FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Moving on Up from Track to Road
When Mo Farah makes the move from track to tarmac this Sunday, 13 April,
he'll be following in the footsteps of world-class athletes like Paula
Radcliffe, Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie. Neil Wilson considers how
the double World and Olympic champion will handle the transition.
Once upon a time, in days of yore, those who ran through the streets of our
cities in vest and shorts invited coarse comment and canine incisors.
Distance runners were an odd breed, not thought quick enough to run with
serious athletes on a track; tortoises more than hares.
Today the world's best marathon runners are as quick as any endurance
runner on a track. In reality they are as comfortable on a different
surface as Rafael Nadal is on clay or grass. To be competitive over the
classic distance of the road, a man must be able to run 5000 metres on the
track in under 13 minutes and 10,000m metres in under 27 minutes.
Those old timers sought the marathon because they were possessed only of
slow-twitch muscle fibres. They were strong and steady, with formidable
staying power, but you would not put money on them catching a bus.
In the year that the London Marathon was established, just 33 years ago,
the 100th fastest marathon runner recorded a time of 2 hours 14 minutes 24
seconds. By 2012, the year of the London Olympics, the 100th fastest ran
2:08:32 and 11 men ran sub-2:05. The marathon had become less of a marathon
and more of a sprint.
There had been a revolution. Track runners had found a natural habitat on
the road. It began in the 1980s with the likes of Alberto Salazar (Mo
Farah's coach), Robert de Castella, Carlos Lopes and Britain's own Steve
Jones - none slouches at 10,000m and all outstanding at the marathon. But
it wasn't until the late 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium
that the revolution they began swept away all the old thinking.
That dramatic change mirrored the changes taking place in 10,000m running
during the previous decade. The rivalry of Haile Gebrsalassie and Paul
Tergat was largely responsible, slicing 45 seconds off the 10,000m world
record between 1993 and 1998, and when they moved to the marathon its times
dropped proportionately too.
There is not a single 10,000m performance from before 1993 among the
world's fastest 75 times; there is no marathon time among the world's
fastest 100 times that pre-dates 2000.
Why the change? The commercial potential for runners on the road was the
stimulus but there was also a realisation among coaches that the marathon
was not some eccentric event reserved for plodders or those past their best
on the track. Indeed, it soon became apparent that training for the
marathon improved performances on the track.
Steve Jones reckoned that just as he ran his best 1500m when training for
10,000m, he ran his best 10,000m when training for the marathon. "Speed,
speed, speed," he said of his training.
Not that Jones was the best role model. He always regarded the marathon, as
he put it, as "a long Sunday run and a hard 10K". He claimed that he set
the world record on his debut at the distance on "a diet of Mars Bars, Coca
Cola and meat pies".
Things are a little more sophisticated today but Jones's general point
about training for the road not being dissimilar to the track is taken up
by Paula Radcliffe: "When I moved to the marathon I didn't change my
technique. The training did evolve some - a longer long run and tempo run -
but it wasn't a drastic change.
"Whenever I raced a marathon I would say I was also in very
close-to-personal best shape from 3K upwards," says Radcliffe. "I believe
that it was thanks to marathon racing and training that I ran faster on the
track."
So, however well Farah does at his first attempt over 26.2 miles, he won't
burn his bridges on the track; in fact his marathon debut may actually
improve him as a track runner.
Gabriela Rosa, who coached Tergat in his transformation into a marathon
runner, said he put speed ahead of endurance and behind only the aerobic
base building in deciding the year's programme.
Haile Gebrselassie - who will pace the elite men to the 30K mark at
world-record pace in London this spring - did not change his training for
his first marathon because in 2002 his sights were still set on another
Olympic 10,000m medal in Athens.
He did, though, change his training dramatically after 2004 when he focused
on the road for the following year. Even so, he was not an overnight
sensation at his new distance.
The speed that the novice marathoner brings from the track is crucial.
Around 70 per cent of 26.2-mile debutants run their fastest marathon in
their first three attempts, virtually all in their first five. Gebrselassie
was an exception - his seventh and eighth were his fastest - but Salazar
and Jones won their first marathons, Jones in a world-record time.
The challenge for some runners is to adapt their technique to the new
surface. Radcliffe says she did not but then she had run and won half
marathons often in the two years ahead of that marathon debut in London.
Farah has talked of some small changes under Salazar's instruction although
it is doubtful that they will be noticeable to the eyes of the crowds
packing the pavements of London this spring.
So if technique and training need only to be tweaked, what is the real
challenge of a move to the marathon for the modern endurance runner?
Perhaps it is all in the mind. Twenty-five laps of a track in an arena
surrounded by cheering people is sustaining; more than two hours on a
strange road through neighbourhoods where the only howl is the wind is a
different proposition.
Meb Keflezighi, the American who finished fourth in the 2012 Olympic
marathon, says he believes that marathon preparation is 90 per cent
physical and 10 per cent mental, but when the race starts, it's a different
story: "When the gun goes off, it's 90 per cent mental and 10 per cent
physical," he says.
Richard Nerurkar, the last British man to win a global title at the
marathon (the 1993 World Cup), calls the first marathon "daunting". He adds
that he felt: "A certain amount of apprehension, if not fear."
When Farah makes his debut over the classic distance for the first time at
the Virgin Money London Marathon in April, there's no doubt he'll arrive at
the race with all the right credentials, mind and matter.
Certainly Radcliffe is excited by the possibility that Farah will do well,
saying: "If he runs sub-2:05 I believe that would be the best range from
3:28 [his British 1500m record] ever seen from anyone, male or female."
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