The denouement was fascinating and centred on how the two main protagonists handled the steep downhill section just over a mile before the finish: Bekele threw himself down the hill, striding out at full pace and pushing hard, whilst Farah was visibly tensing his thighs and wincing as he tried to stay in control. The paradox of this being that the guy running faster was actually utilising less energy than the man holding back. Of course if Mr Farah had signed me up as his coach I could have told him that in advance ...
I learnt a valuable lesson in running downhill when I ran in the Wimbledon '10' in the early 1980's. The course is a tough one (I think it's still held), being three laps taking in Wimbledon's All England tennis courts as well as the edge of Wimbledon Common at the top of a steep hill. In one particular year, two miles into the race, I was in a large pack of about a dozen runners contesting, I think, second place (GB international Paul Eales was already clear). We turned to go down the long steep hill at the end of the first lap; the runners started to coast, dropping their arms, following what had been some hard graft along Parkside on the flat. This seemed perfectly normal to me, a bit of respite in a hard distance race is always welcome. One runner had other thoughts though ...
Don Faircloth from Croydon Harriers was a top athlete in his time having won a bronze medal at the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games Marathon in 1970, running 2.12. He was by now in his late 30's but still a canny racer. Instead of coasting, Don kicked hard down the hill - just as Bekele did at the GNR last week - catching us all by surprise. I decided to go with him; at first it felt very uncomfortable, being difficult to overstride, punch the arms and work hard down the hill, but running alongside Don I soon got used to it. At the bottom of the hill we turned left along by the tennis courts, I looked behind and there was no-one there. We'd broken the pack and taken some 30 metres out of them. We did the same on the next lap and were fully clear of all opposition. My young legs managed to get the better of Don's ageing pins near the end of the race (see photo, guy in distance was lapped), which netted me a pb of 51.00, a time I never bettered despite the severity of the course (in truth I hardly ran another competitive 10 miler). We had a great chat after the run; Don told me that it never ceased to amaze him how runners, even the very best, ease off down hills just when they have everything in their favour: the ability to stride out with gravity helping and without over-expending energy, which can then be utilised to kick again along the ensuing flat section of a course (i.e. the corollary of kicking off the top of a hard hill climb).Lesson learnt by Mo hopefully.
Footnote: as well as using this in races, it's also sensible in training because it gives legs the opportunity to run faster than they could otherwise manage (especially true for old gits like me who can't muster up a sprint on the flat if I tried).
