Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography (17 page)

For entertainment, the Kenyans used to play chess. There was no proper chessboard, so they made one from a piece of cardboard and used bottle caps for the pieces. I’d never played chess before moving in with them. John Kibowen taught me how to play. He beat me every time. In the evenings they used to watch running videos. That’s all they ever did. No TV shows, no comedy, no movies. Just videos of old Olympic races, the Golden League (nowadays called the Diamond League). At first I couldn’t understand it. All I wanted to do after a hard day’s training was go out to town or play some Pro Evo. Something – anything – to take my mind off running. But as I watched the Kenyans gathering around the TV to watch old races, it hit me just how little I knew about running compared to these guys. They took their athletics seriously. Running was their life. Their dedication was 100 per cent. It was eat, sleep, train, rest. Day in, day out.

My attitude didn’t change instantly. The way these guys trained exploded a few myths that I’d grown up with. But it didn’t take long for the penny to drop. I remember going out for a run one morning with John Kibowen, Benjamin Limo and Sammy Kipketer. (I should explain: none of the other athletes was based at the house all year round. Once the season in Europe was over and they had no more races to compete in, the guys would return to Kenya, so there was a high turnaround in the house. Kibowen and Kipketer might base themselves at the house for five or six weeks. When they were done racing, they’d fly back to the training camp run in Kaptagat, in the Kenyan Rift Valley, and their rooms in the house would be taken by, say, Boniface Songok and Micah Kogo – a younger runner who was beginning to make a name for himself on the circuit by winning several road races in Europe. A few months later, Kibowen and Kipketer would return to the house from Kaptagat, and so on.)

After training and a lengthy warm-down the four of us returned home. I was thinking, ‘Yeah, I’ll go out tonight.’ I was getting ready to go when Kibowen slapped on a video of an old Golden League meeting. I can recall sitting on the living room sofa, itching to go out and have some fun with the boys. Suddenly I asked myself, ‘For real, what am I doing here?’ Here I am sharing a house with the guys I’m supposed to be competing against in track races and cross country championships. But while they’re watching races, learning about different race tactics and events, I’m getting ready for a night out in Kingston. What was I thinking? How could I ever hope to beat the Kenyans in a race, if I wasn’t taking my career as seriously as they did? ‘If I want to beat these guys,’ I told myself, ‘then I’ve got to do exactly what they’re doing.’

It was like a switch had been turned on inside my head. Like that, I knew what I had to do to win. I would have to work even harder than before. No more late-night trips to the cinema or dancing at Oceana. No more jumping off bridges. I couldn’t be doing with any of that. Not unless I was happy finishing fifth or sixth for the rest of my career. And no way would I ever be happy with that.

It wouldn’t be easy. I knew that much. If it was easy, so the argument goes, then everyone would be a distance runner. But now I was willing to go that extra distance. I didn’t just want to be the number one British runner. I wanted to be the best distance runner in the world.

From that day on my attitude changed completely. I went to bed early. I trained hard. I ate more healthily. I took naps in the afternoon after running through Bushy Park. I got in plenty of rest. I drank water, which I never used to do: I used to drink tea. I would have six or seven cups a day, taken with three or four lumps of sugar. Water didn’t taste good to me. I was like, ‘Who drinks this stuff? Tea is way better.’ On race days at the club, Conrad used to tell me to make sure I drank lots of water before the race. If the conditions were hot, I might have a few sips. That was my limit. I might have been dehydrated during the odd race, but I was so used to not drinking water that I never really noticed it.

The late nights I’d enjoyed at St Mary’s were a thing of the past. I even changed my mobile phone number so that people couldn’t get hold of me and tempt me into going out. It was a bold decision, but the way I saw it, I didn’t have any choice. I had to make the running work. What else was I going to do? I had no back-up plan, no qualifications for anything else. It was running or nothing.

Around this time I had also switched athletics clubs, moving from Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow, who were in Division One, to the Premiership club Newham & Essex Beagles. I’d had great fun at Windsor and made some really good friends at the club, but I felt there simply wasn’t enough of a challenge in Division One for me to keep improving as an athlete. In contrast, there were some really tough competitors in the Premiership. The strongest club in the country was Belgrave Harriers, based in Wimbledon and with eleven Premiership titles to their name. Their alumni included the likes of Philips Idowu, the triple jumper from Hackney who competed in the Olympic Games in Beijing and the World Championships, winning gold in Berlin in 2009 to add to the gold he won in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006. As well as Belgrave there were clubs like Birchfield Harriers and Shaftesbury Barnet. For me, competing for Newham & Essex was a step up in competition. The field was full of top-class athletes who’d represented Great Britain at various levels. The club members included the likes of Christine Ohuruogu, the 400 metres specialist who later won gold in the event in Beijing as well as gold in two World Championships, Osaka in 2007 and Moscow in 2013. The change of club scene was exactly what I needed.

In training I started keeping up with the Kenyans, matching them. It got me thinking, ‘If I can match these guys in training, then why can’t I do it in competition?’ It wasn’t long before I had a chance to find out. The following March, 2006, I was selected to run for Great Britain in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia. This was my first major outdoor senior track event representing my country. I couldn’t wait to get out there and race.

There’s a question mark over every athlete making the step up to the senior level. People are watching you and thinking, ‘This guy might have posted some good results in the juniors, but can he do the same in the seniors?’ Until you do it, the doubts don’t go away. I was conscious of the same question mark hanging over me when I flew out to Melbourne two months ahead of the games in order to acclimatize. I would be staying at a house owned by Nic Bideau, Sonia O’Sullivan’s partner. Nic was also an athletics coach – he used to manage Cathy Freeman, and at the time I travelled to Melbourne he was looking after Craig Mottram.

Craig was a big deal at the time, one of the stars of the 5000 metres. He’d already competed in the 2000 Olympics, running in front of a home crowd in Sydney at the age of just twenty. A few months before I flew out to Australia I’d watched Craig win bronze in the 5000 metres at the World Championships in Helsinki. Watching that race, I was like, ‘Woah!’ For a white guy to finish in the medal places ahead of the likes of John Kibowen and Eliud Kipchoge, another great Kenyan runner, was an incredible feat. White guys simply weren’t supposed to beat the Africans on the track. The Kenyans called him ‘Big Mzungo’ – Big White Man. In a way, Craig’s achievement in Helsinki eclipsed that of my Kenyan training partner Benjamin Limo in winning the gold. It made a lot of other athletes – me included – sit up and take notice. Here was someone special.

I already knew Craig a little before the training camp in Melbourne. During the summer, for European meetings, he would base himself in Teddington, same as the Kenyans. I’d often see him at Kingsmeadow running track in Kingston. Alan Storey would take me over there on Tuesday afternoons for a session, and Craig would be there too, training under Nic. Because of the connection between Alan, Sonia and Nic, I’d sometimes join in with Craig. Not often, just once or twice. I was curious. Here was a guy who’d put himself on the distance-running map. He’d done good things at 5000 metres and I wanted to know what his training was like, what he did differently from me. I’ve always thought, no matter how good you are as an athlete, you can always learn something new, always get better. It’s part of my job. I’m always interested in what other athletes are up to – what they’re doing in training and why. These guys are my competition, after all. It’s my responsibility to know what each and every one of them is capable of. Craig was one of the guys I looked up to. I was a bit in awe of him at first. Seeing him win bronze in Helsinki taught me that the Kenyans were beatable. That if Craig could do it, then I could too.

I flew out to the training camp in mid-January 2006. The games were taking place from 15 to 26 March. The idea was I’d spend two months in Melbourne acclimatizing, training alongside Craig and another Australian distance runner, Collis Birmingham. The three of us would train together at the high-altitude camp at Falls Creek, about four hours’ drive from Melbourne. It seemed like the perfect preparation.

When it came to training with Craig, I felt he was using me to help him without him wanting to help me improve as an athlete. Normally when a group of athletes do a track session they will share the pacemaking duties, rotating who runs at the front, where it takes more effort to run at a particular speed. During one rep, an athlete will go in front and lead the group through laps of, say, 62 seconds. For the next rep that runner will go to the back of the pack, and another guy will lead the group at the required speed. You see it a lot in cycling where the front guy does all the work and the others sit in his slipstream.

But judging your pace is something you only get better at over time. Your body instinctively knows what pace it’s going at. You can feel it. It’s sort of like driving a car. The first time you’re behind the wheel of your new motor, you’ve got to constantly check the speedometer to see what speed you’re doing. After a few drives you start getting used to the feel of the car. All of a sudden you don’t have to look at the speedometer any more. You just instinctively
know
that you’re doing 50mph. I’m much better at it now – pacing, that is – but back in 2006 I was useless. Couldn’t tell how fast or slow I was going. I’d start off really fast and would have no idea how long it was taking me to clock a lap.

As the young buck in training, I was supposed to share the pacing duties with Craig but as he was so much faster at the time I was afraid to take the lead – and when I did my pacing was all over the place. I would help out for the first few reps but I struggled to run consistent splits. If we were supposed to go 62 seconds in one rep I’d go 60, and the next I would be at 64. By the end of the session, it was easier for me to just follow Craig. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. The longer this went on, the angrier Craig was getting.

‘Slow down!’ he called out. ‘Faster! No, no! Slower!’

In a way, I could sympathize with Craig. When I was at the front, the pace was up and down, all over the place. When I followed him it was much easier, but then he was having to do all the work. At the time my main focus was to keep up with him and not get dropped. No doubt Craig was wondering what I was doing, keeping up with him at the end of a session but not helping with the pace. Simply put, I wasn’t helping him out. All I was doing was making him more and more annoyed. Towards the end of the session Craig exploded.

‘Why don’t you lead?’ he shouted. ‘If you can keep up with me, why don’t you lead instead of sitting on my tail!’

I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. I just looked at Craig and shrugged. ‘What’s his problem?’ I thought to myself. Looking back on it, I realize he was understandably pissed off with me for not doing my job properly. That was a lesson well learnt.

Waiting to make my first appearance in the 2006 Commonwealth Games was a nerve-racking experience. I remember being in the call room in the bowels of Melbourne Cricket Ground, waiting for my turn to enter the stadium. I was competing in the same event as Craig: the 5000 metres. I could hear the noise of the crowd, people roaring and cheering. Some of the other athletes looked white with fear. That was the most nervous and tense I’ve ever felt before a race. I’d never competed in front of anything like that crowd before. This was a huge step up for me, a huge test of my abilities. I didn’t want to let my country down.

As I walked out onto the track with the other runners, I was confronted by this wall of noise. I’d never experienced anything like it. Camera flashes going off everywhere. A hundred thousand people screaming their support for Craig Mottram, the local hero. He was undoubtedly the star attraction of the games. They had come to see him mixing it up with the East Africans. I don’t remember much about the actual race, except that I finished in a disappointing ninth place. 13:40.53. Craig came second, behind another Kenyan athlete, Augustine Choge, with World Champion Benjamin Limo third and Joseph Ebuya fourth.

I knew I could’ve done better than ninth. I let myself down. I trained too much, too hard during my time at the camp in Falls Creek. I was doing everything the same as Craig. The runs, the gym work, the recovery sessions. In the end, I put in a lot more work at the camp than I should have done. There was no need for me to follow Craig’s routine, to match him in training. He was older than me. He had been a professional athlete for longer. I should have reined myself in. Instead I went into the Commonwealth Games feeling tired, and I paid the price.

I was determined to make up for my poor showing in the summer. In my heart I knew I could do a lot better than 13:40. I’d shown that much in training. At the KBC Nacht of Athletics in Belgium in 2006 I had the chance to prove it.

There are two major athletics meetings held in Belgium. One is the Diamond League meet in Brussels. The other is held in Heusden in July. I was competing in the 5000 metres. Micah Kogo was there. So too was James Murigi and Gamal Belal Salem, a naturalized Qatari born in Kenya. All three were athletes I’d trained with in Teddington. Also on the start line was an experienced indoor runner, Mark Bett, and Ali Abdalla of Eritrea. Micah Kogo won the race. I came home in sixth place. But that didn’t matter. I’d clocked a time of 13:09.40. Prior to that race my best time at 5000 metres was 13:30.53 in Solihull at the British Milers’ Club event the previous summer. For me, that was a massive leap in performance. Not only had I significantly improved my time, it was also fast enough to make me the second-fastest British runner after Dave Moorcroft. It was the big breakthrough I was looking for. I had made a statement. I was starting to get respect on the circuit. And at the European Championships in Gothenburg the following month, I had the chance to do even better.