Still Running (weakly). Issue 38

PAST – inspiration – At the risk of turning this newsletter into an obituaries column, the death of Henry Rono last Thursday at the age of 72 cannot go unmarked. He was undoubtedly the world’s greatest distance runner of the late 1970s. In 1978, he set world records at 3000m, 3000 steeplechase, 5000 and 10,000, all of them by unprecedented margins. He also won two Commonwealth golds that year, but the Kenyan Olympic boycotts of 1976 and 1980 deprived him of the opportunity to win the global titles that his running deserved.

I saw him run in person just once – at the end of that legendary 1978 season – in a 2-mile race at Crystal Palace against Steve Ovett, newly crowned European 1500 champion. In a race for the ages, Rono tried to run away from the Brit, but Ovett clung on and sprinted past Rono in the finishing straight, in the process setting a world record himself.

Rest In Peace Henry.

PRESENT – perspiration – Olympic year is hotting up – both in words and deeds. After Josh Kerr of Great Britain set a world indoor two miles record of 8:00.67 last week, the man whom he beat to the 1500 world title last year, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, said that he would have beaten the Briton “blindfolded.” The Norwegian did run an outdoor world record of 7:54.10 for the distance last year. The comment follows Kerr’s criticism of Ingebrigtsen’s tactics and his manners in earlier interviews!

With Jake Wightman, Kerr’s predecessor as world 1500 champ (also beating Ingebrigtsen into second place), rounding into form, and other Brits George Mills and Adam Fogg running under 3:50 for the mile indoors, the Norwegian better let his feet do the talking if he is not to lose another global title to a UK athlete come the Olympics in Paris in August.

FUTURE – suggestion – Henry Rono’s training had a certain simplicity to it. Once he made up his mind to get fit, he would run hard every day and race more times than would have been healthy for ordinary mortals.

It is said that he did a lot of what the Americans call “wind sprints.” These are best done on a track and consist of several laps of sprinting the straights and jogging the bends. One can see even in Rono’s race against Ovett that he tends to do this, using every backstraight in particular to try and lose the Briton.

If your motivation for training is in danger of drowning in a sea of science, data, complexity and theory, then you could do a lot worse than running hard every other day with a diet of wind sprints thrown in a couple of times a week.

And it might make Henry smile…