The marathon that is learning

Last weekend, I ran 18.7 miles through the streets of San Francisco – the farthest I’ve ever run in my life. The adrenaline fuelled joy of running non-stop for three hours through such a great city at its early Saturday morning best was quickly overwhelmed by a big dark doubt. In London, in five weeks’ time, I’ve got to keep running for another hour or more and a further 7.5 miles. How on earth am I going to do that?

That begged another question that my wife has been asking for months and which I’ve just started to acknowledge myself: why? Why, at the age of 55 and with a pretty full on job that makes finding the time for long runs difficult, would I want to put myself through the pain of all that training – and risk the embarrassment of failing to complete my first (and certainly last) marathon?

It goes back to late October 2009. I was sat in the waiting room at the Royal Marsden cancer hospital waiting to see my oncologist for the first time. Being diagnosed with throat cancer at the age of 47 was a frightening and discombobulating experience, and I felt about as low as I’ve ever felt in my life. Then a fit, lean, younger man walked in. It looked like he’d come straight from work on his bike. He went up to reception and announced he was here for his annual check-up. My wife, a much more resilient and positive person than me, leaned over and said:

“That’ll be you in a few years’ time.”

And so, I guess, running the marathon is my way of saying:

“This is me in that few years’ time.“

I don’t know who that man was and, in all the time I’ve spent at the Royal Marsden since then, I’ve never seen him again. But none of us who survive cancer want to be defined by it.

In my case, surviving cancer enabled me to carry on working at Pearson, where our mission is to help people make progress in their lives through learning. We believe strongly that education transforms lives, and literacy is the foundation. That’s why I’ll be running the London Marathon on behalf of the National Literacy Trust, an independent charity dedicated to raising literacy levels in the UK. They have directly supported more than 2 million disadvantaged children over the last 25 years, giving them the literacy skills they need to make progress in their lives. They are also one of our Project Literacy partners, a global campaign founded and convened by Pearson to bring the power of words to the world, by building partnerships and driving action, to tackle the global crisis in illiteracy.

I can, just about, imagine a day when I can’t run, but I can’t conceive of a time when I can’t read. Running a marathon is daunting. But how much more daunting is it for an illiterate adult learning to read – or reach out for the help to ensure their children are not destined to endure the same fate? That fate – of poor literacy skills – almost certainly brings with it a life of poverty and poor health, too.

You run one step at a time, one mile at a time and it’s the same thing with literacy: one letter, one word at a time is progress. 

So, when I line up at the start on April 22, I will be there to celebrate my own health and the medical staff who saved my life. I will also be there to support the National Literacy Trust, Project Literacy, and the millions of children, and their parents, who are brave enough to face literacy head on in the marathon that is learning.