Globe Runner blog

Talent is a limited commodity. Most athletes waste what little they have, while a few realise a great deal, if not all of their prodigious gift. One or two manage to challenge all of the preconceptions by transmuting minor talent into precious metal. Charlie Spedding is one of that last group, ie one of a kind.

Spedding was not the most talented runner in the world, far from it, indeed he wasn’t even the most talented runner in his club. Fortunately Spedding knew that, and worked to his strengths. The measure of his success in doing so may be gauged from his bronze medal in the Olympic marathon in Los Angeles 1984, and the sixth place at the Games in Seoul four years later.

The same application, or sheer bloody-mindedness has resulted, 20 years later, in Charlie Spedding, from last to first, a self-published book* recounting his tenacious career, beginning with that last place in his first race, and ending, well ending, as Enoch Powell said of all political careers, in failure, but with lots of ‘firsts’ along the way.

The one fact that most people know about Spedding is that he almost died from anaphylactic shock, an adverse reaction to a pre-operation anaesthetic. His account here of this traumatic experience is made all the more riveting by the fact that, as a pharmacy graduate, he realised what was happening as he lost consciousness, unsure as to whether he would ever wake.

A subsequent operation, made all the more painful for being under local anaesthetic was one of the many setbacks during a career which could have ended on any number of operating tables. Because prior to that, Spedding endured almost a decade of good but unspectacular results punctuated by a variety of surgical interventions. Until a missed train gave him the opportunity to grab a pint of beer and indulge in a career revaluation. That evening, retold ‘tongue-in-glass’ in a chapter entitled The Beer Drinker’s Guide To Sports Psychology signalled a turning point.

I have a couple of caveats; I wish Spedding had included more non-running anecdotes -  all runners have them, often hilarious, sometimes embarassing, always worth telling - and had he invested in a proper cover photo, he might have enticed more sales.

But it is an engaging account, told by a down-to-earth character, and is yet another example to today’s under-achieving UK distance runners how a little foresight and a lot of hard graft can take you, as it took Spedding to the unlikeliest of places. Like the one he describes in his final paragraph, ‘The greatest moment of my two decades of running came at 22 miles into the Olympic marathon (in LA), when I took the lead and pushed the pace………… I was running as fast as I dared. I was trying my utmost to fulfill my wildest dreams. …. I was doing it. I was flying and I felt absolutely fantastic’

Matt McCue was nowhere near as talented or successful as Spedding, but the evidence of An Honorable Run** is that McCue can write. And that, since he is pursuing a career in journalism (a far more honourable profession in the US than in the UK) means that he is already much further ahead of the game than he ever was in athletics.

A couple of examples, since you ask…. Of a hard training session, ‘After a particularly draining death-march…’. And of a race, ‘After lactic acid had bullied its way into my muscles…’.

Like Spedding’s book, this account (BookSurge Publishing) is a quest, with many trials en route. But it is essentially a love-letter to McCue’s Iowa High School coach, Bob Brown, and to a certain extent to his Colorado college coach Mark Wetmore, already made famous by Running With The Buffaloes.

The structure is as smart as the writing. For example, I liked the cod opener whose truth only gets revealed towards the end.

And though the pictures inside never make McCue look like the sort of sylph who has done the amount of training he describes, the backcover shot, perhaps by a professional, makes him look like the coolest dude on the planet. No bad thing if you live in New York City!

This book will appeal to anyone who has ever dreamed of being a great runner, which is to say, pretty much everyone who has ever laced a running shoe.

PS I found both books on amazon, but you can also buy directly from:

* www.charliespedding.com

** www.anhonorablerun.com

Marathons come in all shapes and sizes, and can be found just about everywhere in the world. Some, if not many are staged simply for money (charity being an afterthought) or prestige, showcasing a city or even a sponsor.

Then there are the others. Foresight, tradition and love of the unforgiving pursuit gave rise to Boston as long ago as 1897, following the inauguration of the event in Athens the previous year.

Over the ensuing years, many countries instituted a national championship, sometimes with only a handful of runners, doing the geographic round of the country.

But back in the day, before the seventies running boom exploded in a million (it seemed) marathons, there were a chosen few international marathons that everyone in the worldwide running community knew - Boston, of course, Athens occasionally, Fukuoka in Japan, Polytechnic in west London, Kosice in the then Czechoslovakia, Enschede in Holland. And that was about it (forgive me if there were others which escaped this old miler).

Then there are the few nowadays that are organised for other, more altruistic reasons. Like the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon (link), whose course through the lush forests around the ancient Khmer palaces is at such variance with the cause - landmine victims in Cambodia - which gave birth to the event.

The Sahara Marathon comes under a similar aegis. The race, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last Monday, February 22 is organised to raise awareness of the plight of the people through whose borrowed land the event is run.

Get out your atlas or for those less luddite, google earth, and take a look at the Western Sahara, in north-west Africa. It is a ‘large’ strip of land on the Atlantic coast, south of Morocco, and west of both Mauretania and Algeria. It used to be called the Spanish Sahara. But (briefly) when the Spanish leader, General Francisco Franco died in 1975,  the occupying forces left hastily, and permitted other would-be colonialisers - Morocco and Mauretania - to move in.

Over the ensuing 35 years, many Saharawis fled to the deserts of south-western Algeria, and a freedom movement, called the Polisario, representing the displaced Saharawi people rose up against the occupation. The Mauretanians quickly moved out, and have even recognised the right to self-determination of the Saharawis, but the Moroccans still maintain that the territory is theirs. Despite UN resolutions, and thus far vain attempts to institute a referendum - many Moroccans have been moved into the old Western Sahara region - there is political stasis.

Meanwhile the 200,000 residents of the four refugee camps in south-western Algeria - Smara, Auserd, El Ayoune and Dakhla, named after communities in Western Sahara - have tried to build a civil society with an exiled government. Smara camp, where the race ended on Monday, is home to around 50,000 people, in largely arid land. But there is a functioning society, with schools, theatres, shops, (very) basic industries, in short a working town, albeit largely funded by humanitarian aid.

The marathon is part of that attempt to forge a civil society. It was founded nine years ago by Jeb Carney, a US citizen and runner, working for a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). When Carney left after two years, he passed the baton to a Spanish-Italian team, headed by Mattia Durli, from Bologna in northern Italy, who had originally come to run the inaugural race.

“We are all volunteers, doing different jobs back at home. The objective is to get the Saharawis to organise the event completely themselves,” said Durli today (Wednesday). That is still a long way off, but with the help of the local people and the government we are getting there gradually.

“The biggest problem is the transfer of materials and people. There are only two regular flights a week (from Algiers), so we have to send a lot of material overland in the months before. And because it was the tenth anniversary we got many more people than we expected (almost 900 compared to fewer than 500 last year). So there are visas to organise, extra flights, food, and accomodating everyone with local host families.

“Our main aim is to bring as many people and media as possible, to help raise awareness of the cause. Many runners see only the competition, but we ask everyone to stay one week, and gradually they look around and see. Out of over 800 people (almost half Saharawi), we only had eight return home today”.

The course this year was entirely marked out by the Saharawi, with a single course through open desert, marked only by white posts, serving as the route for marathoners, who began in El Ayoune camp, half-marathoners, who started just outside Auserd camp, and the 10k and five kilometre contestants who begin those distances from the finish in Smara camp.

The races were run in temperatures of around 30C (in summer, the mercury rises to 40-50C), and the tenth anniversary was celebrated by Jon Salvador of Spain with a course record victory in the marathon, 2.42.40.

Salvador, 43, from the Basque city of Bilbao has run the half-marathon three times here in the past, winning twice, and finishing third. He only decided 10 days ago to return. “I had stopped training for the event, but my local town hall decided to send me ten days ago. I paced one of my colleagues, Teresa Pulido in the Amsterdam Marathon last October, and surprised myself by running 2.32, so I decided to run the full marathon here this time.

“It was very hot at the start, and there were some good Algerians in there, and they went off really fast. But, having run the ‘half’ before, which is the second half of the marathon course, I knew it was more difficult, so I saved myself, and it paid off.

“There are many Basques here,” said Salvador, “around 85 of us. We really understand the suffering that the Saharawi people are going through. Yes, the competition is important, but it’s also important to tell the problems that the people here are having. The two things go together”.

There will be a children’s race, sponsored by the Association of International Marathons (AIMS) in the Dakhla camp, in the middle of the dunes, some 170k from Smara, later this week.

(race pictures courtesy of Riad Abada, Agence New Press)

It gives me great pleasure to reveal (and for once this isn’t a joke) that BBC Films has finally announced, today, the production of a screenplay based on my book The Perfect Distance, an account of the rivalry between Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe.

Thus, a quarter of a century after their heyday, arguably the greatest rivalry in athletics history is finally destined for the silver screen, sometime before the Olympic Games in London 2012, a sports festival whose staging in Britain’s capital city owes much to the efforts of Seb, now Lord Coe.

Three years ago, in his then regular Guardian column, Steve Cram, the man who took over the world record mantle from Coe and Ovett, was bemoaning the lack of any sort of cinematic vehicle for the trio’s feats, which might help kick-start the largely moribund British middle distance scene, and incite the current crop of milers to emulate their illustrious predecessors.

Cram was musing on what had revived US middle and long distance running, and wondered, ‘in 1997 and 1998 two movies about the American athletic icon Steve Prefontaine hit the screens in the US. Pre died tragically in a car crash arguably at the height of his powers and although he never won an Olympic medal he has long carried the flame of American running dreams. No doubt one or two of those performing so well now had sat in their multiplex as youngsters and taken it all in. I’m not totally convinced it would get funding from UK Sport but a remake of the Three Musketeers set on the tracks of Europe in the 1980s might just do the trick for us. You never know.’

Cram, who I referred to in my book as the Third Man need wait and wonder no longer.

Shortly after Cram’s article, I was contacted by experienced producers Joanna Anderson and Vicky Licorish. Operating as AL Films, they subsequently optioned The Perfect Distance, and ultimately (these things take time) engaged Hollywood-based British screenwriter, Will Davies to produce a treatment. Following its delivery a month ago, BBC Films green-lighted the script, and yesterday authorised this announcement.

BBC Films sprints ahead with Ovett and Coe

London, UK - BBC Films and AL Films are developing a film together about the celebrated Olympic rivalry between Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe, arguably the greatest athletics rivalry of all time.

The film is due to be released prior to London 2012 Olympics.  Joanna Anderson and Vicky Licorish of AL Films, the producers behind BBC 1’s recent hit Small Island, have signed up LA-based Brit writer William Davies (Flushed Away, Johnny English, Twins) to write the screenplay. “Will is a fantastic writer who is a keen sportsman.  He has been fired up by this story which means so much to a UK audience and is the British Olympic story which also gripped the US,” says Anderson.

Coe and Ovett ran in the Moscow and LA Olympics; they dominated world athletics for several years and had very contrasting personalities. “You were either an Ovett person or a Coe person” says Vicky Licorish, “and that’s what makes it such a great character piece as well.”

AL Films optioned the acclaimed account of their rivalry ‘The Perfect Distance’ by respected sports journalist Pat Butcher, who had unprecedented access to Coe and Ovett, as well as those closest to them.

Christine Langan, Creative Director BBC Films, says, “This is a gem of a story, about British sporting life and more.  Will’s take on it is very exhilarating and BBC Films is excited to be developing it with him and AL Films.”

There’s still a long way to go, but stay tuned to Globerunner, for progress reports.

By one of those felicitous coincidences which gives rise to columns like this, the accreditation form for the world cross country champs in Poland in March arrived on the same day as news broke that Toyota was recalling millions of vehicles worldwide, due to accelerator pedals sticking to the floor.

Nothing felicitous about that, of course. The horrific result of such a malfunction in the USA was reported in one of the British papers this week. A man driving with a friend and his family made a panic stricken call to the 911 emergency service. “We’re in a Lexus…going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck….we’re in trouble…there’s no brakes…we’re approaching an intersection…hold on…hold on and pray”. The call ended with the sound of a crash, that killed all four in the car.

The last time the world cross was in Poland, in 1987, I was in a car which could have suffered a similar fate. Like many such incidents, it started innocuously enough. Two days before the championships, I came down to the lobby of our central Warsaw hotel, intending to go out for a run. A couple of IAAF officials who were heading out of town to inspect the course offered me a ride, so that I could run round the hippodrome rather than fight through the city traffic. I readily agreed, and we crammed into a tiny car along with an old Polish journo, who was our guide, and a driver .

An hour or so later, we were speeding back into the city on a highway, when we crossed a bridge over another major road, and our guide told us that that was the road to the then Soviet border. At which point the driver jerked his head round in the direction of the road, and I thought he was going to make some disparaging comment about the Soviets, since the Poles were no friends of their communist masters.

An instant later, I froze rigid. It probably helped that I had once worked with a guy who suffered from epilepsy, so I was able to recognise that our speeding driver was manifesting the first symptoms of a seizure.

Fortunately we were approaching some suburban roads, and he had begun to slow, but not sufficiently to convince us we were going to survive. Equally fortunately, he had taken his foot off the accelerator, because I often wonder what would have happened if he had floored the pedal under the influence of his epileptic fit.

As it was, I struggled free of the colleagues on either side of me in the back, leaned over  and jerked the handbrake sufficiently hard to send us into a slowing skid up the pavement, careering to a halt on the grass verge just short of a tree. We got the driver out on the ground, and stuck a pen between his teeth, since one of the dangers of such a seizure is biting though the tongue. Giving us something like that to do probably delayed our shock; and when his fit had subsided, we wedged the driver in the passenger seat, and the old journo drove us gently back into the city centre.

Of course, the one thing I should have done, and never thought of in the heat of the moment (and I haven’t seen it mentioned in any of the articles on the subject of the recalled Toyotas) was to hit the keys, and switch off the ignition, kill the engine! But you’re not necessarily thinking straight in situations like that. However, unlike the poor folks in the Lexus, we’d survived.

That wasn’t quite the end of the story, because when our Polish journo colleagues got on the case, they discovered that the driver had been seconded to the championships committee for the week, from his regular job - as a school bus driver!

I don’t know what happened to him, but I feel sure the kids were spared his attentions after that. And the following day, we even got our appetite back sufficiently to enjoy one of the few perks of life in the Soviet bloc in those days, (two years before the Wall came down) - lashings of caviar and cheap, but very drinkable champagne. The day after that, the unheralded Annette Sergeant of France won the women’s race, and John Ngugi won the second of his five men’s titles.

People like me are always saying how much more exciting athletics was back in those days. But excitement like that car ride I can do without anytime.

Running, particularly long distance running is one of those unforgiving sports. Unlike, say, tennis and golf, or soccer and other team sports - where sleight of hand or foot can disguise failing power or pace - running is a sport which cannot be faked. There is nowhere to hide.

If you’re not fit, you fail. And even if you are fit, once you start to go downhill it feels, well, it feels like uphill. You can choose your races judiciously, but as you get slower, you cannot fool yourself, for even if the pursuers do not yet overtake, Old Father Time, with his trusty stopwatch is there to remind you.

And ambition can be a cruel master. When Paul Tergat broke the marathon world record, with 2.04.55, in Berlin 2003, it took a while to figure out why he was not elated. It was because pacemaker and pal, Sammy Korir had finished a stride behind him. Tergat wasn’t the only man under 2.05, he hadn’t won by a street, indeed, he had had to work to win by just one second.

Four years later, in 2007, Haile Gebrselassie, the man who had made Tergat’s track career look second-best took the Kenyan’s marathon world record too. On that same Berlin course, he ran close to half a minute faster, with 2.04.26. The following year, again in Berlin, the Ethiopian slashed close to another half minute off the record, with 2.03.59, becoming the only man under 2.04. In the interim, Geb ran 2.04.53 in Dubai 2008. A year later, he won Dubai again, in 2.05.29. He won in Berlin 2009, for the fourth time, in 2.06.08. And now he has won Dubai for a third time, in 2.06.09.

There were good reasons - heat, rain, a back injury - why Haile’s last three marathons were, on average close to two minutes slower than his world record. But there are equally good reasons for thinking that this last record attempt may be a sign of decline. And the first reason was his own demeanour, when your scribe tracked him down several hours after the race in Dubai last Friday.

The smile of greeting was just as broad, and he didn’t look like a man who had thrashed himself around 42.2k, managing to stay ahead of two colleagues, who had caught him after 30k; and who ended up just half a minute behind, his closest pursuers in recent years. But when he was asked for an assessment, the smile was not so broad. It is tempting to say it was tempered by doubt.

He agreed that Chala Dechase (in only his second marathon) had made up ground on him far too quickly. Chala was almost sprinting when he caught Geb approaching 34k. He also maintained that the back injury, provoked by an awkward sleeping position could have forced him out of the race. “I might have dropped out, especially at 30k, I was lucky it was warm here. When the pacemaker left at 30k (32k, actually), I tried to push, but I had no reply. He’s a young boy (Chala), if he’d been more experienced, he would have caught gradually. That was wrong what he did, it was too fast, he should have waited”.

Coincidentally, too fast (at the start) is how Professor Helmut Winter of Humboldt University, Germany characterises Haile’s recent races. Marathon expert Winter, who produced the two fascinating graphs here was in Dubai to see Geb’s latest world record attempt, and says of the second graph, “assume the broken line represents the split needed to run even pace….. The conclusion would be: the 2008WR is a fine race, but for all the other races (Dubai, Berlin2009) this guy (Geb) overpowered himself in the beginning and was lacking substantial reserves in the end. The typical mistake of a BEGINNER!”

(For a breakdown of Geb’s 5k splits, look at the equally interesting piece on The Science of Sport website, www.sportsscientists.com)

Gebrselassie has been written off before, like when he finished third in the world 10,000 metres in Edmonton 2001, his first loss in a 25-lapper in eight years. Or like when he didn’t win the London Marathon in his debut in 2002, or in his two further attempts in London, even dropping out in the latter one. But he came back from Edmonton, and from the London false-start, to set further world records, including eventually the marathon.

But he will be 37 in April. OK, you might say, Carlos Lopes won the Olympic marathon at 37. And Constantina Dita did the same trick at 38. But no one has shown such consistent excellence over such a lengthy period as Gebrselassie, beginning with the world junior 5000/10000 double in 1992, and racking up 27 world records and bests in the 15 years between running 5000m in 12.56.96 in June 1994 in Holland, and the 30k in 1.27.49 that he set during the Berlin Marathon 2009.

He is still adamant he wants to run the Olympic marathon in London 2012, despite his business interests accelerating, eg a new foreign vehicle franchise for Ethiopia, a new hotel complex opening in south Ethiopia in April - friend and former World Cup marathon champion Richard Nerurkar says, “I don’t know how he fits it all in, and trains twice a day”.

Geb’s next race is a half-marathon in New York in March, but he says he has no plans for his next marathon, apart from saying it will probably be in Europe. “I’ve no idea right now. Sometime after September. The Berlin course I like very much. But the big aim is to save my power ‘til London 2012. Until then, two marathons a year, or less. And keep my speed with 10k’s and half-marathons…. As long as I keep my shape”.

He may be suffering the first pangs of sporting mortality, rather later than most of us. But he has already long sewn up the more crucial role - sporting immortality.

Dubai puts a different slant on the Olympic motto. Development was dynamic, the bust was bigger, as was the bail-out, and the towers are taller.

Now, in the wake of Monday’s opening of the Burj Khalifa, rising more than 800 metres over the desert floor, the emirate awaits the arrival of Haile Gebrselassie, fastest man in the world at the longest race.

Inside a decade, the upcoming Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon (January 22) has gone from a backwater event to one of the world’s fastest races. That says race director Peter Connerton is thanks to several factors. “Standard Chartered coming in as title sponsor half a dozen years ago put us on a firm basis, and Dubai Holding putting up a million dollars prize money (with a $1m bonus for a world record) two years ago helped us to get Haile on board.

“Not only has he given us two great races, the publicity has helped our development. Our participation has doubled since his first run two years ago. I never used to see people running in the street, now I see folks training everywhere.

“We’re delighted that he’s coming back again, and hopefully it’ll be third time lucky. He went too fast in the first half two years ago, and ran the second fastest in history at the time (2.04.53), and last year the bad weather ruined his record attempt. But he still ran the eight fastest marathon (2.05.29)”.

Principal opponents this year, Sammy Korir (2.04.56), Tesfaye Tola (2.06.57) and Joshua Chelanga (2.07.05) will hardly be heartened that, despite approaching his 37^th birthday (April 18), Haile’s speed does not appear to be diminishing. Evidence of which was victory in the New Year’s 8k Silvesterlauf in Trier, Germany, in 22.23.

If the men’s race turns out to be a procession, headed by Gebre again attacking his 2.03.59 world record, the women’s event threatens to be highly competitive. Both events offer a $250,000 first prize, the biggest in marathon running.

The women’s race features winners from the last three years, Bezunesh Bekele (2.23.09), Berhane Adere (2.20.42), and Askale Magarska (2.21.31, all of Ethiopia).

Bekele disposed of Adere in short order in last year’s race (2.24.02 to 2.27.47), and the 26 year old has asked for a pace to deliver her to a sub-2.20 clocking, which if successful would see her replace the veteran Adere as national record holder.

With last year’s third placer Helena Kirop of Kenya, and two more Ethiopians, Genet Getaneh and Eyerusalem Kuma, all of whom beat Adere in 2009, this will be the race to rank alongside the record chase.