Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography (16 page)

When I saw Sam lying there in the hospital, the first thing that went through my head was that I wanted to wake him up. I kept waiting for him to open his eyes and say something. But he didn’t. His eyes stayed clamped shut. So many things were going through my head. I wanted to know more about what had happened. Where, when, how, why? It didn’t seem possible. One minute we had been joking and laughing, talking about the future. Then all of a sudden, Sam was gone.

He was just twenty-four years old.

Anthony, Neil and me drove back to Potchefstroom in silence. The camp was eerie. Everyone was devastated by the news. None of us wanted to stay for a moment longer. We wanted to go home.

For the longest time I didn’t want to talk about what had happened. I didn’t say anything to anyone. Not to Alan or my friends or my family. But not talking about it didn’t help. The only way you can deal with stuff like that is by talking. Gradually, I started to talk about it with people close to me, to try to come to terms with it. I didn’t want to admit it at first, but Sam’s death affected me deeply.

The hardest thing of all was accepting that life goes on. I found that really hard to take. I’d always imagined that when people died, life was never the same any more. But it doesn’t work that way. The rest of the world goes on without you. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. For a time, everything felt different, but then slowly things started returning to normal. That was actually the scariest part for me. I’d see Sam’s younger brother Tim around the club and instantly I’d be transported back to that night in Potchefstroom.

In the end, I realized that life is precious – that you don’t have any control over certain things, and all you can do in this life is to try to be kind and decent to those around you. To be a good person, to do the best you can. Sam was a brilliant young athlete. More than that, he was one of the nicest guys in athletics. That’s the memory I have of Sam. I’ve tried my best to follow his example.

I still kept in touch with Tania. Our lives were pulling us in different directions, but we were still close and we still found time to chat on the phone – these long conversations talking about nothing really, like you do at that age. A year or two into my time at St Mary’s I dropped hints to Tania, about the way I felt about her. I remember us talking on the phone one evening as I was getting ready to fly out to yet another training camp. I said something about wanting to pack Tania in my suitcase and take her everywhere I went. Anyway, it didn’t happen. I didn’t feel any resentment over it. I was just happy to be friends. I still dropped in on Tania, popping round to her house and chatting with Bob and Nadia. Tania had a boyfriend at the time, but regardless of that fact, I always had what I like to call the sweet spot for her. And Tania knew how I felt, even if I hesitated to express it. One evening in early 2005 I went over to her place for a chat. We did our usual thing. Sitting around, listening to some tunes. I didn’t know it at the time, but Tania was pregnant. The fact that she didn’t tell me was nothing to do with shame or anything like that. Tania simply didn’t want to hurt my feelings. She didn’t feel the same way about me as I did about her, and she knew that if I learned she was having a baby with someone else I’d be disappointed – because that would mean things might never happen between us. Actually, I didn’t find out that Tania was pregnant until she gave birth to Rhianna that summer. None of this altered my feelings towards Tania. We kept in touch after Rhianna had been born, although shortly after that we might only speak once in a blue moon. Partly that was the stress of motherhood for Tania. Partly it was down to my training commitments and travelling. For a couple of years, things simply got in the way.

For a while after Sam died, training felt weird. I needed something to focus on, something to take my mind off Potchefstroom. The next big meet on the horizon was the 2005 European Under-23 Championships, which were taking place in Erfurt, Germany, in July. I felt good about my prospects going into the Under-23s. My times had been good in training, I’d put my knee problems behind me and I’d improved my 5000 metres personal best to 13:30.53. Earlier that year I finished sixth in the European Indoor Championships in Madrid in a personal best 7:54.08. At the Under-23 championships two years earlier in Poland, Chris Thompson had beaten me into second place. This time I was determined to win.

Erfurt was a wake-up call. I was way off the pace, finishing 4 seconds behind the winner, Anatoliy Rybakov of Russia, in 14:10.96. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but losing in Erfurt was the best thing that could have happened to me. The disappointment of that defeat stung me to the core and helped to focus my mind. I flew home from Germany, thinking that something had to change.

My results in 2005 were a real mixed bag. I was trying to make the step up from the juniors to the senior ranks and was quickly finding out that there was a big difference between the two. My first race for Great Britain had been at the World Cross Country Championships in St Etienne-St Galmier, France. I finished in thirty-seventh place in a field dominated by Kenyans, Eritreans and Ethiopians. There was also a bunch of Kenyan athletes who’d switched to Qatari nationality, which made the field even stronger.

Personally, I’m against fast-tracking the naturalization of athletes. I don’t blame the runners – these guys have families to feed, and athletics careers are notoriously fragile and short-lived. It’s hard for some of them to make the Kenyan team, simply because there are so many good runners in Kenya. If they go to Qatar, they can make enough money to look after their family, have a good life, and compete in the Olympics and the World Championships. But I believe the countries themselves shouldn’t be allowed to naturalize athletes so easily. If you want to run for Qatar or Bahrain, you should be expected to live in that country for a number of years before becoming eligible. At the moment you have guys who are running for Kenya one minute and appearing at the Worlds for Qatar the next. That isn’t right.

It would be a lie to say that East Africans weren’t totally dominating the field. I saw it in competitions, and I saw it in training too. Every Sunday a few of the lads and me would do a hill session in Richmond Park. We’d meet up at Ham Common and do sessions up and down the incline just inside Ham Gate. The sun would be out, people would be jogging or walking their dogs, and the swans would be floating on the lake. Then the Kenyans would rush past us, this blur of colour tearing up the incline at a ridiculously fast pace. I’d glance at Scott Overall or Abdi Ali. We were all thinking exactly the same thing: ‘Man, these guys are
gooooood
.’

The problem I faced was the same one that had affected any aspiring British or European distance runner over the past several years. From early on in my athletics career there was this general belief that the Kenyans were so far ahead of the rest of the competition that they couldn’t be beaten. None of my coaches ever told me this. It’s just something you absorb from a young age. The mentality at the time sort of said, ‘The Kenyans are too good and you’ll never beat them. The best you can do is finish fourth and just enjoy yourself.’ It’s the equivalent of a football team entering the World Cup and on the eve of their first game the coach telling the players: ‘We’ll never beat Brazil, so let’s just beat the teams below us and hope for the best.’ Then they meet Brazil in the quarter-final and they lose – because they expect to lose.

I started thinking to myself, ‘How do I beat these guys?’

At the same time, I was ready to move out of St Mary’s campus. I’d given up my studies at the college in Richmond and enrolled on a sports massage therapy course at the university. I figured that it was at least related to my career. Once I finished that course, I was ready for a change of scenery. Some of the lads had moved on. Lee had gone home to Burnley. I was sad to see him go. At the time I didn’t think he was leaving for good. I thought, ‘Yeah, he’ll come back.’ He never did, which was a shame. Lee had the talent to be a major force in cross country running, but a career in athletics isn’t for everyone. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. The training is hard, painful and often boring. You miss your friends. You miss your family. At the lower end of the scale, the money isn’t great. You can get injured, and even if you’re supremely talented and hard-working, it doesn’t always pan out. Malcolm Hassan had gone to do a sports scholarship at Utah Valley University in the US. For whatever reason, it didn’t quite happen for him out there. James McIlroy fared better. He clocked 1:44.65 in the 800 metres in Rieti, Italy, after leaving St Mary’s, finished fourth in the European Championships and competed for Britain in the Olympic Games, World Championships and three Commonwealth Games.

With guys like Lee and James leaving, a new intake of athletes arrived to take their places at the centre. Suddenly, I was one of the older guys. The new kids were doing the things that I’d already done when I first started at St Mary’s: going on nights out to Kingston, staying up all night, going to fancy-dress parties. I felt I’d done all that stuff already, and the thought of doing it all over again didn’t really appeal to me. Most of all, I was beginning to understand that I needed to calm down if I was serious about competing at the highest level. With that in mind, I took the decision to leave the campus and live somewhere else. I felt that a change of environment would be good for me. The only problem I had now was: where am I going to live?

I mentioned to my agent Ricky that I was looking for somewhere to live. ‘Well, Mo,’ he said after he’d given it some thought. ‘Why don’t you try living with the Kenyans?’

I should explain. PACE represented numerous Kenyan athletes. Whenever they were competing in Europe, they would stay two to six weeks at a time in a house on a leafy road in Teddington. The idea of living there had never occurred to me before, but the more I started to think about it, the more it made sense. I had always been curious about what the Kenyans were doing differently that made them so much faster in competition.

‘There’s a room free at the house,’ Ricky explained. ‘The rent is cheap. It’ll be a great chance for you to see how the Kenyans live and train. It might open up your eyes a little, Mo.’

The truth of it is, I wasn’t fulfilling my potential on the track. And it wasn’t down to my coaching or my race tactics. It was down to me not training to the same high standards as the Kenyans. Staying there was a chance for me to live like them, to do the same things. I didn’t need any more convincing.

I said, ‘When can I move in?’

It would turn out to be a life-changing decision.

F
ROM
the outside, the house where the Kenyans stay isn’t much to look at. It’s set on a leafy, tree-lined street in Teddington and looks like every other house in the road. Inside, though, it was a different story: it was home to some of the most talented Kenyan athletes in the world, and they had very clear ideas about how to eat, sleep, train and rest. From late 2005 for the best part of eighteen months, I lived and trained at the Kenyan house. It’s a special place for me because it’s where the Kenyans showed me how to live like a professional athlete. How to dedicate myself fully to athletics.

The list of people who stayed at the house throughout the year reads like a who’s-who of Kenyan distance runners: Olympic Champions Noah Ngeny, William Tanui, Joseph Keter; World Champions and World record holders like Moses Kiptanui, Daniel Komen, Benjamin Limo, John Kibowen, Saif Saaeed Shaheen, Jackline Maranga, Sally Barsosio and Sammy Kipketer; Commonwealth Champions like Laban Rotich. The list goes on and on. In my first year I would see Colin Jackson, Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe popping in to get treatment from the physio, Gerard Hartmann, who worked from the house during the summer. Living among these guys was an eye-opening experience, and it took some getting used to.

The first evening after I moved in, I remember getting ready to head out to the cinema with some mates. I went downstairs to see if any of the Kenyans wanted to come along. To my surprise, they were getting ready to go to bed. I looked at my watch. It was half past eight. I was like, ‘No way can they be calling it a night already! It’s still very early.’ I left, met up with my friends. Came home about midnight. The lights were out. Everyone was asleep.

I was woken up at 6 a.m. by the sound of church music. Now, I’m not a morning guy at the best of times. Rolling out of bed at 9.30 or 10.00 a.m. – that was more my thing. Imagine my surprise when I cracked open my eyes, saw that it was still dark outside and the house was filled with the sound of a choir singing hymns to a blaring organ accompaniment. It was like waking up on the set of
Songs of Praise
.

The Kenyans went out for their first run early. They’d be up, dressed and out the front door no later than 7 a.m. They believed it was best to get the first run out of the way nice and early, when your head is clear and your body is nicely rested. Their main route was through Bushy Park. I remember shaking my groggy head clear and staggering out of bed to join them on a run. The Kenyans trained hard. And I mean really
hard
. Those first sessions, I bust a gut trying to keep up with them. By the end of the session I was knackered. After the run they spent forty-five minutes doing stretches, taking a few strides to warm down. I’d never warmed down for that amount of time. After our first training session, we went back home and the guys would rustle up some food. The Kenyans didn’t go in for Tesco Value lasagnes or McDonald’s burgers. They cooked simple, home-grown foods in these massive pots, typical Kenyan staples like
ugali
, a maize flour mix rolled into a doughy lump and cooked in a pot, served up with a stew or sauce to dip it in. This was new to me; I’d never tried it before. Kenyan runners swear by
ugali
: it’s loaded with the carbohydrates that distance runners need.

After food, they’d sleep. In the afternoon, they trained again. In the evenings they ate, rested and went to bed early. They did this every day. It was a question of doing whatever the body needed in order to properly rest and recover from training. Late nights were harmful because they didn’t give the body enough time to recover between one session and the next. It was an almost monk-like existence.