Mario Horio interviewed his old friend James Squires on the eve of the London marathon. James is a Professor of Psychiatry at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. He's fifty-five. In 1986 he narrowly missed being chosen for the ordinary person slot on the ill-fated Apollo flight.

MH  How long've we known each other now?
JS  Getting on for thirty years. We met in Lausanne in 1972, didn't we, when I was a medical student.
MH  You didn't seem to be particularly athletic then.
JS  That was at a time in my life when the most exercise I took was lifting up a record needle.
MH  So suddenly, marathons. Why?
JS  I wanted to keep in shape and someone invited me to run in the Chase Corporate Challenge in Central Park, so I did, and I realised that I could run as fast as everyone else. And these were serious runners, some of them. The scene in New York is unreal. I did the New York City Marathon in 1988 and that started it.
MH  How many is it now?
JS  Assuming I finish tomorrow, this'll be my thirtieth marathon.
MH  Amazing. Which ones have you done?
JS  New York ten times, then, different times, Los Angeles, Houston, New Jersey, Long Island, Montreal. I ran in Tahiti. In Europe I've done Stockholm, Lausanne and Paris. Then I decided I wanted to run on all seven continents.
MH  Why?
JS  It was kind of a goal. So I did Buenos Aires, Cape Town, then the Sahara desert.
MH  That must've been hot.
JS  It was warm.
MH  Where did you run?
JS  Near a place called Tindouf in Southern Algeria. It's a part of the desert where the Saharawi people have refugee camps. Since the Moroccans took over Spanish Sahara, the Polisario Front have been trying to get independence for the Saharawi people.
MH  I know. And there's this big man-made berm in the desert isn't there.
JS  Yeah.
MH  Still into radical politics.
JS  I haven't changed.
MH  So after the Sahara, where next?
JS  I ran in the Himalayas.
MH  How high?
JS  Up and down at 12,000 feet.
MH  Was it safe?
JS  Mainly. At one point there was a ledge about four feet wide and I'm thinking, I don't want to overtake anyone on this, and I looked over and there were clouds beneath us, thousands of feet below, and it was just dark. You couldn't see the bottom.
MH  How long was that ledge?
JS  It felt like about a mile.
MH  There must've been hills, right?
JS  Yeah. It's up and down. When you went down, your heart would sink, because you knew you'd have to go back up. And on the way up your lungs are bursting and you think, I'll just make it to the top of that hill. And when you got to the top of that hill, there'd always be another hill.
MH  How many runners were there on that?
JS  About a hundred.
MH  So after the Himalayas...
JS  Antarctica. Starting from the Uruguayan base, through the Chinese to the Russian.
MH  That's at the other extreme.
JS  It was cold but not that cold.
MH  I've counted six continents. Where was the seventh?
JS  Melbourne, Australia.

MH notices a bag.

MH  What's this?
JS  I'll carry a fanny bag with me on the race.
MH  A what?
JS  Like a bum bag. This is a fanny bag.
MH  What d'you have in it?
JS  Stuff I might need.
MH  What's that.
JS  Naprosyn. It's a long-acting analgesic. I take it prophylactically before the race to counter inflammation.
MH  What else?
JS  Immodium and pepto-bismol to take care of diarrhoea. If I feel it coming on, I take it. Kleenex - there's never any paper in the portable toilets. And money - if I have to take a cab.
MH  Have you ever had to take a cab?
JS  So far, not during a race.
MH  Anything else?
JS  Sun-tan lotion. And Vaseline.
MH  Vaseline.
JS  Sometimes, you need Vaseline.
MH  If you need to, um, piss and you can't hold on, what d'you do?
JS  If I'm in a race like London I'll go to the portable toilet. If I'm just running in New York I'll go behind a bush. Everyone does it.
MH  Women do it?
JS  Yeah. It takes longer for women and, in a race, they lose time.
MH  So...
JS  Sometimes they don't bother to stop.
MH  Really.
JS  If it's a really competitive race and they're going to lose two minutes, some won't bother to stop. They'll justŠ not bother to stop.
MH  Hmmn. More tea?
JS  Okay.
MH  When you're in the middle of a marathon, d'you ever lose track of time and just go into yourself and lose yourself in a kind of meditation?
JS  Yes. Absolutely.

I arranged to be at the 14 mile mark the next day with my wife to urge James on, but somehow we missed him. I called him later. He'd come in at around five hours. Not a good time for him. He'd realised it wasn't going to be a good day when a man in a rhinoceros outfit overtook him, but he was okay, he hadn't injured himself and he'd done what he came to do. He'd run his thirtieth marathon.