Still Running (weakly). Issue 175

PAST – inspiration – "You talk about all these great runners, Steve, but who is your greatest running hero?” asked the lady who approached me at the end of a talk I’d given at her running club.

My hero?  Steve Ovett always comes to mind when I consider this subject – Olympic gold at 800, European gold at 1500 and Commonwealth gold at 5000 – plus the odd league 200 and local half marathon wins – all speak of his unmatched range.  And he was a down-to-earth ‘runner’s runner.’  When I bumped into him at Crystal Palace gym and congratulated him on his majestic World Cup victory in 1977, he was genuinely delighted.

Then again, I never thought I’d live to see a sub-2 hour marathon, but Sabastian Sawe (Kenya) and Yomif Kejelcha (Ethiopia) have proved me wrong in London this year.  They’re great, but they’re not my heroes.

Then my mind strays onto ultrarunners.  Don Ritchie (Scotland) is probably the greatest of all time (and a hero whom I raced against) or he was until Aleksandr Sorokin (Lithuania) came along – but does a 6:05:35 100km in 2023 beat a 6:10:20 in 1978?  And how do you compare them with my clubmate, Sandra Brown, who would never claim to be the fastest athlete, but her longevity means she has completed well over 200 100-mile-plus races – mostly race walking – more than any other human.  Heroic indeed.

But there is another way of looking at this, at identifying your hero or heroes.  Bryan Adams’s recent song about fellow Canadian Terry Fox reminds me that being a hero is not all about performance – sometimes displaying bravery, overcoming obstacles and inspiring others is more valuable.

And maybe, you can only really judge someone’s heroism when you know what they have been through – when you have almost literally walked (or run) a mile in their shoes. 

One lady I coached balanced her training with the demands of family life, completing every long run with dedicated precision, before achieving a lifetime’s ambition by clocking 3:57 in the London Marathon.  And again, another lady I know finally beat 5 hours there after many years of trying.

Or perhaps it should even be the people I know best of all.  My son and daughter.  I know every work demand that has heaped stress onto an already packed training day, every injury scare, every session that hasn’t quite gone to plan, every nervous misgiving before a vital race.

So I know that, this year, my son’s target-smashing half Ironman, half marathon PB and parkrun first finishes, and my daughter’s trail 50km (more than half an hour faster than before) and 10km PB, have come at a cost.  This is not a cop-out to the ‘greatest ever’ question, because it is only when you have seen the blood, sweat and tears behind the t-shirts, the times and the triumphs, that you can award ‘my greatest hero’ status.

But finally, I feel that we must circle back to Terry Fox, who died at 22, and include him alongside the other two youngsters, because we can see, across the years and across the miles, what it cost him in every step that he took. 

Yeah, the road was long where he once ran. 

He did the best any human can.

Get across the country, that’s the plan.

That’s the spirit of our man.

PRESENT – perspiration – “Do people who walk large sections of a marathon deserve to say they’re marathoners?”

There is a trend that suggests that walking half or most of a marathon is OK – it’s inclusive.  The London Marathon is twice the size next year: this is not to accommodate more sub-3 hour runners!

And there seems to be an equally vocal backlash against this trend.  These latter folk suggest that a marathon is supposed to be hard.  It is something that one must train for.  One should respect the distance, prepare properly for it, and earn that finish line, medal and backslapping water-cooler moments.

This dilemma reminded me of an email I sent to an athlete of mine who wanted to mark her 50th birthday by running 50 miles.  She’d had problems – injuries, illness, family crises – and wanted to make it 50km instead.  She had still done most of the prescribed training, so I wrote: “You can do 50km if you like but you will regret it afterwards ………. This is not about it being manageable or easy to do, or anything like that – it is because it is difficult to do, that you are doing it, and why we run marathons and test ourselves anyway.  I repeat, it is precisely because it is difficult that you are doing it, and why you wanted to run 50 miles in the first place.”

So you can see that I am an old-school, hard-nosed runner, but even I am a little conflicted about people just ‘getting through’ a marathon – not training properly and therefore having to walk most of it.  Who is judging them?  Us?  The marathon runners who have put in the work and reaped our due reward?  At least they are out there doing something – more than most people in fact……..

What do you think? 

FUTURE – suggestion – You hear it all the time………..

“I’m just going to jog round today.”  “I’m using it as a training run.”  “I’ve had a bit of a cold this week.”  “I’ve only just got over that sore hamstring.”  “I don’t feel ready for the marathon, so I’ve dropped down to the half.”

All these really means is, “I am scared of this race, so I’ve thought up an excuse.”

Fiona was a very good runner.  Back in the 90s, we used to go to a lot of races together.  She’d run a 40:23 10km and was desperate to get under 40.  Thing is, every 10km race we went to, also had a 5km option…….

Which she always took.  “Good speed training,” she said.

“But at some point, you’re going to have to grasp the nettle and attack a 10km,” I said.

“I know,” she said, with a faraway look in her eyes.

She never did, and now she never will.

The siren call of the excuse, in her case the 5km, is very tempting.

Because it’s not easy.  Think about it.  In attacking your running target, you are asking your body to deploy every last bit of endurance, strength and speed across every moment of that race.  You are asking your mind to keep clenched on your goal for every second of the test.

No wonder we’re scared.

But the degree of satisfaction you experience when you do complete the challenge is directly proportional to the degree to which it scares you.