The British distance runner looks back at his 25th-place finish of 2:40:13 at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The Greek capital was the scene of only the Briton’s second Tour over 26.2 miles since qualifying for the Olympics on her debut in Berlin 11 months ago. While she finished almost 14 minutes ahead of Japan’s gold medalist Mizuki Noguchi, staying the distance was an achievement when others, notably team-mate Paula Radcliffe, did not get bogged down in the punishing heat.
I got injured in early 2003 when I tore my Achilles during a really hilly cross country race. Because of that, I wasn’t able to get in enough shape for the trail season, so it made me think that the marathon would be a pretty good time in terms of recovery.
Berlin came to mind. It was always the third week of September, so the date was set. The Olympic qualifying time was 2:34 and I was confident I could do it easily. I had a little chat with Paula about preparation and nutrition and made my way to the start line. It was like nothing I had done before. I was putting all my eggs in one basket, but I ran 2:30:58 with a toilet stop to finish eighth and make the qualifying time.
However, the qualification was not so simple. Staged six months later, London was the official trial and I didn’t want to run so close to the Olympics. Instead, I walked the first part and then went to my hotel room to watch, just hoping they weren’t running faster than me.
It was quite a tense moment. Tracey Morris was the 40-year-old who qualified for third place, available as the first Brit on the day with a qualifying time. Paula and I were selected based on previous performances that year. It was a high-risk strategy.
I had a long time to focus on Athens. You have to learn a lot about your own ability to peak at the right time and what works for you, but going through my first marathon cycle really taught me a lot about peaking and rest, which is great for coaching too.
Not having other distractions is really good in some ways, but in some ways it’s pretty high pressure because you have one focus and you can’t distract it with: This is not the case with the marathon.
Athens was always going to be very hot, so the training had a lot to do with heat acclimatization and we did a lot of sweat tests to make sure we got the electrolyte balance right. You also use more glycogen in the heat, so it’s trying to ensure that we’re also fueling in the right way to deal with the conditions that Athens was going to throw at us.
The focus was on tempo endurance, very long repetitions with short recoveries. Some sessions will be six x six minutes or 10 x three minutes – fairly standard sessions with 60-90 second recovery, but also much longer tempos. I would do a midweek 15 mile hilly run, probably done at about six minute mile pace, and then a longer run on the weekend.
Qualifying for the majors is probably the most stressful part, but once you’ve qualified, you can relax and just get on with the job. After taking that stress out, it was more about excitement and anticipation.
The Olympics are quite unique as you are in the Athletes Village surrounded by the world’s most incredible athletes in their various sports. There are all these superhumans just walking around and then actually realizing that you’re one of them is very, very surreal.
But everything that surrounds the games, from training camp, makes you feel special. All you have to do is practice. There are no daily hassles and you have a clear path to focus on the job at hand.
We were running at 6pm which was another curve ball as we are usually used to running in the morning. It was like. “What are we eating?” I think I ate three bowls of porridge during the day. Then, at the start line, it was 40 degrees and the new tarmac gave it 50 degrees, so it was really intense.
Paula was expected to perform very well, so there was a lot of stress and pressure around her at that point. I could just fade into the background. I was nervous, of course, but I was excited. And I like extreme conditions because people who are usually at the front might not be, and some people might do well in those conditions. I liked that unknown being from the challenge posed by Athens.
I did the best I could do that day. My time was nine minutes slower than my best from Berlin, but I hadn’t really slowed down much. I ran a fairly even paced race and I was the first Brit home. I didn’t know until afterwards that Paula had been forced to drop out.
If I’d been wiser and done more marathons, I probably could have run faster, but I was pretty inexperienced, so it was a really good springboard to properly prepare for Beijing four years later. I wasn’t going to be there because I slipped at the 15km mark, but I was going to those games as a way of life.
I loved the fact that in Athens we were supposedly running the original route. We finished in Panathinaikos, the original Olympic stadium. At first I was a little disappointed that we weren’t finishing the main athletics stadium, but it was incredible to get there. I can still picture it now, running around thinking about what happened in that stadium years and years ago. It was just really fitting. A real privilege for my first Olympics and my second ever marathon.
Liz Yelling does running and triathlon training. learn more here yellingperformance.com
