by Mo Farah
Tania couldn’t understand me so I passed the phone to an onlooker.
‘I think you’d better come down,’ the man said to Tania. ‘There’s been a fight. He’s okay, but you’d best get down here.’
Several minutes later the police showed up. A few minutes later Tania arrived. She’d rushed down to the park from our flat. I was caked in mud from where I’d been rolling around on the grass. There were nicks and cuts all over my face and I sported a massive bruise on my head. I wasn’t badly hurt or anything but you could tell that I’d been in a scuff. Nothing came of it; there were no arrests made or anything like that. The other guy looked the worse for wear too and although I told the police that he had attacked me first they were reluctant to press charges, because the guy looked as if he had come off worse in the scrap, despite being much bigger than me. Thankfully things calmed down after that and I came home, cleaned up and changed and forgot about it. We all had Christmas dinner, but it’s fair to say my day got off to a bad start.
Earlier in December I had run the European Cross Country Championship in Dublin and finished second on the 9.97 kilometre course. In early January 2010 I ran the 4 kilometre Great Edinburgh International Cross Country and placed third. On both occasions I collapsed at the finish line. At the time there was a lot of speculation that I’d suffered some kind of dietary problem, with reports claiming that I had lower than normal levels of iron and magnesium. In Ireland I’d been locked in a duel with Alemayehu Bezabeh, an Ethiopian athlete who now represented Spain. Bezabeh was running fast in Dublin – and I mean fast. I ran as hard as I could, trying to beat him. Ricky likes to say I have the heart of a lion, and I was pushing harder and harder, right to the very limits, practically killing myself to finish ahead of this guy. I started feeling dizzy. But no matter how hard I ran, I couldn’t catch Bezabeh. I don’t even remember crossing the line.
Three weeks later in Edinburgh the same thing had happened. I got off to a blistering start. At one stage I’d put almost 100 metres between myself and the second-placed runner. Towards the end of the course I had the same dizzy spell. Something wasn’t right. I faded badly and was close to collapse at the finish line. Paramedics rushed over to me immediately.
It wasn’t the first time I’d felt dizzy in a race. In my junior years I had tried sticking faithfully to Ramadan during the athletics season. I remember running in the European Cross Country Championships Juniors race one year when I suddenly felt faint and started experiencing these dizzy spells as I went round the course. Somehow I made it to the finish line before collapsing through sheer exhaustion. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had gone wrong: the race was in the middle of Ramadan and I’d fasted in the days leading up to it. Chris Thompson had been competing at the same championships. He came over and checked up on me. When I explained what had happened, he was stunned that I’d been able to run in the first place. For me, I was never going to say, ‘I can’t do Ramadan, I’m an athlete.’ But obviously collapsing in races was no good either. I had to find a balance, so I began fasting in the lead-up to Ramadan, breaking the fast during race meets and then catching up with the fasting days I had missed out at the end of the season.
After the race in Edinburgh a bunch of tests were run, but the results were inconclusive. There were a lot of factors to consider: at both races the weather had been freezing cold; I hadn’t been eating properly and I was still feeling the effects of having run too hard in Dublin. I’d had a couple of off-days. That was it. Despite this, I felt in good shape. On New Year’s Eve, between these two events, I’d run a great race at the BoClassic International in Bolzano, Italy, finishing just 4 seconds behind Edwin Soi and Imane Merga. After Edinburgh I flew out to Kaptagat/Iten for high-altitude training. In March 2010 I won the British World Cross Country Trial and went on to place twentieth at the World Cross Country Championships in Poland.
In April I got married.
On the big day Tania was a lot more nervous than she thought she was going to be. We both were. As Muslims we were married in the traditional way, in a private ceremony at a nearby mosque. A week later we had the official celebration. Everyone we knew was there. All our friends and Tania’s family. Steve Cram was there with his partner, the former athlete and BBC commentator Allison Curbishley. Paula Radcliffe and her husband Gary Lough were there too, along with Hayley Yelling, Jo Pavey, Mustafa Mohamed and his wife. Ricky, Marion, Grainne and Mike Skinner, one of my former training partners who also worked at PACE, were all there. Steve Vernon, Scott Overall, Alan Storey and some of the old St Mary’s and Loughborough crews attended the wedding, along with Darren Chin. My groomsmen were Tania’s brother Colin, Scott Overall, Kevin Quinn – another running mate – and Ricky. Alan Watkinson was my best man. It was a beautiful day apart from one small hiccup – we forgot to arrange for someone to capture the wedding on video. Happily, Darren came to the rescue and whipped out his mobile phone. He’s living the dream in Jamaica these days, so the only footage that exists of my wedding day is somewhere in his pocket.
Tania’s grandmother was there too. ‘I knew it!’ she said at the wedding, reminding us of the time I popped round the house as a kid with a gift for Tania and she had been there. ‘I knew all along that he had a thing for my granddaughter!’ Apparently the signs were always there. When Alan Watkinson gave his best man speech, he recalled a time when he gave me and Tania a lift to a training session at the athletics club. According to Alan, the two of us were arguing in the back like husband and wife. It was clear from the start that there was a strong chemistry between us.
The following morning we left for our honeymoon in Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. Tania had the wedding blues and was pretty depressed on the flight out. Zanzibar was entirely my choice for the honeymoon. Mustafa Mohamed had gone there for his honeymoon six months earlier with his wife, staying in a top hotel overlooking the beach. He came back raving about the place, telling me how amazing it was, this quiet, secluded spot, far away from anything touristy. It sounded great.
When we first arrived in Zanzibar, it looked a little less great. On the drive from the airport we had to pass through several dodgy areas, and at one point Tania turned to me and said something like, ‘What are we doing here?’ Things got better when we arrived at the first hotel. (We stayed in three different hotels on the trip.) It was just like Mustafa had sold it to me. Right on the beach. Pristine white sand. Blue skies. Deep blue water. Palm trees. Not a soul in sight.
During the days we’d go for walks along the beach. We did a few water sports too, including a deep-sea diving trip. A group of about six of us strapped on oxygen tanks as the diving instructor explained that there was enough oxygen in each tank to last forty-five minutes. We went down quite deep under the surface and started exploring the reef. About twenty minutes in, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Alarm bells went off in my head. I didn’t know what was going on; I was terrified. I bulleted to the surface and ripped off my breathing mask. The diving instructor inspected my tank to see what had gone wrong. To his amazement, my tank had run out of oxygen. Because I have much bigger lungs than the average person, an oxygen supply that was supposed to last forty-five minutes lasted less than half that for me. The instructor couldn’t believe it at first. He told us it was unheard of for anyone to use up their oxygen supply so quickly.
It was a great holiday. A beautiful honeymoon. We did a lot of chilling out and relaxing, staying up all night and enjoying the feeling of being newlyweds. We even got up to the odd bit of mischief. At one of the hotels we became good friends with the night-time supervisor, a lovely guy called Robert. One night we were up into the early hours and both craved some food. No one was about, so Robert let us sneak into the hotel kitchen at three o’clock in the morning and told us we could cook up whatever we wanted. Brilliant. What with all my travelling and training in camps, being able to spend some quality time with Tania meant a lot to me. Although one of Tania’s pranks backfired a bit. We were lazing around the pool one day
when Tania asked me, ‘Is your watch waterproof?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, it is,’ I replied, frowning. ‘Why?’
Without a moment’s hesitation Tania pushed me into the pool. It was for a joke and I would have been laughing along with her – had it not been for the fact that I was fully clothed at the time and my iPhone was in my shorts pocket. Tania had no idea. But stored on my phone were all of our text messages from when we had first gotten together and started dating. I scrambled out of the pool and frantically dug my iPhone out of my pocket. It was dripping wet. A total write-off. At first Tania couldn’t see why I was so upset. Then I explained about the texts. It wasn’t Tania’s fault. She wasn’t to know I had my iPhone on me. And we soon forgot about it and went back to enjoying ourselves.
By the time it came for us to fly home, I was itching to get back to training. I’d hardly done any running in Zanzibar, and as a result I’d put on a bit of weight. To look at my frame you wouldn’t believe it, but I do put on weight really easily. Tania noticed it straight away on our honeymoon. We were both eating the same portions, but I was the one putting on the pounds. As a junior runner, I’d been able to scoff McDonald’s burgers all day long, but these days I can’t get away with it. Now I have to watch my diet very carefully: after the London Olympics I did a lot of media work and didn’t train properly for a while, and in the space of a few weeks I ballooned from 52kg, the leanest I’d ever been, to more than 60kg. It was ridiculous. Leaving Zanzibar, I wasn’t in race shape.
The original plan was for Tania and me to fly back to London together, and then I’d head on to Stanford, California, in time to compete in the Payton Jordan Cardinal 10,000 metres. On arriving at Nairobi airport, the first leg of our journey home, we discovered that half of Europe was covered by a volcanic ash cloud and all flights had been cancelled. We wouldn’t be going anywhere; we were stranded in Nairobi. There was nothing to do except book a room in a nearby hotel and sit it out. Luckily, Tania’s dad, Bob, worked in the travel business and had the inside scoop on when the flights were going to start again. For a few days we were on edge, wanting to know what was happening, when we could leave. Neither of us was enjoying our enforced stay. Tania wanted to get back as Rhianna was due to start school in a couple of weeks. I wanted to get across to California and race – and I would have gone had it not been for Tania. She felt that, considering the shape I was in, racing in Stanford wouldn’t be a good move for me. I’d not trained properly and if I went over to Stanford and lost badly, that would dent my confidence going into the European Championships. Since we were already in Kenya, Tania thought it made more sense for me to go up to Iten and train there instead. She made a compelling argument. After all, I already had a load of clothes left at the camp from my previous training block there. All I had to do was get a short forty-five-minute flight to Eldoret and catch a taxi to the camp.
In the end I changed my plans and decided to head up to the Rift Valley, while Tania would return home to England at the first opportunity. At last the cloud cleared and Bob managed to get Tania on a flight bound for London. We said our goodbyes at the airport. That was really, really hard for us both. We had only been married for a few short weeks. All we wanted to do was spend more time with each other. Now we were going to be separated for the next six weeks. It hurts, but these are the sorts of sacrifices you have to be prepared to make in order to achieve everything you’re capable of. We’ve both made countless sacrifices for the sake of my career. And believe me, it’s painful to stand there in the departures lounge at Nairobi airport and watch your wife fly home alone from her honeymoon.
At this point I was being coached by Alan Storey again. After my problems in Dublin and Edinburgh I reached out to Alan to ask his opinion. We started talking more often again and as I was getting into my track season preparations, I felt that I needed Alan’s help once more. I needed more structure, some kind of framework to allow me to concentrate more on running than over-thinking my programme. I explained that I wanted the freedom to source advice from others, including Ian Stewart, who had taken over from Alan as Head of Endurance at UKA. I didn’t want to be tied completely to his methods because while some of them worked well for me, others were less successful. Alan was okay with that. Both of us wanted the same thing – for me to win races – and sometimes when a coach can see that things aren’t going well, they’ll take a step back and let the athlete explore different things. I wanted a structure, but I also wanted the flexibility to try different things, to add more quality to the track workouts and reduce the volume. The two of us came to an arrangement whereby Alan was my main coach. He’d write a training programme for me. I’d go away and think about it. Then I’d use that programme as a framework, adjusting it depending where I was or who I had to train with.
That volcanic ash cloud turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Rather than flying to Stanford only to get beaten, I spent six weeks working hard in Kenya to reach peak fitness.
When I came back, I was ready for the 2010 European Championships.
My form was excellent going into Barcelona. After returning to Teddington, I based myself at a training camp in Font-Romeu, a small town high in the French Pyrenees, close to the Spanish border. Paula Radcliffe had been using Font-Romeu as her base for several years. You can instantly see why: the village is nearly 2000 metres above sea level, there are loads of flat trails ideal for endurance training, and plenty of steep inclines to do hill sessions. Font-Romeu is a typical Alpine village: lots of ski chalets, lots of restaurants. I kept up my training regime, doing hill sprints up the steep mountain climbs and going for grinding runs on the trails.
Physically, I felt strong. I took part in a couple of warm-up meetings. I won the 10,000 metres European Cup in Marseille on 5 June. Two weeks later I won the 5000 metres at the European Team Championships in Norway. I was well up for it.
Then – out of nowhere – my Achilles started hurting.
I remember going out for a run and feeling this sharp pain shoot up and down the back of my ankle. I was diagnosed with Achilles tendonitis. This is common among athletes. Most distance runners suffer an irritation of the Achilles at some point in their career. It’s caused by the constant impact of sprinting movement, which in turn overworks the tendon. There are only two things you can do: manage the pain, or go under the knife. I’d trained hard for the European Championships. Surgery wasn’t an option, but the injury was constricting my running gait. Every time I stepped onto the track, I got this sudden pain and tightness in my Achilles. I wasn’t running as freely.
I gritted my teeth and trained through the injury as best I could. It’s a weird one, the Achilles. The pain isn’t severe enough to stop you from training, but it inhibits you just enough to play on your mind. You’re aware of it with every stride. I did everything I could to minimize the pain. Wearing spikes aggravated the tendon, so at the beginning of each training session I’d have to wear racing flats until it was well warmed up and only put on spikes for the last few reps. It wasn’t ideal. Achilles tendonitis is not something that just goes away, and it’s hard to perform to your best when you’re worrying about an injury. I decided to try and get through the championships, then begin proper treatment of the injury.
On the Tuesday I raced in the 10,000 metres. It was a hot night inside the Olympic Stadium. I’d done my homework on the competition and knew that Ayad Lamdassem, a Moroccan now running for Spain, was my biggest threat. My friend Chris Thompson was also on the starting line. Back in 2003 Chris had beaten me to win the 5000 at the European Under-23s in Bydgoszcz. Now, seven years later, we were lining up together as seniors. Athletics is funny like that. You can be best friends with someone off the track, but once that gun goes, it’s every runner for himself.
The gun cracked. The shot echoed. The race started. Lamdassem and me soon pulled away from the chasing pack. After that, it was a straight tussle between the two of us. I was pushing hard but, unlike at Beijing, I had some gas left in the tank thi
s time round. I had trained better, smarter. As long as I stuck close to Lamdassem, I knew I had the pace to beat him on the sprint finish. He knew it too. With 500 metres to go, I saw him glance up at the screen. He saw me hovering on his shoulder, pushing hard, waiting for the loud clang of the bell to sound the final lap.
At 400 metres to the line, I kicked on. Fifty metres further on, 350 to go, I stormed past Lamdassem. I knew he couldn’t catch me. Not now. I was stretching. Increasing the gap between us. I was in control of the race. With 200 metres to go, Lamdassem faded. I charged towards the finish line, arms outstretched. Lamdassem crossed the line in fourth. Chris thundered ahead of him on the home straight to claim second, shading silver ahead of the Italian Daniele Meucci on the line. A one-two for Great Britain.
This feeling of pure joy washed over me, like nothing else I’ve ever felt. The clock told me that I’d run the race in 28:24.99. The time was irrelevant. All that mattered was the medal. My first major title. Right then, it hit me: ‘I’m the first Briton to land 10,000 metres gold at the Europeans.’ I had gone where no British runner had gone before. When I’d run in the Europeans in Gothenburg in 2006, no British runner had even competed in the 10,000. I was delighted for Chris too. He had been through more than his fair share of injuries. In the 5000 metres in Gothenburg, the same race where I lost to Jesús España on the home straight, Chris had staggered home in last place. To come back from that was an incredible achievement. After the race Chris grabbed me and planted a kiss on my head. He told someone he was going to celebrate with a beer. No one deserved it more than him.
Winning that race went some way towards easing the pain of Beijing. After the race I was inundated with text messages. One of them was from Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, congratulating me on my win. Coming from Wenger, that meant a lot. But there was no time for me to celebrate. I had two days to rest and recover before the 5000 metres heats took place.