Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 119, June 2019 | Page 20

ROAD RUNNING
Outrunning the
Demons
A lifetime’s ambition to watch England play a cricket match
abroad was fulfilled for UK journalist, author and marathon
runner Phil Hewitt on 14 February 2016, when he watched
a one-day international at the glorious Newlands Cricket
Ground in Cape Town. However, a couple of hours after
leaving the ground, Phil was stabbed and left for dead in a grim suburb he knows he should
never have strayed into. In his new book, Outrunning The Demons , Phil tells of the years of trauma that have followed
the knife attack. But more importantly, he tells the uplifting tale of how he has used running to get himself back to nearly
normal. This is his story.
how damagingly. But maybe in the past couple of
months, I have finally turned the corner. My new book,
Outrunning The Demons (published by Bloomsbury) is
my love song to running, my testament to the healing
power of putting one foot in front of another at speed,
my hymn to the way running has picked me up and
put me back on my feet. Quite literally.
It’s a day that will stay with me for as long as I draw
breath. How odd that it should have been one of the
greatest days of my 52 years until that point… the
point I was viciously stabbed, punched and kicked
and abandoned by the roadside. How quickly the
day changed. How dramatically. How painfully. And
In the book, I tell my own story and that of 34 other
people – not necessarily runners in the first instance
– who have been to hell and have discovered, just
as I did, that the surest, quickest, safest way back
is to run. Outrunning The Demons is a volume which
was written in blood, sweat and tears. Its publication
has certainly been a personal landmark as I try – with
increasing though probably only partial success – to
put distance between me and a ghastly evening in
Cape Town in February 2016.
Conflicted Thoughts
The trouble with being stabbed, assuming you survive,
isn’t so much the knife that goes into you. No, the
real trouble is the mess of thoughts it leaves behind...
thoughts, in my case, far harder to deal with than the
physical injuries. But for me, as I hold a copy of my book
in my hands, I know I am definitely on the right path now.
St Valentine’s Day 2016. And what a day. I got there
stupidly early and I was among the first in the ground.
It was virtually empty. I asked a steward whether I
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ISSUE 119 JUNE 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
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C
ape Town is surely one of the most beautiful
and exhilarating cities on earth, a real pinch-
me am-I-really-here type place, which thrills
and delights in equal measure. It is also, like so many,
many cities around the world, a place where you really
need to keep your wits about you. I didn’t – and I
nearly paid for my mistake with my life.