Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  I finished seventh. I actually pulled away at the beginning of the final lap but fell away coming into the last bend. Bekele, Lagat, Kipsiro … they all placed ahead of me. I couldn’t help thinking back to the last World Championships in Osaka. Back then I’d finished sixth. Two years on, I was placing seventh. In my opinion, I’d actually gone backwards. That was hard to stomach. Throughout this period, I never lost faith in my ability. I never doubted myself, not for one minute. But I knew something needed to change. At least Rhianna and Tania were there to help take my mind off things. It was the first time they had travelled abroad to watch me run and it was a big deal for me, to have them both cheering me on, me wanting to make them proud. I was conscious of that while I was competing. It made me feel good, knowing that I had family up there in the stands.

  I returned to Teddington, spent a week by myself, thinking things over. By the end of that week I’d reached a decision: I didn’t want to be coached by Alan Storey any more.

  This wasn’t a decision I reached easily. On the one hand, I knew I needed a change. On the other, this was Alan Storey. He wasn’t just my coach. He was my friend – someone I felt close to. We’d been through a lot together, and when someone has done a lot for you, leaving them can be really hard. Normally when my mind is made up to do something, I just do it, easy. But when it came to Alan, I spent a long time weighing it up. I thought about what had worked in training for me, what hadn’t worked. I looked back over my performances under Alan and asked myself what I could have done better, or differently. Leaving Alan, I knew, would change everything for me. But in my heart I also knew that it was the right thing to do if I was serious about beating the Africans.

  Different athletes respond differently to the same training programme. What works for one athlete doesn’t necessarily work for the next guy. As an athlete, it’s up to you to be honest about the areas you need to improve on. It’s like this: Alan Storey got me 98 per cent of the way towards becoming a World and Olympic champion. But I felt I needed someone else to come in and give me that 2 or 3 per cent to get me over the line.

  I sort of drifted away from Alan for a while after Berlin. We talked less and less. I went off to Kenya as usual. Instead of following Alan’s programme, I decided to try coaching myself. Going it alone. Sometimes I would train with athletes in Iten, guys like Moses Masai, who got a bronze in Berlin. Then other times I’d jump in workouts with some of the other groups training on the track in Iten. At this stage I was mainly building up my mileage. I knew what I had to do. It wasn’t rocket science. Some of the runners training at Iten then were actually Kenyans who’d been naturalized as Qataris. They were being trained by Renato Canova, an Italian coach employed by the Qatari Athletics Federation. They were staying in the same hotel as me and sometimes I would join in with their workout rather than driving to Eldoret or Kaptagat to train.

  Renato was a former schoolteacher, and he’d been coaching professionally since 1969. He had a good reputation on the circuit for his work with the Kenyans. He’d coached some of the most famous distance runners of the past few years: Saif Shaheen, Moses Mosop, Wilson Kiprop and Christopher Kosgei. The sheer intensity of his sessions took me by surprise. I had thought that the sessions under Alan were tough, but they were nothing compared to what Renato’s group were doing. He insisted on doing a high number of reps, running circuits of flats coupled with uphill sprints to build up my strength. Everything was done at a faster speed than I’d been used to. We’d have a few hours’ rest at midday. Then, in the afternoon, we’d head back to the track and do some more running work.

  Renato liked to talk a lot. In that respect, he was your typical flamboyant Italian. Very expressive, very passionate. When it came to debating what was best for me in training, Renato could be quite forceful. I’d disagree with him on something he’d said, or question something, and he’d be like, ‘No, no, no, Mo! You mustn’t do it like that. Do it this way instead!’

  Renato Canova wasn’t the only one dispensing advice to me in Iten. At the same time I would join in on the odd session with guys coached by Jama Aden. Jama was also working for the Qatari federation. (As the Qatari runners were mostly naturalized Kenyans, it was easier for the athletes to stay on and train in Kaptagat/Iten, where conditions were ideal for training, rather than relocate to the desert.) Like me, Jama was born in Somalia and we had known each other for years. He ran for his country before becoming a world-renowned coach. He had family in Sheffield. Jama had mentored one of my personal heroes, the great Abdi Bile, another Somali athlete, winner of the 1500 metres in the 1987 World Championships in Rome and the 1989 World Cup in Barcelona, when he beat Seb Coe. To get advice from the man who’d coached Abdi Bile was a privilege. We had the same arrangement as with Renato – very informal, just jumping into workouts with their groups or giving bits of advice here and there over cups of tea in the Kerio View. I was very grateful for the help. There was nothing in it for Renato and Jama, really. But they loved the sport and loved helping an athlete reach his potential.

  Now I was getting the experience of training with different groups, I realized that what the Kenyans or the guys under Jama and Renato were doing was different from my training programme under Alan Storey. On the back of that, I knew that my instincts were right, that things simply hadn’t been working for me 100 per cent back home. But there was a downside to going it alone. I’d think too much. When someone else is mapping out your programme, you follow it and that’s it. Maybe you suggest one or two changes here and there. But basically, what your coach says goes. Now, at the end of a good session, instead of focusing on my rest and recovery, I’d already be thinking ahead to the next session. I was doing a lot of what I had done previously with Alan, but with the freedom to add in elements that I thought were missing. I was having to filter all the advice being given to me, trying to figure out what worked for me and what didn’t. Instead of concentrating on my rest, I was questioning myself: Was that run too hard? Did I go too slow? How did I look on the workout today? What should I do tomorrow? I needed someone I really trusted to be there and tell me these things.

  It would have been ideal to have Alan there with me. But the truth is Alan couldn’t travel with me wherever I went. He had numerous commitments in his role as Head of Endurance for UK Athletics, which meant he had to base himself in the UK for much of the year. Although he gave me as much time as possible, he simply wasn’t able to completely oversee me in training. What I really needed was someone who could be there with me all the time. And I didn’t have that.

  Prior to going to Kenya I had mentioned to Dave Bedford that I was moving away from Alan. I’d gotten to know Dave pretty well down the years through his son, Tom, and the fact that London Marathon sponsored the endurance programme at St Mary’s. He could see that I was not satisfied with the way things were going in my career, finishing seventh at the World Championships. During one conversation, the talk turned to my plans for the next year. I told Dave I wasn’t sure what to do.

  ‘Well, Mo,’ said Dave. ‘We both know that you’re capable of a lot more than you’ve done in the past year. Maybe it’s time for a change? Forget track. Why don’t you try running the marathon instead?’

  I remember hearing this and thinking, ‘If I switch to road races, that means turning my back on the track.’ Was I prepared to do this? It would be a huge decision. I spoke to Ricky and we talked it through. There were reasons to make the switch, and reasons not to make the switch. The last twelve months had been pretty rough. Beijing, then Berlin. I wasn’t closing the gap on the Kenyans and Ethiopians, despite my best efforts. Guys like Bekele were still way ahead of me. I wondered: Could I never get any better than fifth or sixth on the global stage? But at the same time I honestly felt that I hadn’t achieved everything I was capable of on the track. If I turned my back on the track now, would I regret it, knowing that I could have done more, that I could have done better? Running in the London Marathon appealed to me, but it was something I imagined
doing later in my career. This moment might have come too soon.

  In the end, I decided that if I was going to make the switch, I’d only do it if I could be trained by the best guy in the business: Alberto Salazar. If Alberto said no, I wouldn’t make the switch.

  ‘I’ll speak to Alberto,’ said Dave. ‘Look into setting up a meeting. But listen – if Alberto agrees to be your coach, will you make the switch?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Although I had never met him, I knew about Alberto. He’s one of the most famous distance runners in the USA, but he’s less well known in Britain. Alberto was born in Cuba, but moved to Weyland, Massachusetts, at a young age and began competing in high school track-and-field events. He wanted to emulate the achievements of the legendary US runner Steve ‘Pre’ Prefontaine, who had died tragically young in a car accident. Alberto had an older brother, a college runner who competed in some of the same National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) races as Pre. As a result, Alberto would hear about what Pre and the Oregon runners were doing, having a pre-race meal of peaches on toast, going for 3-mile runs to warm up on the day of their races, and he’d do the same things. Alberto then went on to become one of the greatest marathon runners in the world. He ran his first-ever marathon at New York in 1980 in a time of 2:09.41 and ended up winning the race. He won two more New York Marathons, in 1981 and 1982, added the Boston Marathon title in 1982 and twice broke the American 10 kilometre road record. Alberto also had this reputation as a true fighter. He trained hard – harder than anyone in the business – and he wasn’t afraid to put his body through hell. In 2007 he suffered a heart attack on a practice field at the Nike campus. His heart stopped beating for 14 minutes. Miraculously, Alberto survived. He returned to coach the US Olympic team in Beijing.

  Many in athletics considered Alberto to be something of a genius. I knew that if I had him as my coach, I stood the best possible chance of winning at the 26.2 mile race – the marathon. For me, there was no point switching from track to road if my results were going to be the same. Track, road – in the end, whatever surface I was running on, I just wanted to win. I was conscious of the fact that there would be tough competition in the marathon. I knew about guys like Martin Lel, who won the London Marathon three times and New York twice; Sammy Wanjiru, the Olympic Champion and a London and Chicago winner; Haile Gebrselassie, who held the world record and was still going strong; and newcomers like Tsegay Kebede. Alberto had achieved amazing results with the likes of Kara Goucher (bronze in the 10,000 metres at the Worlds in Osaka) and Dathan Ritzenhein (a three-time USA Cross Country winner). For me, hanging up my spikes only made sense if I had Alberto coaching me at the marathon. It was that or nothing.

  In mid-October the World Half-Marathon Championships were taking place that weekend in Birmingham. Alberto was in town to watch Dathan Ritzenhein compete, and Dave asked if I would like to travel up to meet him? Alberto, not Dathan. I said yes.

  We met in a hotel in Birmingham city centre. The IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) had taken over the hotel for the weekend and everywhere you looked there were athletes and coaches and agents. Dave introduced me to Alberto. Of course, I’d seen him around on the circuit, but this was the first time we had properly met. We talked for a bit, but it soon became clear that Alberto wouldn’t be able to coach me.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘Not at this moment in time, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked Alberto.

  ‘Three reasons.’ Alberto counted them off on his hand. ‘You’re sponsored by adidas. I work with Nike. It’s none of my business who you’re sponsored by, but I can’t coach an athlete who’s under contract with a rival sponsor. And somehow I doubt adidas would be very happy with that arrangement either.’

  I nodded. Fair enough. ‘What’s the second reason?’

  ‘You’re British. Strictly speaking, the Nike Oregon Project is about promoting American distance running.’

  The Nike Oregon Project, with Alberto directing it, had been specifically created by Nike to improve the prospects of US distance runners. American distance running, as in Britain, had been in a bad state for a long time. Alberto had previously brought over a couple of Kenyans to help train the American athletes, but that hadn’t worked out. Since then, the project had focused purely on US runners.

  ‘That’s two reasons,’ Alberto went on. ‘Third, I personally don’t think you should be running the marathon yet.’ He turned to Dave Bedford. ‘I’ve seen Mo a couple of times. The kid has got great potential on the track if he works on one or two things. For me, he gives up the track now, it’s too early.’

  I left the hotel thinking, ‘Alberto doesn’t want to coach me, so what am I going to do now?’ I had a big decision to make on my future. Dave Bedford was still pushing for me to switch to the road. I was about to go to Kenya to start my winter’s training. I weighed everything up and felt I had unfinished business on the track. My mind was made up. I wasn’t going to run the marathon. Not yet, anyway. If I had given up track then, I would have felt like I had failed. There would be plenty of time for the marathon in the future. I wanted to give the track one more shot.

  And this time I wanted to break the British 5000 metres record.

  12

  UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  I MOVED in with Tania after returning from Kenya in late 2009. The lease on the place she was renting had come up for renewal and I thought, ‘Why don’t we just move in together rather than living in separate homes?’ Things had been going really well between us and I was ready to take our relationship to the next level and share a home together. I was spending a lot of time at Tania’s anyway, so we were practically living together by that point. Maybe if that lease hadn’t come up for renewal, the idea of living together wouldn’t have occurred to me. But now that the opportunity had presented itself, we decided to take it.

  Not long after moving in together, we attended the wedding of one of my close friends, Mustafa Mohamed. He married his Swedish wife in Gothenburg; it was the first time Tania and I had attended a big function together as a couple and being there, seeing how happy Mustafa and his wife looked, brought up the subject of marriage in my mind for the first time. I was in love with Tania, things just felt right between us and I thought to myself, ‘I want this. I want to get married.’ Within two weeks of returning home, I decided to pop the question. We were watching TV one night, talking about this, that or the other, when I just casually dropped it into the conversation.

  ‘Do you want to get married?’

  Tania looked at me for what felt like the longest moment. She probably wondered if I was joking. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly the conventional down-on-one-knee proposal.

  ‘Are you asking me to marry you?’ she asked at last.

  I nodded. ‘For real.’

  I was serious. It clicked. Tania smiled.

  ‘Let’s do it!’ she said.

  We set our wedding date for the following April. Everyone was thrilled for us. Tania’s parents, Bob and Nadia, were over the moon. In the meantime, I knuckled down to the business of smashing records.

  13:00.41. Dave Moorcroft’s 5000 metres British record had stood since 1982. I hadn’t even been born then. For me, breaking the record was the biggest thing. Ever since I’d edged closer to 13:00 in Heusden, I’d been obsessed with it. I believed – I knew – that I could break it. And twenty-seven years is a long time. But this was about more than simply beating Dave’s record: running a sub-13:00 was something I’d never done before, and it would put me in the mix with the world’s leading distance runners. Kenenisa Bekele had clocked 12:37:35 in the Netherlands in 2004 to set a new world record. Championship races are tactical and the pace is usually slower. But running under 13 minutes would give me a psychological boost going into the big competitions.

  People have this idea that athletes set their aims for things that are a long way away: the Olympics, the Worlds. That isn’t how it works. For sure, a
young runner might dream of running in the Games, but there are loads of steps to take before getting to that level. So you don’t look too far ahead. You focus on something closer. Making this time or winning this race meeting. Inch by inch, you edge towards your big goal. At this point, I wasn’t thinking about the next World Championships or Olympics. The only thing I could think about was getting back out there on the track and beating that record.

  My year didn’t get off to the greatest start. On Christmas Day 2009, I went to Richmond Park to do a hill session on my own. It was a freezing cold morning. I was running up and down repeatedly on this one hill when I noticed a couple with a baby in a pushchair walking up the same hill. They were taking up nearly the entire path, and as I was having to run around them, I couldn’t train properly. After three or four attempts to run around the couple I got a bit fed up and approached the man.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ I said. ‘Would you mind moving just a little bit to the side of the path so I can run past? I’m training.’

  The man refused. I’m not sure why, but he appeared to have got the idea into his head that he had right of way on the path. I wanted to get my sprint sessions done so I asked the man politely again if he would consider moving. He still refused. Things quickly escalated into a heated argument – from both sides. Neither of us would budge. We both believed we were in the right. All of a sudden the man stepped towards me, as if he wanted to fight. He was much taller and bigger than me but I did not want to back down so I took a step towards the man. We were in each other’s faces. Then it all kicked off. Before I knew it, we were having a full-blown fight, rolling around on the ground, trading blows. Onlookers had to pull us apart before things got really bad. Meanwhile, Tania was at home preparing for our first Christmas Day under the same roof when I called her.

  ‘Come down to the park,’ I mumbled incoherently. ‘Come down, quick as you can.’