I had thirteen weeks between London and the Olympic Marathon, and a lot of people were saying this wasn’t long enough for anyone to prepare properly. I believed it was. I think people struggle to deal with this sort of timetable because they don’t give themselves enough time to recover fully from the first marathon, before training for the second one. I regarded a full recovery as my first priority, and I saw no point in training to the limit again until both my mind and body had recovered from London. I wasn’t at all worried about missing training, because I had been in such good condition at London, and all that fitness doesn’t completely disappear during a spell of easy running.
I have heard it said that top class runners end up being obsessive compulsives, but I disagree. Top runners have to be determined, focused and committed, but to be really top class you have to be able to make the right decisions under pressure. In fact, I think the ability to make the right decisions under pressure is one of the most important and least appreciated factors in sporting success. Obsessive compulsives often fall short of their potential because, when they are under pressure, they revert to their compulsive behaviour, and make the wrong decisions. I think that taking two weeks to recover from the London Marathon was a correct decision, and one that an obsessive compulsive would have got wrong.
For those who are interested, I have listed all of my training between London and Los Angeles in the appendix to this book, where I also explain the thinking behind it. It took me two weeks before I felt ready to do anything more than easy running, and another two weeks before I got the amount of running up to 100 miles per week. Among all those miles of steady running, there were many sessions of fast running which were all supposed to bring me to a peak of fitness at the Olympics. While each session was part of the whole process, there was one which I felt had a major part in developing my ability to race the marathon, rather than just run it. I learnt about the session from Greg Meyer when I was in Boston, and it involved a 20 mile run with a series of timed efforts throughout it. The first effort lasted five minutes and was followed by a repeating sequence of one, two and four minute efforts. Between every effort there was five minutes of steady running at about 10 miles per hour, or six minutes per mile pace. There was no jogging to recover, so it simulated a series of surges during a race, and the changing duration of the efforts prepared me to cover somebody else’s surge, when I didn’t know how long that surge would last.
This session was very demanding, and left me feeling tired for the next couple of days. It made me feel slightly nervous beforehand, but I always enjoyed doing it. I loved running, and in this session I got to do a great deal of it. I liked the deep focus and concentration required to stick to the timetable of efforts, but, at the same time, I enjoyed the freedom to run the efforts at a pace that I felt was right. I had to determine, at the time, what pace I could hold for the next two or four minutes, and respond to my body, rather than a pre-determined number on a stopwatch. Racing a marathon successfully is a balancing act between discipline and freedom of expression. This training session gave me exactly that, and it always made me feel ready to race those 26 miles.
It is stating the obvious to say that any runner going to the Olympic Games needs to be at peak fitness, and in my imperfect, self-coached world, I felt that my training for the marathon was as close to perfect as I could reasonably expect. I believe I trained with great intensity, without doing too much, but the training I did only tells part of the story of my preparation. I have met a lot of runners who think that if they get the training right, the race will take care of itself. I have never believed that. The training has to be done, but I think you have to make a good race happen, and to do that you have to prepare your mind.
Shortly after London, I planned the training I have documented in the appendix, and I discussed my preparation in general with Lindsay. He reminded me of the AAA 10,000m, where I had beaten Rob de Castella, who had gone on to win the World Marathon Title two weeks later. Lindsay reckoned that I was a better marathon runner than track runner, and if I could beat him over 10,000m, surely I could beat him over the marathon. It was Lindsay who had helped me to set the goals of making the British team, and then winning a national title. Both these things had come true, and so I readily accepted that his latest argument made sense.
There is nothing like setting a stiff goal, which is accomplished, for giving you the confidence to aim for a higher goal. A couple of years earlier, I would have thought it was madness to contemplate beating the world champion at anything, but now I thought of it as logical. Lindsay has since told me that during this conversation he was shocked by how readily I accepted his argument, and when he saw that I truly believed what he was saying, he started to believe it too.
An Olympic medal had always been my very wildest dream; a completely wild dream, because I had been a serious runner for 16 years, and until now I had never been to the Olympic Games. I knew a medal was highly unlikely, but the idea that I could beat de Castella, who was one of the favourites, opened up the idea in my mind that it was possible. I am convinced that the minimum requirement to achieve something is to believe that it is possible.
While that possibility was in the back of my mind, I concentrated on what I could definitely achieve. I had always run well in big races, and this was the biggest race of my life. I was new to the marathon, but it obviously suited me. I felt that whatever happened, I needed to produce the best performance of my life. After a few weeks of thinking like that, I began to believe that I would definitely run the best race of my life. I became totally convinced of it, but to remain convinced I had to get all my preparation right.
The Olympic Marathon is always run in temperatures that are much higher than the ideal. I needed to acclimatise to the heat I would face, so I went back to Boston for six weeks. The British Team were holding their own acclimatisation camp on the west coast at San Diego, but I wanted to go where I knew I would be comfortable, and arranged with the team that I would be in Boston and would make my own way to Los Angeles six days before the race. I knew people in Boston, I knew my way around and I knew where to train. I also knew that it would be about the same temperature as Los Angeles, but more humid, and therefore slightly worse than the conditions expected in the race.
On previous trips to Boston I had made a friend called Steve Toubman. He was going to be touring Europe that summer and said I could stay at his place. He had a room in a small apartment, which he shared with a guy called Andy and his girlfriend. We got along alright for strangers thrown together, and they later told me that as the Games got closer, I became more and more detached. In the last few days before I left, apparently, they would speak to me and I would have no idea that anything had been said. It was as if my entire brain had been taken over by thoughts of the race.
When I flew from Boston to Los Angeles, I was expecting someone from the British team to meet me at the Airport, but there was nobody there, and oddly, there was nothing relating to the Olympics. I knew the Olympic village was at UCLA and I realised I would have to make my own way there. I got a bus to somewhere close and then a taxi the rest of the way. I had made and paid my own way to the Houston Marathon, and I had made and paid my own way to the London Marathon. I hadn’t expected to be doing the same thing for the Olympic Marathon.
When I got to the village, I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have accreditation. After a few minutes of debate with the security people, I got them to ring the British team, and the Head of Delegation came down to the front gate. Apparently accreditation was at the airport. But I had just come from the airport, and there was no sign of it. Accreditation was at the international airport, but because I had come from Boston, I had been at the domestic airport. Being the Head of Delegation, he had a car, so he drove me to the international airport, and sorted out my security pass.
I was staying in a two bedroom apartment for four. However, there were six of us. Because I was last to arrive, I had the bed in the living room next to the door. All of my room mates were distance runners, and I shared the living area with Tim Hutchings, who ran a brilliant race to finish fourth in the 5,000m.
I had been nervous before I arrived, but once I was in the village and saw so many fantastic athletes, it hit me hard. I was feeling nervous all day long. I arrived on Monday and by Wednesday I knew I was too wound up. Some of my other room mates, Mike McLeod and Steve Jones, had run the 10,000m and their Olympics were finished. They were going out for a drink that night, so I decided to join them.
I had been meticulous with my diet for weeks, and I had rarely drunk any beer. Going drinking in a bar four days before the race of my life may not sound like the conventional thing to do, but it was an excellent decision. The most important thing for me right then, was to relax and become less nervous. I made two small bottles of beer last all night, and I was back in bed by eleven o’clock. Whilst in the bar, I got talking to a couple of Los Angeles women who didn’t believe I was running in the Games. I got the impression that every man they met was using the same line.
I was still nervous the next morning, but it was nowhere near as bad, and I got through the whole day without getting worse. I am sure my night out stopped me from going over the edge. I was running very little in the last couple of days, and with a lot of time to kill, I was always trying to distract myself. There was a cinema in the village and I watched a movie but I couldn’t tell you what it was. The Beach Boys played a concert in the village one evening, and I went to see it, but I couldn’t tell you any of the songs they played. I had become so focused on the race that my mind couldn’t process anything else.
Sunday eventually arrived and the marathon was due to start at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, so I had a full day to get through. I spent a lot of it lying on my bed trying to read a book. I would read for a while, and look at my watch, read for a while and look at my watch. By the early afternoon I was struggling to read at all. After checking the time again, I decided to resist the urge and keep reading. I read and stopped myself looking. I read some more and stopped myself looking. I resisted several more times and eventually gave in. It was only sixty five seconds since I had last looked. I was so nervous it was distorting my perception of time.
Eventually it was time to go to the bus. I met my team mates, Geoff Smith and Hugh Jones and we sat together for the twenty minute ride to the start. We talked most of the way but I don’t know what about. The bus stopped outside the Santa Monica College stadium and as the sun beat down, I walked across the car park and into Chapter 1.