In 1982 the European Championships were to be held in Athens during September, and the Commonwealth Games were in Brisbane four weeks later. My various road race victories had given me the confidence to believe I might make the team for one of these. I was determined to train as well as possible, to make this dream come true.
Winter training, for most runners, consisted of lots of miles, with occasional cross country races. I knew from my experience in Boston that I needed to include some faster running every week, and without an indoor track, it was going to be difficult. I could do sessions on the track at Gateshead, or, if I had to, I could use a quiet road. Or so I thought.
My training diaries, which record the details of every training session throughout my career, also perform another task. They prove the advance of global warming! It is several years now since snow lay on the ground in Newcastle for more than a few hours, but my diaries record regular falls of lasting snow. In January 1982 we had several inches which lasted more than a week. The track at Gateshead was closed, and all the roads were covered in ice or slush. Easy running was treacherous, and fast running was impossible. I tried training in a multi-storey car park but there were too many sharp bends. I discovered that there was really only one suitable venue in the North East.
The Tyne Tunnel is a well known and extremely busy road under the River Tyne, in between Newcastle and the coast. Half a mile away is the less well known pedestrian Tyne Tunnel, which is about the same width and height as an underground train tunnel. It is best described as dank, but completely free from snow and wind, and it was in this tunnel, beneath the river Tyne, that I tried to replicate the training sessions I had performed on Harvard’s award winning indoor track a year earlier. I trained there on several occasions, and rarely saw anybody else travelling through the tunnel. However, I did have a slight altercation with the guard who mans the entrance. Halfway through my first session, he came along the tunnel and told me that whatever I was doing he didn’t think I should be doing it in his tunnel. I referred him to the notice at the entrance, which laid down the rules for users of the tunnel. I pointed out that I was clearly a pedestrian; I was not riding a bicycle; I was not smoking or drinking; and, even if I say so myself, I was quite confident that I was not loitering. I always laugh when people try to tell me there is just no glamour in long distance running.
At the beginning of the year I made a detailed plan of my training and racing, up to the AAA Championship in July, which was the trial race for the European and Commonwealth Games. I showed it to Lindsay and we discussed it at length. There were two important things he wanted to change. He felt I needed to do a specific, six week spell of high mileage at 110 miles per week before the track season, and he didn’t think I should run a 10,000 metre race before the trial, in case it took too much out of me. At the end of our talk I agreed to change my training, but disagreed about the race. I wanted to achieve the qualifying time before the trial, so I could concentrate on getting in the first three, and not have to worry about the time as well. As our relationship was one of friend and adviser, rather than coach and athlete, we agreed to disagree.
Before these decisions became important, I was back in the USA. I had been invited back to a couple of the races I had done well in the previous year. I ran the New England Indoor 5,000m at Boston University’s track. I had surprised myself in last year’s event by how quickly I ran. This time I was surprised by how quickly everybody else ran. I went through the first mile in 4:21 and two miles in 8:48, but I couldn’t hold it. Instead of finishing fast, I was slowing down and I ran the last 800m in 2:16. I finished 6th in 13:53. John Flora, my previous training partner on this track, had the honour this year of being out sprinted by Greg Meyer, who won by one second in 13:36. I was a little disappointed with my run, but it was probably to be expected. 13:53 wasn’t too bad in January, but it was more of a Tyne Tunnel performance than a Harvard performance.
Next on the agenda was a return to Tampa, Florida and the Gasparilla 15k, where previously I had finished 6th in 43:44. This year I managed to improve both my time and position. I was 5th in 43:38. It was hot and very humid. The leading group of four got away from me after passing two miles in 9:01, and I ran most of the race by myself. Mike Musyoki won it in 43:08; with Greg Meyer second in 43:11. This was a good run, and I was very pleased with it. Despite the problems of training in the snow, I knew my winter work was on course.
My job at Nike was working out quite well. My task was to increase exposure of the brand, which I achieved by signing good runners to exclusive Nike contracts. Most of them were glad to sign for the provision of free kit and shoes. Everybody was happy. Nike was getting plenty of authentic advertising, the runners were getting free kit, and I had a job which allowed me to run and race when I wanted to. The downside was that it often involved a lot of travelling, and my training diaries state, without any explanation, that one day I ran 7 miles in Manchester, and 10 miles the next day in Sheffield.
After five weeks of decent training, it was time for my six week spell of 110 miles per week. I started with a 19 mile run with Lindsay, Pete Parker and Steve Winter. It was mid March, and although there was no snow, it was very windy. I felt tired, and continued to feel tired all day. I woke the next day with a severe headache, and felt really ill. I felt so bad that I didn’t run a step for the next four days. My first week of high mileage ended with a grand total of 28. I decided to ignore that week and start again.
This time I was alright, and apart from a couple of days with a sore leg, which reduced the fourth week to 86 miles, I achieved my 110 mile target for the other five weeks. I did it, but it wasn’t easy. I felt tired all of the time, and I often felt as if I was doing the second run of the day having just finished the first one. I had regularly run 80 to 90 miles per week without any problem, but the extra 20 miles on top had me feeling as if I was constantly out running. However, I felt good about completing it, and I knew it had improved my endurance, so I could move on to the next part of the plan, which was altitude training.
Boulder, Colorado was, and still is, a favourite place for runners. It is 5,000 feet above sea level, which is high enough to have an altitude stimulus, but not so high as to make quality running impossible. If you stand in Boulder and face east, you can see flat farm land disappearing into the distance. If you turn and face west, you have to look up to see the snow covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
In late May, Lindsay Dunn, Barry Smith and I went to Boulder for two and a half weeks of training. Conventional wisdom says that this is too short a period of time for altitude training to provide a benefit. I discuss this idea in a later chapter, so for now, I will just say that conventional wisdom is not always right.
Barry and I had done lots of endurance work, and the purpose of this trip was to propel our cardiovascular fitness forward so that we could race well on the track, and hopefully both make the British team. When you run at high altitude you have to make concessions to the rarefied air, but a lot of people seem to do this by running more slowly. We had come to run fast, so all our steady runs were shorter than usual but a little quicker too. One of the track sessions was 8 × 440 yards – they didn’t have a metric track – in an average of 62.7 seconds, but with three minutes jog between efforts instead of the 90 seconds I would have taken at home. The extra rest didn’t make this session any easier; it just made it possible.
I also did one of Lindsay’s infamous ‘unknown’ sessions, where I had to run every effort at 62 seconds per lap pace, but I didn’t know what was coming until I jogged up to the line and he called out the distance I had to run. I also didn’t know how many reps I was going to do, and he always made me jog up to the line ready to go again before he told me I had finished. I won’t repeat what I usually called him.
He still likes to tell the story of one of his sessions I did later that year. It involved running at a predetermined pace whenever he blew a whistle, and keeping it going until he blew it again. I was well into the session, and had just done a long effort, when, after only forty yards of jogging, I heard the whistle and set off again. I was cursing him for giving me so little rest and, as I came into the home straight, I couldn’t understand why he was laughing. It turned out that the whistle I had heard was from a football game outside the stadium. Afterwards, when I had recovered, I laughed about it too, but I also realised that the ability to surge, when very tired, could prove extremely useful.
After ten days in Boulder, we went into the Rockies to a place called Snowmass, which is at 8,500 feet. Barry and Lindsay stayed, but after two days I went back to Boulder, because I found it impossible to run at anything faster than a jog. I felt this sort of altitude was too much and it wasn’t doing me any good.
The day before we came home I ran a session of 3 × ¾ of a mile in 3 minutes 22 seconds each. This is about 28 minute pace for 10,000m, which was the pace at which I was hoping to race. The comment in my diary next to this session is ‘excruciating; oxygen debt was huge’. Perhaps the race would be easier, but then again, perhaps not.
After a week at home, I ran a local track league 1,500m in 3:50.1, and ten days later went to Oslo for the Bislett Games 10,000m. This was the race Lindsay had thought I should miss, but I wanted to run it for the European championship qualifying time of 28:30. There was a top class field, which I was lucky to be in, and though 10,000m is 25 laps of the track, I let the leaders go during lap one. It wasn’t really a race for me other than against the clock. For a long way I ran in isolation near the back, but after passing 5,000m in exactly 14 minutes, I started to overtake people who had gone with the pace and blown up. Carlos Lopes defeated Alberto Salazar in a new European record of 27:24, which was only two seconds away from Henry Rono’s world record. I avoided being lapped by finishing eighth in 28:17, which was a big personal best and comfortably inside the qualifying time.
There were about twenty or thirty British athletes at the Bislett Games. People like Steve Ovett, Seb Coe and Dave Moorcroft could run anywhere because every meeting wanted them, but the rest of us were there thanks to Andy Norman. Over the previous few years he had gained control over what happened in British athletics, thanks to his dominant personality and brusque manner. He wasn’t easy to get along with, but getting along with him was a good idea. At meetings like the Bislett Games in Oslo, he worked closely with the organisers, and guaranteed that the big stars like Coe and Ovett would run, but in return he wanted twenty other British athletes to be given places in the meeting. This was a huge help to people like me. I would never have got a place in this race without being part of Andy Norman’s package of athletes, and these events gave me, and others like me, fantastic experience of top level racing in a packed stadium.
Of course, he made it very clear that a poor performance was not acceptable, and anybody who failed to run well could forget about ever asking him again for a race abroad. I knew I had been outclassed by some of the best runners in the world, but I was pleased with knocking nearly 30 seconds off my personal best. When he saw me after the race he said, ‘Spedding. Did you get lapped?’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ With a kind of sneer he said, ‘It must have been close’ and walked off. Over the next few years, as I got more used to him, I began to realise that if he said anything to you that didn’t compare your performance to excrement, it was his obtuse way of giving you a compliment. It just never sounded like a compliment.
A week after Bislett I ran an invitation mile at Steve Cram’s local track at Monckton in Jarrow. I don’t really know how I managed it but I finished last in 4:25, which is only slightly faster pace than I had just run for six miles. I was shocked to perform so badly, but realised that my mind simply wasn’t on it. The AAA Championship and trial was getting close and this race just didn’t mean enough to me. However, it did shake me up enough to run a personal best for 800m in the local track league four days later. A lifetime best of 1 minute 56.7 seconds for 800m shows quite clearly why I needed to run the longer distances!
I assume that Andy Norman hadn’t seen the result of my mile in Jarrow, because a week before the AAAs I was picked to run 5,000m for England, at Crystal Palace, in a four sided international against Japan, Spain and Kenya. I also assume that a lot of the faster 5,000m runners had turned it down because it was too close to the trial, but I was glad of the international vest and the race.
This international vest, however, was actually a bit of a hassle. Nike was sponsoring the England team, and it was part of my job to make sure the team kit arrived on time, and in the right sizes, which ranged from small to extra, extra, extra large. Everything was fine, but it involved dealing with Andy Norman and a strict deadline, which was far from stress free. I had learnt the hard way that going too fast in the first few laps of a 5,000m always had me in trouble later. The early pace in this race was quick so I settled in at the back, but this had me in a different kind of trouble. Andy Norman was on the infield, and started barking at me to pull myself together, get my finger out and move up. I ignored him. A few laps later, the pace at the front slackened and then I moved up until I was in third place. With six laps to go Koskie, one of the Kenyans, surged and I went with him. We were soon clear of the rest, and we ran together until 450m to go, when I sprinted hard, and stole a gap on him, which I kept until the end. Winning for England, in front of a full house at Crystal Palace, was fabulous. The crowd were on their feet and cheering, and as I jogged a victory lap I had to pass Andy Norman, who paid me the huge compliment of grunting, ‘not bad, for the kit boy’.
It had been an evening meeting, so I had stayed at the Queen’s Hotel with all the other athletes. At breakfast the next morning, Andy Norman was sitting with three other officials from the Athletics Association. I apologised for interrupting his breakfast but I wanted to be sure about the selection policy. He confirmed that the first three Britons in the AAA 10,000m would be picked for the European, and the first three Englishmen would be picked for the Commonwealth Games. To be absolutely certain, I asked, ‘So, if an Englishman is in the first three next week he is in both teams?’ ‘Yes,’ said Andy Norman. I went back to my table but I wasn’t out of earshot when they all had a bit of a laugh after one of them said, ‘I can’t imagine why he needs to know that.’
I was a little upset by his comment, but, on reflection, had to agree that he probably had a valid point. My best of 28:17 looked very average compared to the recent times of others in the trial such as Julian Goater (27:34); Mike McLoed (27:39); Geoff Smith (27:43); Bernie Ford (27:43); Adrian Royle (27:47); Nick Rose (27:50); Dave Clarke (27:55), Barry Smith (28:06) and Steve Jones, who had just run 13:18 for 5,000 metres.
The trial was back at Crystal Palace and there were plenty of other British runners, along with the Japanese and Kenyans, who had stayed from the previous week. The Norwegians were also using the race as their trial for the European championships, which meant that 45 runners went to the start line. It was crowded and awkward during the first few miles, but despite so many runners, nobody wanted to push the pace. We reached 5,000m in 14:20. I felt comfortable, but I assumed that most of the others were comfortable too.
I started to move closer to the front, because someone was bound to push on at some stage, and I didn’t want to miss the break. With six and a half laps to go, I was in about 8th place when I saw Goater surge to the front. The moment I saw him move I surged too. It was a reflex, as if I had heard a whistle. I was almost sprinting down the back straight passing people who hadn’t responded so quickly. By the home straight I was third, with Steve Jones in second. I knew this was the decisive moment, and no matter how hard it was, I had to get with Jones and hang on.
Goater ran the next lap in 63.4 seconds and I was just about holding the gap to ten yards. When he ran 66.9 for the next one, Jones and I were able to close up and form a group of three. It was really hard but I knew there was a decent gap behind me and if I could hang on I would be in the team. The next lap was 66.3 and our leading group was still together. Goater wasn’t thinking about the team, he was thinking about winning, and he pushed the pace down to 64.5 for the next lap. There were a couple of yards between Goater and Jones and a couple more to me. When he ran 62.9 for the penultimate lap, he was away.
I was incredibly tired now, but I concentrated totally on staying within a couple of yards of Jones, and finished 2 ¼ seconds behind him in third, with 28:11.00. Nick Rose was fourth in 28:17. I had run the second 5,000m in 13:51. Goater ran the second half in 13:43 for a winning time of 28:02. When I got my breath back, I was ecstatic. I had run another personal best; I was going to Athens and Brisbane; and with a bit of luck I would bump into those guys from the breakfast table.
I had made no plans beyond the trial, because making the team was my only plan. I always found that it helped to have nothing planned beyond the target race, because it focused the mind so well. When things got hard, I couldn’t start thinking about an alternative if there was no alternative. But now I had six weeks to wait for the European Championships, and ten weeks for the Commonwealth Games, and I felt as if I had already peaked. I discussed this with Lindsay, and we agreed to go back to a little more mileage, with fewer quality sessions, to try to maintain my fitness without pushing it over the edge. We also agreed that our conversation at the beginning of the year had worked out well, because I had ended up with the right decisions on the high mileage training and racing the Oslo 10,000m for the qualifying time.
During the period before Athens I raced with typical irregularity. I ran a good 13:29.1 for 5,000m in Koblenz, but also managed to take a pedestrian 2:01 to run 800m in Sunderland. Neither performance mattered very much, compared to how I would run in the Championships. When we got to Athens we were expecting to run heats on Monday and a final (if we made it) on Thursday, but the organisers decided there weren’t enough runners to justify two rounds, and they altered it to a straight final on the Monday. Some people weren’t happy about the last minute change, but I always try to see everything in a positive light, and I regarded this is as good news – I was in the final without having to exert myself.
It was a hot evening in Athens in early September, and as you would expect in a European final, there were a lot of fast runners. I was very nervous about running a major championship, and I always find it curious that I was so nervous, I was almost dreading something that I had spent years longing to do. I knew there was no chance of getting a medal, and I went to the start line not knowing what I was aiming for. I simply had to run the best race I could.
The first 5,000m passed in an uneventful 14:05, and I was happy to stay in contention for as long as possible. With nine laps to go, Carlos Lopes surged to the front with a series of laps in 64 to 65 seconds. As he made his move I was behind Alex Hagelsteens of Belgium, who had run 27:26 when finishing third in the Bislett race. I figured that if I could hang on to him I would do well, but his pace didn’t change. I was thinking, ‘come on, let’s get after them’ but he made no response, and I overtook him and gave chase myself. This process only took a couple of seconds but in those seconds a leading group of five had made a gap I couldn’t close.
I learnt a vital lesson here about giving an opponent’s reputation too much respect. If I had responded instantly to the surge as I had done in the AAA 10,000m, I may have been able to hang on to the leading group long enough to be pulled clear of everybody else. With eight laps to go I was in 6th place, running hard with a gap in front and a gap behind. It was going to be a long two miles to the finish. Steve Jones and Salvatore Antibo of Italy were running together and caught me with three laps to go. They were too good for me round the last lap and I finished eighth in 28:25. I had mixed feelings about it afterwards. Having started the season with a best of 28:45 and no realistic hope of making the team, I should have been delighted with eighth in Europe, but it bothered me that I had made a mistake, and had not been able to hang on to sixth.
When I looked back at this result a few years later, I felt a lot better about it, because the winner, Alberto Cova, went on to win World and Olympic titles; second placed Schildhauer won a few European medals; and third placed Vainio won silver in the ’84 Olympics, although he was later disqualified for drug taking. Carlos Lopes (4th) went on to be Olympic marathon champion and record holder; Julian Goater (5th) won a Commonwealth medal later that year; and Antibo (6th) went on to win two European titles and an Olympic silver medal. Steve Jones (7th), who again finished two and a bit seconds ahead of me, went on to win bronze in the World Cross Country and set a World best for the Marathon. It eased the disappointment of finishing eighth to realise there were no mugs among the seven who beat me.
The English team travelled to Australia a week before the Commonwealth Games began. I left home on Saturday morning on the train to London. We flew to Dubai, Kuala Lumpar, Singapore and Sydney, then changed planes and flew to Brisbane, arriving at midday on Monday. I was extremely tired and disorientated, but I recovered and adjusted with a couple of days to spare.
I had travelled to the other side of the world to run this race, but right next to me on the start line was my arch rival from Tyneside, Mike McLeod. He had made the team because Steve Jones was running for Wales, and Nick Rose was in the 5,000m. The first half of the race went by in a comfortable 14:17. With six laps to go, Goater surged hard, and McLeod and I followed immediately. For a lap England filled the first three places, but I couldn’t hold on to this pace, and was passed by Gidamis Shanga and Zack Barie of Tanzania. Those two worked together and caught and passed Goater. With three laps to go I passed McLeod and hung for fourth, in a repeat of the 28:25 I had run in Athens.
I was very pleased with fourth, and delighted with my year. It had been a very long season; I was extremely tired, both physically and mentally, and I barely ran a step for the next three weeks. I took the rare opportunity to enjoy the Gold Coast beaches and relax. I watched the rest of the Games from the stand with a great sense of satisfaction, but on the last day, as we were all standing for a national anthem, I looked around at the crowd and vowed to myself that this was not the end; I would be back for more Championship racing.
The following winter didn’t go very well. I was starting to get problems with the arch in my left foot and I had several bouts of viral illness. I was failing to do consistent training, and the few races that I ran were nothing better than average. However, I had a meeting with Lindsay about plans for 1983, and his idea was perfectly simple. After finishing third in the AAA 10,000m last year, surely I had to aim to win it this year. I had improved my times, and I had been to a couple of Championships, so a national title was next on the list. The logical simplicity of his argument had me agreeing straightaway. Having pulled off an unlikely goal last year, I felt more confident that I could pull off an unlikely goal this year. In early January I put a year planner on the wall of my office at Nike and wrote ‘AAA 10k’ against the 23rd of July. Every morning, for the next six months, I looked at that entry and calmly said to myself, “I am going to win that.”
In February, I went to Tampa for the third time to run the Gasparilla 15k. I finished 14th in 44:15, and knew that my interrupted training was to blame for the half minute I had lost on previous runs. The race was won by Rob de Castella in a scintillating 42:46. The winning time for this race was getting faster every year, and I was reminded very clearly that no matter what you had achieved previously, top class performance requires top class training. I managed a couple of weeks at 90 miles before running the National Cross Country. I finished an embarrassing and dismal seventy sixth. I was reminded that top class performance requires a lot of top class training.
I began a six week spell of 110 miles per week straight after the National. I managed it on three out of the six weeks. In the worst week I ran a meagre 49 miles, because I was ill with a temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. However, I had to go to work because the World Cross Country Championships were in Gateshead, and the Nike promotions department had so much work to do in preparation.
After the mileage spell finished, I went to Oslo to run a 10k road race and I struggled the whole way to finish 13th in 29:50. I then did several weeks of 85 miles with some good quality sessions, before my first track race of the year. I ran the North Eastern Championship 1,500m and finished 7th in the heats in 3:59. It was eight months since Brisbane, and I hadn’t run a single decent race. However, I was still looking at the entry on my wall chart for July 23rd, and still telling myself that I was going to win.
I had done a session of 3 × 1,200m in 3:12 a few weeks earlier, when Lindsay suggested I do it again but with differential pace. The idea was to practise racing, and I had to run the first lap in 66 seconds, surge the second lap in 61, and deal with the tiredness by running the third lap in 65. I was delighted when I did it almost perfectly, and I soon saw some improvement with a 3,000m in 8:02. In late June I went back to Oslo for the Bislett Games 5,000m, where I ran very close to my best with 13:29.7. I finished 12th, which was fine in such a high quality race, but what concerned me was that, despite beating Geoff Smith and Steve Jones, I was only sixth among the British runners. Eamonn Martin, Dave Clarke, Nick Rose, Julian Goater and Steve Binns all finished ahead of me.
Ten days later I was back on the same track for the Oslo Games 10,000m. It was another world class field and I saw it as a chance to run a really fast time. I went with the leaders from the start, and passed through 5k in 13:45. It was far too fast. As Carlos Lopes went on to win in 27:23, I blew up in spectacular fashion, and struggled to the finish in 28:49. It took me over five minutes to run the last four laps. This was not the ideal way to prepare for a national title attempt.
Every time I ran a track race in Britain the same guys would be there at the check in and we would all warm up together. I liked them well enough but invariably the conversation would be about injuries and illnesses, or about who else was running really well. I always found this type of banter detracted from my concentration on the task ahead. I knew that I had to be totally focused for the AAA Championship, so I planned to avoid all contact with my competitors before the race. Everybody stayed at the Queen’s Hotel at the AAA’s expense, but I booked myself into another hotel nearby, at my expense. Before the race I nipped into registration, picked up my number and disappeared before anybody could speak to me.
There is a swimming pool at Crystal Palace, which is near the track, and I went to the far side of it to warm up for the race, by myself. I ran up and down the edge of the building repeating a sort of mantra to myself. I jogged to the warm up area just as we were all taken onto the track, and I made it to the start line without anybody having the opportunity to put the slightest negative thought into my head. I knew that I had run only one decent race all year, but it didn’t matter. This was going to be my best race of the year, because today was the day, and I was going to fly.
The World Athletics Championships were taking place in Helsinki two weeks after the AAA, and there were a lot of foreign athletes at the meeting. The biggest threat in the 10,000m was the Australian Commonwealth marathon champion, Rob de Castella, who was using this as his last race before the World Marathon. I stayed close to the front throughout the first 5,000m which I passed in a decent 14:08, with de Castella, Geoff Smith and Allister Hutton, who had finished one place behind me in Brisbane.
After 6,000m de Castella went to the front to stop the pace from slacking. On a few occasions he gestured for someone to lead and help him with the pace. I was having a bad spell at this point, and was struggling to stay positive. But even if I had felt good, I would not have led, because I was there to win, not to help him to run a fast time. With six laps to go I snapped out of my bad spell and began to anticipate the finish. We all let de Castella lead, but as we approached the line with three laps to go, I surged to the front. I ran 63 seconds for the next lap.
When you make a long run for home, you have to run fast enough to get a gap but not so fast that you can’t hold on. I had certainly gone fast enough to get a gap, but whether I could hold on, only time would tell. I ran 65 seconds for the penultimate lap, and people on the side were telling me that I was still clear. I didn’t look round; there was no point – they were definitely chasing me. When I reached the bell I was gasping for breath, my legs were stinging, but I knew I had to pick it up. I ran really hard down the back straight to make sure nobody could get close enough to out sprint me. As I turned into the home straight, half a dozen runners I was about to lap moved out into lane two. I ran for the line as hard as I could, and with fifty yards to go I pulled level with the lapped runners, but I couldn’t get past them. I felt as if I was running through treacle. I was clawing at the air trying to pull the line towards to me, and I staggered across it almost drowning in a sea of lactic acid.
I had run 64 seconds for the last lap, and I won in a new personal best of 28:08; Geoff Smith was three seconds back with Allister Hutton third in 28:18; de Castella was fourth in 28:24. As I jogged a very slow victory lap I was reminded of something I had written on a notepad in a pub several years before. What do I want? Why do I want it? How much do I want it?