The British runner’s storied career may not have always gone to plan, but it has given him an enduring love of pushing boundaries.
Chris Thompson loves to talk, so much so that he has a term for it. “You did ‘Tomo’,” he laughs as we come to the end of a long but fascinating video call. There is a lot to digest.
The reason for the talk was to go back through a long and fascinating distance running career that began as an under-15 with Aldershot in 1995 and ended as a V40 runner with victory in the Great Southern 5km.
Let’s not forget that this is an athlete who beat Mo Farah to win the European Under-23 5,000m title in Bydgoszcz in 2003, while seven years later he finished second to his British team-mate at the European 10,000m in Barcelona. . He also competed in two Olympics, despite a career that was periodically interrupted by serious injury.
Chris Thompson Peeps Mo Farah (Mark Shearman)
“Thommo” has always had talent and has seen first-hand how his chosen sport has changed, from the lean years when he first appeared, to the current shoe brand’s growing investment in coaching groups and teams, which he says provide far. a clearer path for the current generation.
He has strong opinions about, among other things, performances such as Ruth Czepngetic’s marathon world record, and what he sees as the unfortunate way athletics presents itself to the world.
We’ll come back to these later, but the main feeling I leave the conversation with is that I’ve just spoken to someone who’s been battered and bruised, even heartbroken a few times, but still deeply in love with what he chose to devote his physical priority. If distance running needed another booster or speaker, here’s Exhibit A.
Chris Thompson (Mark Shearman)
“I think there was a healthy, though others would probably say unhealthy, relationship or addiction to pushing my body from a young age,” she says as we go back to the beginning and discuss what got her into distance running in the first place.
“I remember doing a session and I hadn’t been at Aldershot for a long time at all. A group of us were repeating the grass and all I could think was, “Go faster, faster, faster!”
“I was doing it, I was running away from everyone in every repetition, and I clearly remember screaming and yelling. “Yes, give me more!” Give me more. I don’t know where it came from, but I absolutely loved beating myself up and I couldn’t run hard enough.’
“My friend Brian (who was also doing the session) told me, You were destroying us and almost showing us off. And I said: “Honestly, I just went to this weird place to push my body.”
“I have very big lungs, my Vo2 max is very, very high, and that’s my superpower. I probably just woke it up that day and never looked back. I just found this relationship with the red line that I kept coming back for.”
Chris Thompson (Great Scottish Run)
But it wasn’t just because he was good at it, Thompson kept coming back to challenge himself again and again.
“The biggest asset in my life as a person and in sport has been my resilience to never give up,” he adds. “I’m stubborn in everything, but that stubbornness with sports was born because I had an amazing experience running as a teenager, with my friends, with everyone I interacted with. Everything was so positive. That’s what kept me coming back. I never fell in love with running. I fell in love with everything the sport had to offer.”
There is a pause as he wonders where his train of thought is going. As it turns out, the next stop is a pretty perfect summary of what to tackle and train for longer events.
“If you’re a distance runner, I mean, you understand what hard work is,” he says. “Self-discipline, endurance, perseverance… if you go through being a distance runner at some point in your life, I defy you not to be a better person for it. Your relationship with yourself improves, and as it improves, your relationship with everyone else improves because you go through experiences like nothing else. By and large, that’s why I was sucked.”
» The above article is an abridged version of a much longer feature that appears in the November issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW Magazine here subscribe to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here or check out our latest podcast below…
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