Born to Run

I've been reading a lot of cycling books recently - the Robert Millar story, the David Millar story, 'Blazing Saddles' about the Tour and so on - but there were some athletics books in there as well. Most recently it is 'Born to Run' by Christopher McDougall. He is billed as a runner whose feet hurt so he went to see how the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico could run for days at a time without injury. Well, aye that's the basic plot but it is also a quite savage indictment of the running shoe companies. For instance, go into your nearest book shop and find the book. Open it at chapter 25 (page 148) and start to read it. Bookshops even give you wee seats and sofas to sit on while you browse these days so you can do it easily. On page 149 he tells of two Nike reps going to a sponsored college team and seeing them running barefoot because it was faster and safer than wearing their shoes. He goes on to develop the arguments that more athletes are injured wearing top of the range shoes than are injured wearing cheap shoes; that the newer more modern shoes actually weaken the foot and that the foot naturally pronates and that anti-pronation shoes subvert the body's natural movements and so cause injury!
There is a lot more about shoes, racing, attitudes, etc in the book as well as stuff about the Tarahumara and the basic story. He also puts Dean Karnazes in his place! I would suggest that road and endurance runners generally have a wee look at the book - persuade the Library to buy it for you or even get your nearest and dearest to buy it as an extra birthday present!

www.scotstats.com

It has been known for some months that Colin Shields and Arnold Black have decided not to publish any more of the Annual Yearbooks of Scottish Athletics Statistics. Many of us deplore that but since there were fewer copies sold every year then their viewpoint is understandable, Instead they have decided to set up a website and do all the things there that the statistical handbook would do and more. Unfortunately you can't put a website on the book shelf and printing it out doesn't give the same result either! However, today, 1st January 2010, Arnold sent out an email saying that the new website is up and running. It is to be found at www.scotstats.com
I have had a look and it includes a lot of stuff about different aspects of the sport including ranking lists.

The only senior club member that I could see in the road rankings was Pamela McCrossan in the Women's 10 Miles with her time of 64:37. Anyway, it's worth a look!

Viewing and Reading

Did anyone see the programme on Channel 4 at 12:35 on Monday? Probably not - Harriers are all abed after midnight. It was called 'Running to the Limits' and was about a chap setting out to run a marathon in 2:20 after two years training. Aged 24 and a slob he set to it and worked hard and................. well, you can see it at 4 on Demand: just go to www.channel4.com, click on 4OD, select the programme and away you go. It lasts 50 minutes and includes interviews with Ron Hill, Bruce Tulloh and Haile Gebrselassie with a horrific glimpse into the future by Frank Horwill right at the start!
On the books front, Colin Youngson sent me a copy of the book about the Scottish marathon championships that he wrote with Fraser Clyne and very interesting it is too. Called 'A Hardy Breed' it covers all the Scottish Marathon Championships from the first one in 1946 to the year 2000 and has a lot of interesting information on the training done by such as Harry Fenion - fastest in Britain and second fastest in Europe in the mid 50's - Emmett Farrell, Colin and the guys he trained with in Edinburgh and many other Scottish champions. If you can get your sticky fingers on a copy, grab it! The other book that I read - am still reading - is called 'Athletics Enigmas' and was written by Alistair Aitken in 2002. Although now out of print you can still get copies via that nice Mr Amazon. It starts with a chapter on Gordon Pirie and goes on to deal with Great Characters David Bedford, etc), Hard Men (Roy Fowler for a start), Great Races and much much more, as they say. Lots of training information there! Get reading!!! Better still, keep on running!

This Week's Athletics Weekly

It's not often that it arrives on a Thursday - it's a pity that it takes a postal strike to get it here on time! There are some good things in here if you don't mind the combination of Paula Radcliffe and Dwain Chambers on the front. There are several interesting two page interviews: one with Steve Jones, one with Tom MacNab on coaching (he used to be a member of Shettleston Harriers and of Bellahouston Harriers as well), Dwain Chambers and a piece on risk assessment by a chap who believes that it is a good thing. There is another two page section in their 'Performance' series under the heading of 'Seven Ways to Run Quicker' which has good stuff about VO2 max, lactate threshold and so on that are all in an easy to read and easy to understand form. The need to learn stuff is not just confined to coaches but athletes can't afford to be ignorant of the sport either and we used to argue and discuss books, AW articles and TV programmes when I was running regularly.

I also got a couple of books today: 'On A Cold Clear Day' about the American who came to Britain to learn how to be a distance runner in 1961 and Haile Gebreselassie' biography modestly titled 'The Greatest' written by Jim Denison. If anyone has already read these then let's hear about it in the Comments bit below.

"You can't learn faster only by having access to your own experience and knowledge, it's a no brainer. You need access to the experience of everybody." Frank Dick

What's In It For Me?

Last week's Athletics Weekly was waiting for me when I came home on Saturday afternoon and there is quite a lot in it for most runners. There is a page on the four most common drinks which looks at how useful they are for runners - water, milk, tea and coffee and alcohol are all discussed. If you are a distance runner looking for a new event or an additional event, or if you are a coach looking for information, David Lowes analyses the steeplechase. On the books front, a book called "An Honourable Run" by Matt McCue is reviewed by Paul Larkins and the review starts as follows: "This book covers all sorts of bases and does what it sets out to do, which is tell the story of how a coach can influence the life of a young athlete....author Matt McCue was a cross country runner in Iowa then Colorado which means for us it's as much an inspirational tale as a fascinating insight into American high school and college running life."
There is also information about a personal trainer for the wii - information at www.newu.me There are a couple of pages with information about whether music helps running which seems to come up with the totally surprising finding that for the top athletes like Daley Thomson, Charlie Spedding and company it doesn't, for those going much slower it is a welcome distraction and it is sometimes useful as part of a warm up to get you in the right frame of mind. It can rebound on you though - I remember coaching Susan Crawford of McLaren Glasgow who had a dire run in the SWAAA 3000 metres and just ran off home afterwards: I had her walkman for safe keeping and took the chance to see what she had been listening to - 'Chariots of Fire'. Who wants to start a long race totally wound up? In a marathon you want to keep as relaxed as possible while keeping on schedule and only get fired up after 20 miles - who can keep themselves totally emotionally psyched up for two and a half hours???
There is an interview with Lisa Dobriskey and eight pages of training advice.
Have a look at their website. Some weeks are better than others and there is a lot in it for us this time - not least the result of the Tooting Bec 24 hours!

Athletics books (Fiction)

Some of us were talking about athletics and who our heroes were at the weekend and my two big heroes as athletes were Herb Elliott and Peter Snell but in the conversation about what had inspired us the names of Wilson of the Wizard and Alf Tupper came up. So who were they? Alf Tupper was a character in a boys' comic of the time called the Rover which was a weekly collection of stories in prose with hardly any pictures which we all devoured. Alf was a welder to trade who slept under the railway arches and ate lots of fish and chips with loads of salt and vinegar. A real working class hero who loved beating the toffs from University clubs who always cheated. Wilson of the Wizard (the amazing Wilson) had been born sometime in the 18th century and lived alone on the moors. His secret for long life was the Elixir of Life - a potion the secret of which had been given to him by an old man when he was but a boy! We all read them as well as the other stories every week and talked about them on the way to school, at school and even after school if the story that week was particularly good. I looked them up on the net on Saturday night and suggest that if you are interested in what children read in the 1940's and 50's, or athletics fiction or the standard of literacy at the time, you could go to www.britishcomics.20m.com where you will find out about the five real boys comics - the Wizard and Adventure that came out on a Tuesday and the Rover and Hotspur that came out on a Thursday.

What has this to do with the price of eggs? Well there used to be a fairly good market in athletics fiction, some of which was filmed. In recent years Tom MacNab had Flanagan's Run about the TransAmerica footrace and The Fast Men about sprinters in the Old West but I can't thinlk of any more that were any good. Has athletics fiction died out? And can we blame Geoff Wightman?

Apologies!

Charlie Spedding's Olympic medal was in 1984 - thanks for the correction, put it down to a shaky typing finger! I checked his website last night and couldn't get it although Mr Google offered to show me a photograph of the front page. It was up again this morning though so it should be OK. The other thing is that although the review I read called the book "From First to Last" (I checked the cutting) it is actually called "From Last to First"! Apparently he was bottom of the class at school and ended up winning races..... My copy has been ordered from Amazon Books and they say it will be despatched on 8th October so don't look for it in the shops before then or I'll have the lawyers on the case!

Charlie Spedding

Charlie Spedding was a member of the great Gaateshead team of the 70's which included such as Brendan Foster, Geoff Turnbull and company. Many of them, including Geoff, subsequently left to form Valli but the Gateshead team was superb. Masterminded by Stan Long with Lindsay Dunn also one of the mainstays they carried all before them. Spedding was the last Briton to wn an Olympic medal for the marathon when he was third in 1964. Like almost all of his generation he is quite critical of the present generation of distance runners. He cracks the well worn joke about the last Briton to win the Great North Run being a Kenyon! Steve Kenyon that is of Salford.

He is now 57 and runs a pharmacy in Wallsend and has written his life story in "From First To Last" which is well worth a read. It is priced at a more than reasonable £8:99 and is available from www.charliespedding.com

Kerrydale Street

Since I have given some info on the Rangers book which has a fair bit of coverage of the club's connection with Clydesdale Harriers, I'll try to balance it with a reference to the Kerrydale Street website which is basically a Celtic supporters website. It has a report (complete with teams) of the match in which Clydesdale Harriers defeated Celtic at Parkhead in 1889. The link is www.kerrydalestreet.com/page/1889 and then just scroll down to the match in question.

In my time in the club there have been many books recommended by Harriers to Harriers - not all were on athletics matters: I remember Frank Kielty suggesting Patrick McGill's books (The Rat Pit, Moleskin Joe and so on)nearly thirty years ago and most recently Allan Faulds loaned me 'The Shetland Bus' about the last war. There were athletics books in all categories: books on training, books on coaching and biographies in the main. Occasionally there was a book on sports philosophy (eg 'Testament of a Runner') and just this week I saw 'What Sport Tells Us About Life. by Ed Smith who is a cricket player. It has chapters on such diverse topics as "The Age of the Amateur has passed: Worse Luck", "The Curse of Talent" and "What Price Is Too High?" I can see it being passed round among the guys of twenty and thiry years ago and being argued about - many of the topics are perennials and worth looking at in detail. So if you want a wee read that is not too heavy and that might just make you think a bit - get it from the Library!

Finally, it is good to see Ryan Kenny back just this week. He is the right type of boy to have in the club and he can run a bit as well! Welcome back Ryan!

More Strathallan and a Book

I omitted from the comments on the Strathallan Meeting last week the fact that Anton Russell took part in the Long and Triple Jump competitions: his placings are still not known but it is good to see him in only his second competition of the year. Lewis Wood, the star Under 15 throws expert, took part in the wrestling championships and took third place: it would be a brave boy who took him on, I can tell you!
The 'Rangers 1972:the gallant pioneers' is now available and 'flying off the shelves'. The club has almost four pages in the final chapter as well as several mentions in the course of the book.
I have another book and will cover it separately tomorrow in my next blog.

Athletics Daily

I'm not sure whether I have mentioned the athleticsdaily website before but it has been brought to my attention again by a friend just this week because of a particular thread that I'm interested in. The address is http://athleticsdaily.proboards.com/ and is an unofficial British (mainly English) website on all matters related to athletics with a slight bias towards endurance running although there are very good - and long - boards dealing with Long Throws, Sprints, etc contained on it. If you look at 'The 400's Daily Chat' you'll get Longthrow's laughter lines which is a collection of jokes plus John Bicourt's Daily Discussions on middle distance training and tactics plus International Athletics plus a whole series of boards on ALL aspects of athletics from 100 metres to pole vaulting.

Wilf Paish has a whole board to himself and his articles on coaching events across the spectrum. Some are quite long bur are all informative and written in easily accessible language. And then there is the 'Dark Side of Athletics' one that you could say is in places critical of the Establishment.

It's a site that is certainly worth a look. Of the two unofficial Scottish websites, the http://z3.invisionfree.com/Unofficial_SAL has much more traffic than the www.saforum.org.uk one and there are rumours that the latter has links to SAL. Whatever the truth of that it is pretty well known that all three are infiltrated by the governing bodies who post the odd reply under a pen name. They're none the less interesting for that and there is a lot of interesting info on them all.

'Rangers 1872: the Gallant Pioneers'

When I joined the club and for almost the whole of my membership there were two things that we never talked about - religion and football. We argued about politics, we discussed athletics and criticised television and so on but the abive topics were taboo. However, I am now recommending that you at least have a look at the book 'Rangers 1872: the Gallant Pioneers'. Why? Well because there is a big bit in it about the Clydesdale Harriers. The author, Gary Ralston of the Daily Record, paid several visits to me up here in Lochearnhead, consulted the old club handbooks, accounts, minutes , etc and made his notes. There were also several phone calls and I have had a look at what he has done on the club. The connection was because when the club was founded the main club in Glasgow was the Rangers and we trained at their venues. When Celtic arrived we had many members from there as well and we held sports meetings at both grounds. However we had several founding members in the Rangers club. He also mentions Willie Maley and the Clydesdale Harriers Football Committee (we had a team for a short while.)

The book is worth consulting and if you are interested in club history maybe worth buying! It is due out in August, published by Breedon Books and you can pre order at Amazon. The cost will be £14:99. If you want the link I'll pass it on. Incidentally, these books escalate in value very rapidly. I have one that I bought in the late 1980's, a paper back on Scottish International Footballers, that is now worth over £400.

Thanks, Brian

Brian Gallagher drew my attention to a book called 'The Marathon Makers' by John Bryant that he had got from the Clydebank Library. It is basically the story of three runners from the London Olympics in 1908 - Dorando Pietri, Johnny Hayes (both marathon men) and the Scot Wyndham Halswelle. It is a lot more than that - it covers the races in the Olympics and the careers of the runners thereafter. I found the bits about the marathon runners the most interesting - following their careers and races against each other after the Games. It's a book that I would recommend heartily to anybody.

I used to runa t least five days a week with Cyril O'Boyle. One year his daughter gave him a subscription to 'Runners World' magazine as a present. We had both read it off and on prior to that and talked about it on the run. After the sub started we discussed each issue as it appeared and many a good argument or discussion we had. We also bought some of the books produced by the magazine such as 'Running After Forty' by Hal Higdon. This week I came across a book called 'Ultra Marathon Man - confessions of an all night runner' by Dean Karnazes. It reminded me of the old RW books even although it was published by Tarcher Penguin. It dealt with the career of an ultra marathon runner who had been good at school and high school but stopped running until he was 30 when he took it up again in an idiosyncratic way. The book covers his run in the Western States 100 (a 100 mile race covering several serious mountains), a race through Death Valley and then a 199 mile relay which he ran as a single race. For freaks like me he even discusses his diet and there is a Food Log from the 199 miles run. He has a website called www.ultramarathon man.com that might be worth a visit. I haven't checked it out yet but I will as soon as I finish this post.

New Year Presents!

I know it's a bit late for the Christmas present market but there are two new books reviewed in the 'Athletics Weekly' for 18th December (which arrived on 23rd December!). The first is Sonia O'Sullivan's autobiography called "Sonia, My Story". It is published by Penguin, Ireland at £14:99 and is available through Amazon - and probably through bookshops if you place an order. It was shortlisted for the Irish Sports Book of the Year. It gets a good write up and from what it says it sounds a good book.

The second is called 'Keep Ya Peckah Up!' and is by Natasha Danvers who won the Olympic 400 metres hurdles bronze in Beijing. I quote "More than an autobiography the book draws on Danvers' experiences to encourage readers in all walks of life, whether business, personal or sporting areas, to see that they can realise their dreams" There is no indication of publisher or price that I could see but you can probably get them on the internet.

I mention them because there are not many on women's athletics available other than Paula Radcliff or Kelly Holmes and any addition to the body of knowledge is welcome.

Finally, have a good Christmas and a successful New Year.