The Psychology of Running

After spending last Sunday afternoon erecting and decorating an enormous Christmas tree in our lounge – why do we humans do such bizarre things? – I felt that I deserved to sit down and read the Sunday Times accompanied by a particularly large whisky, a packet of crisps and with a Rachmaninov piano concerto blasting away. (This custom started in my early 20’s after my flatmate Simon Collingridge and I had been out for our second Sunday run of the day, thus completing another weekend of hard training, drinking and, in Simon’s case, womanising. Trouble was it always seemed to be my whisky being consumed ...)

There was a brilliant Q&A piece on Sir Christopher Chataway (CC) in the ST and it made me laugh a lot. It also made me think. CC is now in his late 70’s and still competes in mob matches for Thames, although was absent when we thrashed them a couple of weeks ago. He was a very fine runner in the 50’s, being particularly remembered, along with my old chum Chris Brasher, for his part in Roger Bannister’s first 4 minute mile in 1954. Brasher took the first two laps, Chataway took it on for the third, leaving Bannister to take the glory at the end.

CC’s finest memory is of his famous 5,000m race against the Russian Vladimir Kuts in October that year. There were 40,000 spectators in the White City stadium in London. In those days there were no floodlights, instead two searchlights followed the runners as they circled the track in the cool autumnal evening, that must have been something special to watch. CC won the race by inches in a new world record of 13.51. Compared to today’s pampered, lottery funded, shoe sponsored, athletes, the top runners of the 50’s had nothing going for them. They did very little training (there having been no real science on the subject), ran in heavy, old leather shoes with no support, and on rough and often flooded cinder tracks ... and they nearly all smoked! CC stated that he cut down to seven cigarettes a day during the summer when he was competing!

So how were they able to run so fast? For starters anyone who ran then had a perception in their mind of what was needed to be competitive and therefore had an inherent belief that they could run at the necessary speed. This is an argument I’ve used a lot when talking to today’s runners about why standards were so much better in the 80’s – you effectively turned up at your club and ran at the pace necessary to keep up, then went away and trained hard on your own so that you could keep up the following week! At a finance seminar I recently attended, someone quoted the famous economist John Maynard Keynes on the paradox of thrift: "if we are all prudent together, there can be no growth." Growth being exactly what our economy needs at present but thrift and lack of ambition holding it back. This can easily been linked to training. There's no point just pottering along together at an easy pace (prudence) when to get fitter (growth) it takes more investment in extra input, effort and energy. No gain without pain.

Back to the 50's, at the highest level it then became a psychological battle to be the best. The Austrian Franz Stampfl coached all three of the 4 minute mile protagonists. As well as being one of the early pioneers of the standard interval session on the track (yep, blame him every time you are asked to do 10 x 400 off 200 recovery), he had a strong belief in the mental aspect of training and racing. As CC stated in the article, he conveyed masses of positive thoughts to the runner, including just before the Kuts race: "don’t forget he’s just as frightened of you." I’ve always tried to convey this to athletes i.e. don’t look across at the guy running alongside you in a race and assume he is better than you; think positively about how the guy is hanging on for dear life and also show positivity to make him feel even worse, a little smile perhaps or a gentle surge for a few metres. This can be the difference between a good and a great runner. A little bit of arrogance is a good thing in a runner.

CC won the first ever Sports Personality of the Year award in 1954, quite remarkable considering that Bannister had broken the 4 minute barrier. However, his greatest memory of that night wasn’t collecting the famous outside broadcast camera trophy but of being given an enormous, extremely expensive cigar!

Finally, some good news at last for me to end an all round tough year. No, I don't mean winning Ciren's athlete of the year award, although very proud of that despite my embarrassing beer belly. I've been asked and have accepted to mentor and coach a top UK international distance athlete. We live some distance apart but have met up a couple of times already, contact each other on a daily basis and are both looking forward to an exciting 2010. It's going to be hard work and a real challenge but hopefully fun as well.