Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  I lined up at the start of the race. I was nervous, but I was also feeling confident.

  The race starts. The crowd cheers. I get off to a good start. With five laps to go, I take the lead. My legs are aching. Muscles pumping. I’m gritting my teeth through the pain. I’m pushing, running hard. The effort I’m having to put in is ridiculous. I’m running 64- or 65-second laps, and it feels more like I’m running 60-second laps. That’s how much effort I’m putting in. Two laps to go. Just two laps, then I’m in the final.

  And that’s when everything starts to go wrong.

  One guy shoots past me first. It’s Edwin Soi. Then Kipsiro cruises clear of me. Kipsiro, who I’d matched stride for stride on the track only a few weeks earlier. I can’t believe what is happening. My place in the final is slipping away before my very eyes. Then Cherkos races ahead of me. Then España. As I come into the last lap it hits me: I’m down in fifth. In the heats. This is bad. Really bad. I know in my head that I need to wind it up now if I’m going to claw my way back into the qualifying positions. But I can’t do it. There’s nothing left to wind up. I’m kicking hard, giving it everything I’ve got, but it feels like I’m wading through treacle. Every muscle is heavy. Physically, I’m spent. I’ve done such a high volume in training that on the day of the race my tank is empty. I’m like a car running on fumes.

  I have nothing left to give.

  I’m still kicking as an Eritrean passes me and I cross the line in sixth place. For a moment I’m stunned. I can’t believe it. My time is 13:50.95. It’s not even good enough for me to sneak into the final as one of the fastest losers. My Olympic dream is over.

  My mind is racing. I look across at España. He’s finished fourth – fourth! – qualifying him for the final. I always try to show the greatest respect for my competitors, all athletes do, but the same thought keeps churning over in my mind as I watch España celebrate. ‘Even this guy has made it! I should’ve beaten him easily.’ There are no ‘should haves’ or ‘might have beens’ in athletics. There’s only what happened. And what happened is, I’d blown my chance of a medal in the Olympic Games.

  Every defeat hurts. But some defeats hurt more than others. If some raw nineteen-year-old who’s never been on your radar kicks on and sprints past you like it’s nothing, then you accept it. It’s hard to swallow, but you can process it. The same if someone accidentally trips you up. Things happen in a race. There’s a difference between what is in your control and what’s outside it. When you lose a race because of something outside your control, okay, that’s one thing. But when you lose a race because of something you did have control over – like how hard you trained – that’s harder to process. That defeat in Beijing hurt me more than any other.

  I had let myself down. I had let my country down. Wearing that Great Britain jersey meant so much to me, and I’d arrived in Beijing full of hopes of winning a medal for my country. Now I’d failed even to make the final of my event. All those months of training – all that effort – it had all been for nothing.

  I didn’t want to stick around Beijing for a moment longer than I needed to. I just wanted to be alone. Later on I found out that Boniface Songok had done exactly the same thing as me. He’d returned to Kenya ahead of the Olympic trials and kept up the intensity in training, not allowing his body to recover. When it came to running in the trials, his body was shot. That’s why he’d failed to make the team. Likewise, Micah had been wiped after Flagstaff. But unlike Boniface and me, he’d listened to his body and dialled down on the training in Kenya, doing only light sessions and making sure he got plenty of rest. Micah went on to win the bronze medal in the 10,000 metres in Beijing. Moses Kipsiro placed fourth in the 5000 metres. For me, there was only one reason Boniface didn’t qualify at the trials and Micah got an Olympic medal. It was the same reason I’d under-performed in the heats. We had over-trained.

  I remember sitting on the flight back home, staring out of the window, feeling utterly deflated. I was more down than I’d ever been before in my life. To lose a race by running badly or getting your tactics wrong, or not putting in the effort, that’s one thing. I could deal with that. But to have given everything for a whole year and get nothing in return, that’s really hard to take. It would be some time before I managed to put Beijing behind me.

  Looking out of that window, I told myself: ‘I’m never going to feel like that, ever again.’

  11

  GOING IT ALONE

  MENTALLY it was hard for me to focus after Beijing. I just wanted the season to be over. I was tired. My body needed to rest. Back in Teddington, Ricky explained to me that a rest would simply have to wait.

  ‘Your contract with adidas is up for renewal,’ he said. ‘And we have a problem. You haven’t run sub-13:15 all year.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘If you don’t run sub-13:15 at 5000 metres by the end of the season, the retainer on your new contract automatically goes down. You’ll be taking quite a hit.’

  I should explain. A runner’s main income is through a shoe contract: that’s how you put food on the table and pay the bills. The way the contract works is that you get a retainer, a basic salary to retain your loyalty, but there are several bonuses built into it based on whether you win medals or perform well or race certain times. If, for example, you win bronze in a World Championship 5000 metres, that bonus kicks in for your next contract. Suddenly, you’re making more money. But if you fail to maintain those standards the following season, you don’t qualify for the bonuses and your next contract goes back down to the original retainer. In 2006 I’d run that 13:09 race at Heusden in the Netherlands, so the following year my contract went up. But in 2008 the fastest time I’d clocked at 5000 metres was 13:25.01 at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Nowhere near good enough, so we were talking about a big drop in income. Athletics isn’t Premier League football. Most athletes most of the time are on a pretty modest income. Coming so soon after Beijing, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to run a sub-13:15 race. Physically, I was wiped. Mentally, I needed a break. I was in nothing like the condition I wanted to be in. In Beijing I’d clocked 13:50.95 in the heats. Now I was being asked to shave more than 35 seconds off that time. I told Ricky that I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Look, Mo,’ he said. ‘You may as well run one more race at 5000 metres. The Diamond League meet in Brussels is coming up. For the next two weeks just jog slowly, do some strides and get plenty of rest. Why don’t you go to Brussels, give it your best shot and see what happens? You’ve nothing to lose.’

  If I raced and failed to make the time, then it didn’t make a difference to the contract situation. I’d still be dropping down to my original retainer. If I did clock a time under 13:15, then I’d keep the increased retainer for the following twelve months. Also, having to race so soon after Beijing meant that I didn’t have time to dwell on that defeat. Now I had to focus my mind on the event in Brussels. Two weeks after the Olympic Games, I took to the track again.

  My last chance to run sub-13:15 in 2008.

  The Diamond League meeting in Brussels is also known as the Memorial Van Damme and it takes place at the King Baudouin Stadium. This was a good arena for me: the previous year I’d run my personal best of 13:07.00 at the same meeting. Now, more than ever, I needed to run a similar time. It wasn’t just about the money, although I was concerned about what would happen if my retainer went down. For me, this was a chance to begin the long process of putting my Beijing nightmare behind me. I’d be foolish to suggest that doing well in Brussels would make up for failing to make it through the heats at the Olympics. It wouldn’t. But at least it’d be a start.

  I wasn’t sure I had it in me to run sub-13:15 so soon after Beijing. I wasn’t in a good place. But then a funny thing happened. On the day of the meeting in Brussels, I did better than I’d expected. Way better. I went out there, ran the race and finished fourth. My time?

  13:08.11.

  Clocking that time was a bitter
sweet moment for me. My immediate feeling was one of relief. I’d saved my adidas retainer. I’d given it my best shot and it had worked. But at the same time I was like, ‘You must be kidding … 13:08!’ That time would have easily qualified me for the 5000 metres final in Beijing. I was only two seconds behind Eliud Kipchoge, who won the silver in Beijing, and I beat Moses Kipsiro, who finished fourth in the Olympics. If only I’d run that time two weeks earlier. If only I’d properly rested in the run-up to the Olympics instead of over-training and working myself into the ground. If only …

  If anything good came out of my performance in Beijing, it was that I learnt to listen much more carefully to the needs of my body. It’s very easy to over- or under-train. Getting it spot on going into a major competition is one of the most difficult tasks for an athlete. You don’t want to go in underprepared. But if you overcook it, you’ll perform just as badly. There’s a fine line. The more you race, the more you begin to understand your body and how it responds to different approaches to training. What works for someone else doesn’t necessarily work for you.

  In November I had the chance to go on a trip to a training camp in Ethiopia. Kaptagat (and Iten) had been so good for me that I was keen to check out more camps. It wasn’t just the Kenyans who were doing great things in distance running. The Ethiopians were right up there too. Kenenisa Bekele had won Olympic gold in the 5000 metres and 10,000 metres in Beijing. His younger brother, Tariku, was also making a name for himself. I was keen to see what they might be doing differently.

  You have to make a lot of sacrifices in athletics. I was lucky that in Tania I had someone who was understanding about the commitments I had to make to become a better runner. Shortly before I travelled to Ethiopia Tania won a prize for being one of the top ten salespeople in her company. The prize was a trip for two to New York. Tania really wanted to go – we had only recently got together and New York would’ve been a nice way to celebrate. But I had to make this trip to Ethiopia to train. Tania was a bit gutted. We missed out on a really lovely trip, but she understood what I needed to do. There were some things that we wouldn’t be able to do as a couple, things that would have to take a back seat, because everything had to fit around my training.

  I flew out to Addis Ababa with a few other Europeans, including the French steeplechaser Bouabdellah Tahri, Lidia Chojecka from Poland and Scott Overall, my old friend from Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow. Also there was Mustafa Mohamed, another distance runner from a Somali background. I’d raced against Mustafa several times on the circuit, including the European Cross Country Championships in San Giorgio, when he finished third. He was already racing for Sweden by that point, having moved there from Mogadishu in his early teens. In 2007, the year following San Giorgio, when I’d been unable to defend my title because of injury, Mustafa took silver behind Sergiy Lebid. As well as being a good cross country runner, Mustafa specialized in the 3000 metres steeplechase. He’s a softly spoken, quiet guy, unassuming, but warm and friendly. We had that shared experience of leaving Somalia at an early age. There’s quite a few Somali-born athletes who had to move for one reason or another. Mukhtar Mohammed, for example, also runs for Great Britain and gave up a promising career as a footballer with Sheffield Wednesday to pursue his career on the track. There are Somali-born guys representing Holland, Belgium, Canada, the USA – all over.

  The camp in Ethiopia was nothing like the one in Kenya. Instead of basing ourselves in a remote village, our camp was located in the north of Addis. We were basically running around the outskirts of the city, passing run-down shacks and piles of rubble. People would stand at the sides of the roads watching us train. The trails were narrow, steep and winding, and were also pot-holed and scattered with rocks, so I had to watch my step. The narrowness meant that the Ethiopians went out in tiny groups of one or two, unlike in Kenya, where sixty or more runners might go out together.

  Maybe because of this, I got the impression that the Ethiopians were less welcoming than the Kenyans. Somehow they came across as more private. It’s not that they were cold towards us or anything like that. They just very much kept themselves to themselves. They didn’t like outsiders training with them. I found this strange. In Kaptagat I’d jump in on a training session and the Kenyans were more than happy for me to join them. Afterwards we’d share a meal, talk for a bit. There was none of this in Addis. I ended up training alone. As I picked my way up a steep, rocky incline, I might pass an Ethiopian runner, perhaps a pair, but I was never invited to join in their session. Not all the athletes were stand-offish, though. Meseret Defar, the 5000 metres runner, invited some of us to her house for dinner. The gold medal she’d won in Athens took pride of place on the wall. Meseret cooked us a traditional meal of injera flatbreads with a chicken stew and some vegetables. That was lovely of her, but I couldn’t help wondering why she was the only one who made us feel truly welcome at the camp. Looking back, I think it’s because we were male athletes. We weren’t competition for her, whereas the men probably perceived us a threat – European runners who’d come to their backyard to learn their training secrets.

  After the European Cross Country in Brussels in mid-December I went back to Kaptagat/Iten for my winter training. I needed to get Beijing out of my head. Going into the 2009 season, I was desperate to get a win under my belt. I knew that the better I ran, the more my mind would begin to clear, the more I could put the Olympics behind me. I got off to a great start, winning the Aviva International Match 3000 metres in Glasgow on my seasonal debut in late January and setting a new British record time of 7:40.99, just beating John Mayock’s record by a tenth of a second. The next month I ran even faster in Birmingham, shaving more than 6 seconds off my time in Glasgow with 7:34.47 and moving me up to second on the all-time European list. The only British athlete ever to run faster than me outdoors at that distance was Dave Moorcroft. Winter training had gone well, and I felt in great shape going into the European Indoor Championships in Turin.

  Big pressure came with the Europeans, though. On the back of my good performances in Glasgow and then Birmingham, people were hanging the gold medal around my neck before I even got to Turin. As for me, Beijing was lingering at the back of my mind, and I was conscious that Turin was the first major competition since then and I simply had to win. I had to work hard in that final. I led from the gun, but Bouabdellah Tahri was right on my heels throughout the race. I could hear him. We’d trained a lot together, knew each other’s weaknesses. Tahri had finished fifth in the 3000 metres steeplechase in Beijing, so he was no mug. But with five laps left I finally broke him and kicked on to win in a time of 7:40.17, a new championship record. Jesús España, who’d beaten me in 2006, was third. Crossing the line, I had this overwhelming sense of relief. Winning a big title from gun to tape isn’t easy. You can’t afford to let your concentration slip. I told the press that after the year I’d had, I was simply pleased to have won a big title. I wanted to try and build up some momentum over the next few months. The World Championships were coming up in August and I was desperate to do well against the Kenyans and Ethiopians.

  In the back of my mind, though, doubts were beginning to form about my training programme. Something had to change – I knew that much.

  Alan Storey was more than simply my coach. He was someone I respected and listened to. I still believed in Alan, still thought he was the right person to take me forward. But I was starting to think more independently about my training needs. Asking myself, ‘Is this right for me?’ I’d always placed complete faith in Alan, followed his programmes to the letter, done whatever he’d asked of me. Now I started to question things. Nothing major – just small things here and there.

  There’s no denying that I’d made really big strides under Alan. I’d stepped up to the senior ranks, got silver in the Europeans, won the cross country title in Italy and become one of the best distance runners on the European stage. But something wasn’t right. On the biggest stages – Osaka, Beijing – I was falling short. Despit
e pushing hard in training and making big sacrifices, living and training with the Kenyans, I was still finishing behind them in the major competitions. I believed I was capable of beating them. I looked at guys like Micah Kogo and told myself, ‘Here’s someone I’m regularly matching in training, yet he’s won Olympic bronze, broken the world record for 10k on the road and is the number one 10,000 metres runner in the world. I’ve beaten him in Dunkirk, so why aren’t I doing it in big events?’ What was most frustrating for me was that, in some ways, I trained harder than these guys. Not only was I busting a gut on the track, but I was putting in sessions at the gym, making more changes to my diet, paying attention to nutrition, going to high-altitude camps. In simple terms, I was putting in more effort than the Africans but getting less out. Something had to change.

  I reached a personal low point at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. I went into that competition thinking that I had a realistic shot of a medal in the 5000 metres. At first glance, the field was strong: Kenenisa Bekele was there, and Bernard Lagat. So too were Moses Kipsiro and Jesús España. That’s not how I saw it. ‘Kipsiro, I’ve beaten him in training,’ I thought. ‘España, I’ve beaten him in competition.’ Lagat and Bekele were top class, but looking across the line, there was no one else I wasn’t capable of beating on my day.