Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography (20 page)

Three weeks before the Games began, I put in an unbelievable session alongside some of the other guys preparing for the 5000 metres. I kept pace with Moses Kipsiro, the Ugandan who’d won bronze in Osaka the previous year. On the last lap I actually surprised myself by running faster than him. Matching a world-class runner like Kipsiro, I told myself, meant that I was doing something right. I came off the track filled with a sense of excitement. Thinking to myself, ‘That’s probably the best session I’ve ever done.’ I was pumped and ready to go.

The truth was, I’d peaked too soon.

Training is like running up a hill that has a sheer drop on the other side. You have a good session, you get further up the hill. Then you have more good sessions. Suddenly you’re close to the peak. But if you push it too hard for too long, you go over the top and fall off the edge. You crash. That’s what happened to me in the build-up to Beijing. I was only aware of this in hindsight. At the time, I didn’t think anything was wrong. I flew out to the training camp in Macau to link up with the rest of the Great Britain team, full of confidence about my chances in the 5000 metres. Alan travelled with me this time, as he was part of the official UKA delegation. It was good to have my coach there. The mood in the camp was vibrant, friendly, relaxed. I caught up with people I hadn’t seen for a while on the circuit and tried to ignore the tiredness that was working its way deep into my muscles. ‘I just need some more rest, that’s all,’ I tried to convince myself. While I was in Macau I did just a few light sessions. I didn’t want to push it. But then, after one supposedly easy session, I came away thinking, ‘That was a lot harder than it ought to have been.’

I rested up some more.

I delayed my departure to the Olympic village in Beijing to the day before my heats. As an athlete, the last thing you want to be doing is hanging around, counting down the days to your race. Staying in the village is a weird experience. You’re in this bubble, cut off from the outside world. You’re barely aware of being in a foreign country. If you asked me, ‘What’s Beijing like?’ I couldn’t tell you because the simple truth is, I don’t know. I spent my entire stay in Beijing cooped up in the village, sharing a room with the marathon runner Dan Robinson. When I wasn’t sleeping, I hung out in the entertainment centre, playing the arcades or having a go on the air hockey table to take my mind off the upcoming race.

Still, I was incredibly excited. The Olympics! The pinnacle of my career so far. I loved everything about it. So many athletes from all over the world – every country imaginable. I remember getting my Great Britain kit. You’re given loads of kit, including a Great Britain suit and everything. There’s this sense of occasion. You’re part of something special. I really got into that. I kept my kit as a souvenir – I’ve still got it at home somewhere.

The morning of the heats I woke up feeling pretty good. I still wasn’t 100 per cent, but at least I seemed to have shaken off the tiredness that had troubled me in Macau. I was racing in the second heat, alongside Edwin Soi of Kenya, Moses Kipsiro and my old rival from the European Championships, Jesús España. A good field, but I still favoured my chances of reaching the final. Before my race I’d been in the call room at the stadium, watching the first heat on the live TV feed. Matt Tegenkamp, the American, had qualified in first place, with Eliud Kipchoge and Tariku Bekele second and third. Those guys were guaranteed a place in the final three days later. Now it was my turn. All I had to do was finish in the top four places in the race to be sure of my place. Even if I finished fifth or sixth, the three fastest losers advanced to the final too.

I lined up at the start of the race. I was nervous, but I was also feeling confident.

The race starts. The crowd cheers. I get off to a good start. With five laps to go, I take the lead. My legs are aching. Muscles pumping. I’m gritting my teeth through the pain. I’m pushing, running hard. The effort I’m having to put in is ridiculous. I’m running 64- or 65-second laps, and it feels more like I’m running 60-second laps. That’s how much effort I’m putting in. Two laps to go. Just two laps, then I’m in the final.

And that’s when everything starts to go wrong.

One guy shoots past me first. It’s Edwin Soi. Then Kipsiro cruises clear of me. Kipsiro, who I’d matched stride for stride on the track only a few weeks earlier. I can’t believe what is happening. My place in the final is slipping away before my very eyes. Then Cherkos races ahead of me. Then España. As I come into the last lap it hits me:
I’m down in fifth
.
In the heats.
This is bad. Really bad. I know in my head that I need to wind it up now if I’m going to claw my way back into the qualifying positions. But I can’t do it. There’s nothing left to wind up. I’m kicking hard, giving it everything I’ve got, but it feels like I’m wading through treacle. Every muscle is heavy. Physically, I’m spent. I’ve done such a high volume in training that on the day of the race my tank is empty. I’m like a car running on fumes.

I have nothing left to give.

I’m still kicking as an Eritrean passes me and I cross the line in sixth place. For a moment I’m stunned. I can’t believe it. My time is 13:50.95. It’s not even good enough for me to sneak into the final as one of the fastest losers. My Olympic dream is over.

My mind is racing. I look across at España. He’s finished fourth –
fourth!
– qualifying him for the final. I always try to show the greatest respect for my competitors, all athletes do, but the same thought keeps churning over in my mind as I watch España celebrate. ‘Even this guy has made it! I should’ve beaten him easily.’ There are no ‘should haves’ or ‘might have beens’ in athletics. There’s only what happened. And what happened is, I’d blown my chance of a medal in the Olympic Games.

Every defeat hurts. But some defeats hurt more than others. If some raw nineteen-year-old who’s never been on your radar kicks on and sprints past you like it’s nothing, then you accept it. It’s hard to swallow, but you can process it. The same if someone accidentally trips you up. Things happen in a race. There’s a difference between what is in your control and what’s outside it. When you lose a race because of something outside your control, okay, that’s one thing. But when you lose a race because of something you did have control over – like how hard you trained – that’s harder to process. That defeat in Beijing hurt me more than any other.

I had let myself down. I had let my country down. Wearing that Great Britain jersey meant so much to me, and I’d arrived in Beijing full of hopes of winning a medal for my country. Now I’d failed even to make the final of my event. All those months of training – all that effort – it had all been for nothing.

I didn’t want to stick around Beijing for a moment longer than I needed to. I just wanted to be alone. Later on I found out that Boniface Songok had done exactly the same thing as me. He’d returned to Kenya ahead of the Olympic trials and kept up the intensity in training, not allowing his body to recover. When it came to running in the trials, his body was shot. That’s why he’d failed to make the team. Likewise, Micah had been wiped after Flagstaff. But unlike Boniface and me, he’d listened to his body and dialled down on the training in Kenya, doing only light sessions and making sure he got plenty of rest. Micah went on to win the bronze medal in the 10,000 metres in Beijing. Moses Kipsiro placed fourth in the 5000 metres. For me, there was only one reason Boniface didn’t qualify at the trials and Micah got an Olympic medal. It was the same reason I’d under-performed in the heats. We had over-trained.

I remember sitting on the flight back home, staring out of the window, feeling utterly deflated. I was more down than I’d ever been before in my life. To lose a race by running badly or getting your tactics wrong, or not putting in the effort, that’s one thing. I could deal with that. But to have given everything for a whole year and get nothing in return, that’s really hard to take. It would be some time before I managed to put Beijing behind me.

Looking out of that window, I told myself: ‘I’m never going to feel like that, ever again.’

M
ENTALLY
it was hard for me to focus after Beijing. I just wanted the season to be over. I was tired. My body needed to rest. Back in Teddington, Ricky explained to me that a rest would simply have to wait.

‘Your contract with adidas is up for renewal,’ he said. ‘And we have a problem. You haven’t run sub-13:15 all year.’

‘So?’

‘If you don’t run sub-13:15 at 5000 metres by the end of the season, the retainer on your new contract automatically goes down. You’ll be taking quite a hit.’

I should explain. A runner’s main income is through a shoe contract: that’s how you put food on the table and pay the bills. The way the contract works is that you get a retainer, a basic salary to retain your loyalty, but there are several bonuses built into it based on whether you win medals or perform well or race certain times. If, for example, you win bronze in a World Championship 5000 metres, that bonus kicks in for your next contract. Suddenly, you’re making more money. But if you fail to maintain those standards the following season, you don’t qualify for the bonuses and your next contract goes back down to the original retainer. In 2006 I’d run that 13:09 race at Heusden in the Netherlands, so the following year my contract went up. But in 2008 the fastest time I’d clocked at 5000 metres was 13:25.01 at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Nowhere near good enough, so we were talking about a big drop in income. Athletics isn’t Premier League football. Most athletes most of the time are on a pretty modest income. Coming so soon after Beijing, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to run a sub-13:15 race. Physically, I was wiped. Mentally, I needed a break. I was in nothing like the condition I wanted to be in. In Beijing I’d clocked 13:50.95 in the heats. Now I was being asked to shave more than 35 seconds off that time. I told Ricky that I didn’t know what to do.

‘Look, Mo,’ he said. ‘You may as well run one more race at 5000 metres. The Diamond League meet in Brussels is coming up. For the next two weeks just jog slowly, do some strides and get plenty of rest. Why don’t you go to Brussels, give it your best shot and see what happens? You’ve nothing to lose.’

If I raced and failed to make the time, then it didn’t make a difference to the contract situation. I’d still be dropping down to my original retainer. If I did clock a time under 13:15, then I’d keep the increased retainer for the following twelve months. Also, having to race so soon after Beijing meant that I didn’t have time to dwell on that defeat. Now I had to focus my mind on the event in Brussels. Two weeks after the Olympic Games, I took to the track again.

My last chance to run sub-13:15 in 2008.

The Diamond League meeting in Brussels is also known as the Memorial Van Damme and it takes place at the King Baudouin Stadium. This was a good arena for me: the previous year I’d run my personal best of 13:07.00 at the same meeting. Now, more than ever, I needed to run a similar time. It wasn’t just about the money, although I was concerned about what would happen if my retainer went down. For me, this was a chance to begin the long process of putting my Beijing nightmare behind me. I’d be foolish to suggest that doing well in Brussels would make up for failing to make it through the heats at the Olympics. It wouldn’t. But at least it’d be a start.

I wasn’t sure I had it in me to run sub-13:15 so soon after Beijing. I wasn’t in a good place. But then a funny thing happened. On the day of the meeting in Brussels, I did better than I’d expected. Way better. I went out there, ran the race and finished fourth. My time?

13:08.11.

Clocking that time was a bittersweet moment for me. My immediate feeling was one of relief. I’d saved my adidas retainer. I’d given it my best shot and it had worked. But at the same time I was like, ‘You must be kidding …
13:08
!’ That time would have easily qualified me for the 5000 metres final in Beijing. I was only two seconds behind Eliud Kipchoge, who won the silver in Beijing, and I beat Moses Kipsiro, who finished fourth in the Olympics. If only I’d run that time two weeks earlier. If only I’d properly rested in the run-up to the Olympics instead of over-training and working myself into the ground. If only …

If anything good came out of my performance in Beijing, it was that I learnt to listen much more carefully to the needs of my body. It’s very easy to over- or under-train. Getting it spot on going into a major competition is one of the most difficult tasks for an athlete. You don’t want to go in underprepared. But if you overcook it, you’ll perform just as badly. There’s a fine line. The more you race, the more you begin to understand your body and how it responds to different approaches to training. What works for someone else doesn’t necessarily work for you.

In November I had the chance to go on a trip to a training camp in Ethiopia. Kaptagat (and Iten) had been so good for me that I was keen to check out more camps. It wasn’t just the Kenyans who were doing great things in distance running. The Ethiopians were right up there too. Kenenisa Bekele had won Olympic gold in the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres in Beijing. His younger brother, Tariku, was also making a name for himself. I was keen to see what they might be doing differently.

You have to make a lot of sacrifices in athletics. I was lucky that in Tania I had someone who was understanding about the commitments I had to make to become a better runner. Shortly before I travelled to Ethiopia Tania won a prize for being one of the top ten salespeople in her company. The prize was a trip for two to New York. Tania really wanted to go – we had only recently got together and New York would’ve been a nice way to celebrate. But I had to make this trip to Ethiopia to train. Tania was a bit gutted. We missed out on a really lovely trip, but she understood what I needed to do. There were some things that we wouldn’t be able to do as a couple, things that would have to take a back seat, because everything had to fit around my training.