Still Running (weakly). Issue 167

PAST – inspiration –“How can they run so fast after running so far.”  On Monday, 10th August, my mind once again went back 55 years to that dark night in 1971 when I watched Juha Vaatainen of Finland and Jurgen Haase of East Germany run the last lap of the European 10,000 metres in Helsinki in 53 seconds, the Finn prevailing by a yard or so in front of his home crowd.

It was the moment that started me running.

Watching it again on YouTube, I am still stunned by the sheer athleticism of those guys.  How can they run so fast after running so far, I asked myself then and still ask myself now.  Though now I have more of a clue about the answer!

But it was an all too brief moment in the limelight for Vaatainen.  Already 30 years of age by Helsinki, he was injured at the Munich Olympics in 1972, coming last in the 5000, having to watch his countryman, Lasse Viren, take over the mantle of the number one Flying Finn by winning golds in the 5000 and 10,000.

In 1974, ‘Juha the Cruel’ prepared demonically for the European Championships in Rome.  There is a passage in Brendan Foster’s book that describes the Englishman training with him (or trying to): “He was running around thirty miles a day, with amazing sessions like running a hard 1000 metres twenty times on the track.  On long road runs he was almost sprinting along, and although I was beginning to run really well then, I had great difficulty in keeping up with him.”

Foster was indeed running well, because a few weeks later he set two British records at the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch – with a silver behind Ben Jipcho in the 5000, and in seventh place in Filbert Bayi’s world record 1500.

Unsurprisingly, Vaatainen never made it to Rome (where Foster won the 5000), being injured due to his maniacal ‘Further and faster’ training workload, retiring for good that year.

PRESENT – perspiration – “I’m flying,” said James, not a Finn but one of the athletes I coach.  He is building up for the Berlin Marathon in September. 

I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks when I noticed this figure walking across the car park at Alice Holt.  “Is that James?” I asked myself.  He was so slim I almost didn’t recognise him!

He does a lot of his training running from home to his workplace early in the morning: “All my commutes are going really well.  I have to tell myself to slow down.  I set a 10km PB on one the other day!”

Such is the joy of a runner who is running better than ever, who is setting personal bests without actually trying, and who is following a schedule, going hard some weeks but also – crucially, obediently – resting and recovering on others.

And then there’s Harry.  The idea to do a half ironman came to him and two of his friends in a pub late last year.  Despite beginning in bacchanalian bravado, Harry took the challenge seriously, training harder than he ever had before – with morning swims and evening track sessions, 7am weights and 7pm bike outings bookending his workdays.

Things looked good when he finished first in a parkrun in May, and bore more substantial fruit when did indeed smash his half ironman in July, following it up with new 5km and half marathon personal bests in the four weeks after – the latter by four minutes.

If you are lucky enough – make that, if you’ve worked hard enough and intelligently enough – to find yourself in a purple patch like Vaatainen’s in Helsinki, or like James’s or Harry’s this summer, relish it, respect it and remember it.  It won’t last forever. 

FUTURE – suggestion – My heartfelt thanks to those of you who messaged to tell me how much you appreciated last week’s “Weakly,” including Simon, Fred, Bob, Thommo, Malcolm, Sara and Gabz.  It really does make it all worthwhile.

A recurring theme in your feedback was around the recording of races.  And you asked me to go into a little bit more detail on how I do this.

Obviously, there are many methods – from a pen and notebook through to the many online apps.

I use a simple spreadsheet – partly because things like Strava had not been invented when I started to note down my races – and partly because I am an unapologetic, unreconstructed dinosaur.

I simply type in the number race this is, the number of finishes it makes, the date, the name of the event, the distance to the nearest tenth of a mile, the type of event (R for run, W for walk, T for triathlon, etc.) my time split into hours, minutes and seconds, and then, if it’s a parkrun, which number parkrun it is.  I also have a column for notes – for things like “PB” or “Won” – but I don’t seem to have used that column much recently! 

So a typical recent entry might be:

1796 | 1785 | 01/08/2026 | Alice Holt | 3.1 | R | 0 | 58 | 56 | 727

If you’re into spreadsheets, you can immediately see the mathematical possibilities.  You can add up the distances to get a total.  You can then add the hours (multiplied by 3600) the minutes (multiplied by 60) and the seconds to achieve a total number of seconds raced, which you can then divide by the miles to calculate your average speed.  You can divide the total miles by the number of events to get an average race distance.  You can even take the total seconds raced and work out how many days, hours, minutes and seconds you have wasted – I mean spent – racing.

If you like, you can go on to produce yearly totals of races, of distances, etc..

In calculating the averages, do remember that, if you have dropped out of any races (who would do such a thing?!), these will skew your results – so you will need to account for these.   

It is of course up to you exactly what you record and to what accuracy.  Given that I was never worried whether I had run the 100 metres in 9.94 or 9.95 seconds, I felt that going to the nearest second was sufficiently accurate.  And because most of the races I do are reasonably long, recording them to the nearest tenth of a mile seemed appropriate.

Please do feel free to share with me how you record your races – and your training – if you like – and do ask questions if any of the above comes across as irredeemable dinosaur-speak.