The Birth Of The Bananathon (Saturday 21st June)

I can’t say how exciting the last week has been, to see the seed of an idea grow into a seedling of an event, a plant of publicity and soon to be a towering tree of something beginning with ‘T’. Pulling a hamstring a fortnight ago has given me too much time in the garden and not enough time running, although striding along the hills of the High Peak in February is where I first had the idea of what has turned into Tarzan’s Bananathon.

Doing so many races makes it really difficult to go around the same people asking for sponsorship. Being on the telly, people assume all your mates are minted, but the reality is they are as tight as a monkey’s fist and those big cars slurp a hell of a lot of diesel. Not really, folk at work have always been incredibly generous but a lot of them are constantly raising money for their own charities, so it isn’t the goldmine you might think. I wanted to come up with an idea that was a bit different to physically pull some money in so that I wasn’t just a ‘face at a race’. Some sort of an urban marathon.

I plotted out a route on Google maps from Oldham to Manchester City Centre, stopping at places I knew along the way; Audenshaw, Denton, Bredbury, Stockport and the distance magically came out at 26.2 miles, exactly the same as a full marathon distance. Seeing this as fate, I told my wife Ruth that I had come up with a vague idea of doing a marathon on my own with stops along the way at some shops to try and get donations for the Banana Army. Ruth gave it the all important seal of approval and offered to help, although neither of us had a clue what would need doing.

The next three people I told were pivotal. I separately had a word with fellow Stockport Harriers Sean Whewell and Tom McNally and they both thought the idea was great, not only offered to help, but offered to run the event with me. Suddenly faced with the prospect that everybody I let in on the plan would want to join me on the streets of Manchester, all very nice but hugely impractical, I decided to keep it under wraps apart from one inspirational figure and gave LRF’s celebrity running guru Ken Lomas a call with the words he loves to hear “Ken, I’ve got an idea”

Ken gave the usual response “Oh, Bloody Hell” and set the wheels in motion at Leukaemia Research Head Office.

With the cogs working overtime and a hugely enjoyable 2007 Flora London Marathon under my belt dressed as Elvis , thanks to another pesky injury (Presley, not Costello. Too hard to keep the pork pie hat on when you are running). I decided to run the 2008 in fancy dress again and as I was relatively fit, wanted to run in a light costume that would have some connection with the Banana Army. When Fran from the London Marathon press office gave me the green light not to wear a vest there was only one choice. Tarzan.

The crowd at London gave a great response to the costume and wonder of wonders, no chafing! Three hours, one minute and fifty five seconds later and there was no doubt the event later in the year should be Tarzan themed.

A few weeks after the marathon Kate White from LRF came up North for a meeting with me and Tom. We sat and discussed various aspects of the event; how it would work, should we open it to all sorts of venues, should start with a 5k race, a party at the end, should it take in famous landmarks, how long would it take to run it. Then we came to the sticky issue of what Tom and Sean should wear if I was Tarzan. It was decided one of them would be a banana and the other one would be a gorilla. “I’m not being the Gorilla” said Tom, “I’ll be the banana” (isn’t it great when dressing up as a banana is suddenly the better option).

We then had to discuss with Sean, who had his eye on wearing a normal LRF vest and shorts, (but had made the fatal mistake of going away for the weekend when he should have been at a meeting), that he may have to be dressed as a gorilla for twenty six miles.

So we did the decent thing, let him come back from his break and then debated at length the possibility of him wearing a full skin costume for the event. Actually, we text him with the message “Looks like you are a gorilla. Unlucky”. He gave a one word reply that would be inappropriate to use on this blog. Although I can reveal it began with a ‘B’ and rhymed with ‘plastereds’.

After having a good laugh at his misfortune we sent him another text which said “Or you could be Jane” Would you believe it, he fell for it hook line and sinker…..I mean, he contemplated the suggestion and agreed with the reply “If it means raising money for LRF I will dress up as anything”. (He obviously left the ‘apart from a gorilla’ bit off the end of his text).

So we had our Trio. Tarzan, Jane and the banana.

Lesson of the day. If you really want somebody to do something, first ask them to dress up as a gorilla.

More boring anecdotes to follow.

Tarzan x