Lincoln when I addressed 500 runners the night before the Lincoln Half Marathon. Even at the time, I thought the night before was a little late to be advising them on their training, but that’s what I did.
Not all of the seminars were held in conjunction with a race. The best time to be informed and motivated is well before the targeted race. The middle of winter, when training can be difficult, seemed like an ideal time to pass on useful information to eager runners, so I agreed to be part of a mid-winter seminar in Barrow-in-Furness. If you have ever driven to Barrow you will realise that wherever you set off from, it is a difficult place to get to. I was living in Durham at the time and had to cross the Pennines and then the Lake District. It was either sleeting or snowing the entire way there. I was delayed by road works, accidents, floods, broken down tractors and diversions. It took hours and hours to get there. Luckily, I had given myself plenty of time, and arrived just before the seminar started. I was one of a panel of experts; there was a coach, a podiatrist, a dietician, and two runners. There were five of us on the panel, which was one more than there was in the audience.
No matter how many people came to the seminar I was always asked a lot of questions. Everybody wanted to know about training, shoes and diet, though once I was asked what I thought about breathing. I replied that I wholeheartedly recommended it. A big concern was always diet; so much so that I think a lot of newcomers to running were hoping they would be able to eat themselves into peak physical condition, rather than follow my advice, which involved quite a lot of training. There were various fad foods, supplements and diets, and I was often asked if eating this or that would improve performance. Once I was asked about cottage cheese, and I told them never to eat cottage cheese because it is the most fattening food in the world. I explained that I didn’t have any scientific evidence for this, but I have been all over the world and I have never seen anybody except fat people eat that stuff.
I had done a couple of seminars before the Games, but at every seminar afterwards I was asked the inevitable question, ‘How does it feel to win an Olympic medal?’ When people asked me this they were genuinely interested, but they always gave the impression they already knew the answer. After all, they had watched the Games on television, and from the comfort of their armchairs they had been able to experience the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat as it happened, and then again in slow motion.
The typical image of Olympic success comes from watching the 100 meters final. The athletes nervously go to their blocks; the starter’s commands ring out in a hushed stadium; eight strong men suddenly launch into action; they sprint flat out along the track and flash across the line. In that final moment, and only then, does the winner realise he has won. Accompanied by the other medallists, he immediately starts to dance up and down, slapping his hands, and waving his arms in the air. The sheer joy of this supreme victory flows out of him in a cascading display of pure happiness and ecstatic bliss.
I had to tell them that it isn’t quite like that in the marathon. When Carlos Lopes pulled away, and John Treacy and I moved clear of Joe Nzau at 23 miles, I knew I was going to win a medal. I clearly remember that wonderful moment of realisation. However, I couldn’t start jumping up and down and waving my arms in the air because I still had three miles to run. I provisionally had an Olympic medal, and it would be mine as long as I could keep going for the next fifteen minutes. As I ran those last miles and my tiredness increased, I had to channel all the excitement back into my running, and use my emotion to put one foot in front of the other. When I finally reached the stadium and crossed the line, and the medal was definitely mine, I did not jump up and down or wave my arms in the air, because the only thing I felt was relief; relief that I had not lost it.
‘Okay,’ they said to me, ‘the marathon is a weird event, and it’s not like the others. But it must be a wonderful experience to come through the tunnel into a spectacular Olympic stadium after all those miles of road, and run the final lap in front of such a huge, cheering crowd. The marathon is so special because of that finish in the stadium.’
I suppose it normally is, but as I ran the final lap around the Coliseum, the only thing I saw was a green and white vest of Ireland, with two scrawny, pale arms sticking out of it, slowly edging away from me. It wasn’t until after I crossed the line, that I became aware of the magnificent surroundings. Only then did I see the crowd, only then did I hear the noise, and only then did I appreciate the Olympic stage upon which I had been running. I had finished third, despite my last lap battle, so I might as well have been 100 yards behind, but safely ahead of fourth. Then I could have appreciated the last lap, and enjoyed the occasion, but my lasting memory of that moment will always be John Treacy’s back.
‘Okay, okay,’ they continue, ‘Your circumstances were unusual, but you must have enjoyed the closing ceremonies. The marathon finished as the closing ceremony began – it was an integral part of the whole spectacular finish. I saw those fireworks on television, and they were brilliant. It must have been wonderful to be right in the middle of that enormous party, having just run the race of your life.’
The medal presentation was a fantastic experience for me. As trumpets heralded the medalists approach, Lopes, Treacy and I walked across the track in line and then up onto a huge stage in the middle of the arena. I was stiff-legged but not as bad as Treacy, who needed a push from me to get up the steps. We stood behind the rostrum, and as a hush fell over the stadium, a Geordie voice from behind me shouted, ‘Well done, Charlie.’ I looked around to see who it was, which was pointless, because 40,000 faces were looking back at me. After Juan Antonio Samaranch, the President of the International Olympic Committee, had hung the medal around my neck, I proudly watched the Union Jack climb the smallest of three flagpoles whilst struggling to sing along to the Portuguese national anthem.
The closing ceremony party began as our presentation finished. However, from the moment I had crossed the finishing line I had been accompanied by an Olympic official, who had made sure that I did not take any drinks or food from anyone but himself. As I left the presentation podium, he escorted me through a tunnel underneath the stands, and out of the stadium to a port-a-cabin in the corner of the car park. There I was subjected to my first drug test.
It is a terrible indictment of modern sport that such things should be necessary, but unfortunately they are, and I was always happy to co-operate. The tests, I hoped, would catch the offenders, resulting in their disqualification, and would also prove that I was always clean. The procedure was straightforward; a urine sample was all that was required. After answering a few questions and signing a declaration, I was given a plastic beaker and, accompanied by my designated official, I retired to a cubicle in the corner of this caravan in the car park of the Coliseum.
Can you imagine how hard it is to produce urine into a plastic beaker, after running twenty six miles as hard as you can in 85 degrees of heat, with a complete stranger staring at you? Well, that is where I spent the whole of the closing ceremony.
No matter how poorly my experiences fit the expectations of others, I was always happy to talk to people about them, and especially about the thrill of competing at the highest level. It was my constant hope that among all the people I came across, I might really, truly reach somebody. Perhaps there was one young runner in all those audiences who would be inspired by what I said. Perhaps, like me, he would be engulfed with the vision and desire to be his very best, and after many years of hard training and commitment he would make it to the British team. Maybe, then, he would travel to some distant city where he would perform with fearless conviction, and superlative effort. Then, in the shadow of that famous five ringed flag maybe, just maybe, he too could stand with pride in a port-a-cabin with a plastic beaker in his hand.
My speaking engagements soon diversified from runners’ seminars to fund raising dinners and sports club award nights. After a few more months, I was receiving invitations from groups with no connections to sport at all. The most unusual one I ever received was from a local institution in Sedgefield. There was a hospital there called Winterton Psychiatric Hospital, and a new consultant psychiatrist had recently been appointed. He believed that some of his patients were not mentally ill but merely eccentric. Their eccentricity had made them feel like outcasts in their communities, which had led some of them to depression. He felt that if they could accept their eccentricity and learn to feel all right about it they could return to living at home. Part of his plan was to introduce them to a variety of people who were very much accepted in life, but did slightly eccentric things. He considered that running 26 miles 385 yards as fast as possible, qualified me to speak to these people.
This was such a strange invitation that I accepted it. After all, I was living a happy and healthy life, and it would be good for my soul to give something back to society and those less fortunate than me. On the day of the talk I arrived early and was met in the car park by the consultant. As we had plenty of time he showed me some of the occupational therapy workshops they used, and explained how important it was to keep the patients active in both body and mind. In the last room one of the patients was finishing some work.
The consultant whispered to me, ‘That’s Tom. He’s been here a long time, but he has made a lot of progress. I will introduce you to him.’
We walked over and the consultant said, ‘Charlie, this is Tom. Tom, this is Charlie Spedding. He is an Olympic bronze medallist in the marathon.’
Tom looked at me, and then with a gentle smile he put one hand on my shoulder. He leaned slightly towards me, and in a soft, comforting voice he said, ‘Charlie, it’s alright. When I came in here I thought I was Henry the Eighth.’