So at the end of this Kenyan-esque camp, I went back to the school cross country, and instead of finishing 86th out of 89, and walking most of the way, I came third. This was a bit of a shock to everybody, most of all me, because I never thought I had any particular gift for it. And also, as I hated the sport, I wasn’t really that interested in it. But there’s a lot of kudos that goes with sporting success in a boarding school. That cross country was my first real exposure to it, and I found that I kind of liked it.
Then of course when you become part of a team, you begin to develop a little more self-esteem, and that helps build confidence. As a school, we then went on to win the Warwickshire Schools Cross Country Championships, which was a huge achievement for a school of visually impaired kids who in the local community were always seen as ‘special’ (in the non-complimentary sense). In fact that’s still one of my proudest achievements, because in those days it’s something that wouldn’t have even been conceived of.
At the same sort of time, we also had the triple A [Amateur Athletics Association] FiveStar awards scheme going, so during the summer you could score points for your performance in different events; they’d all be added up and you apply for different star awards badges. In our school we were sports mad, so we weren’t just happy getting five star badges for our own age group: we’d then go for five stars for the age group above us. And I got sucked into that whole competitive thing where my mates and I were simply competing for competition’s sake.
And the school was tremendously supportive. In fact I was still at school when I went to my first championships. It was my first year of A-Levels when we went to the European Championships in Bulgaria, which at the time was Eastern Bloc and it was my first experience of foreign travel apart from family holidays. And half the team came from the school I was at. So, away with your mates on a week-long athletics camp with all that goes with it – if I’m honest it was about eight parts holiday and two parts athletics, but it was incredible. Same with the 1984 Paralympics. There were 20 visually impaired athletes and swimmers in total, and 10 of them came from our school. The Paralympics were in New York, and we felt a little hard done by to be at a university campus on Long Island. Again though, I mostly treated it as a holiday – and just like as a 17-year-old in Budapest, I ended up with a silver medal.
On both occasions my abiding memories are of crossing the finishing line to find the winner lying flat on the ground in a pool of sweat and lactate – and realising that’s what it took to win. Very quickly after that, I stopped looking at these trips simply as excellent holidays. I was lucky enough to be coached by John Anderson who also looked after David Moorcroft and Liz McColgan amongst a huge number of other very talented athletes. And gold medals were the yardstick. When I won silver in New York, I was the only person in our dorm not to be going home with a gold.
And by the time I got to Seoul in 1988, the Paralympic Games were characterised for me by huge amounts of self-inflicted pressure. I’d won the World Championships and set a new 800m world record two years previously – and in Seoul it was all about expectation, pressure, nerves... the whole nine yards.
Retrospectively, I loved running but was absolutely scared stupid of competing and failing. I learned the hard way that pressure can be a very negative force in an athlete’s life. Did I enjoy competing all the time? Certainly not in Seoul. That was hellish, even though I won the 800m by four hundredths of a second having been pushed off the track with 150 metres to go. I had a borderline eating disorder leading up to that as I’d got myself so screwed up – and all because I’d convinced myself that winning the gold medal was the only thing that mattered in life.
But the love of running, that simple love of running, the thing that gets you out when it’s pouring down with rain, out of bed in the mornings when there’s no one else around, that never leaves you. You couldn’t compete for so long – and I’ve been doing it for over forty years now – you couldn’t do it without that innate love of running.
The competitive element blunts the enjoyment for me now. So turning up at a race and pinning a number to my chest, I’m not especially interested in that anymore (though having said that I’m about to run a competitive marathon in Japan).
These days it’s about getting the most enjoyment out of every single run, whatever the circumstances and whatever the context. If it’s a three-mile recovery run on a Monday morning round our local park, then I’m looking at the trees, breathing in the air and living the moment. And if it’s a 20-mile tempo run, I’m still trying to get the most out of that.
As I always say, never leave a run feeling anything negative about it. With running, you can win every day.
9
Lenny Kravitz, Always on the Run
‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 9
Another troubling development. My left knee has swollen up to disturbing proportions. I’m trying not to notice this new pain, and that’s actually proving relatively straightforward (though in the long term, rather worrying) because all I have to do to block out the misery in my knee is to focus instead on somewhere else that’s suffering. There are several lively candidates.
There’s the ongoing issue of the calf muscle. There’s my lower back and middle, now feeling like an overused fold in a piece of paper, like it’s going to give up the ghost any second and simply let the two halves tear away from each other. And I’m increasingly cross with my wrists for adding to the general discomfort. I mean, wrists?
Oh, and the stomach. The whole thing now feels like it’s part of some grotesque, agonising washing machine spin cycle. Whilst continuing all the while to throw up nasty, noxious bile which I’m trying, and frequently failing, to swallow back down.
So yes, it’s easy enough to ignore the knee if I want to. It’s been problematic in the past, but never felt like this before. Clearly, a knee doesn’t almost double in size without good (or should that be bad?) reason, and as it happens that knee will never be quite the same again. It still hurts most days. But to be honest by mile nine I’m beyond caring. It’s got to the stage where I almost welcome the extra challenge.
Bring it on, knee.
Simon Kemp is a very good doctor. And an exceptionally good sports injury doctor. Possibly the best there is.
You want an imposing list of post-name letters? You’ve got them: he is Dr Simon Kemp MA MB BS MSc(SEM) MRCGP FFSEM. You want an impressive CV? Check this out: he’s treated injured rugby players in New Zealand, lectured in Sports Medicine at the Queens Medical Centre, been team doctor for Fulham Football Club, medical officer to the English Basketball Association and, since 2001, head of sports medicine at the Rugby Football Union. If you’re the richest national governing body of the most injury-prone sport on the planet, you make sure you’re getting the finest medical advice available. Indeed we pretty much have Simon Kemp to thank for keeping Jonny Wilkinson fit enough to kick that dramatic World Cup-winning drop goal in Sydney in 2003.
He’s also been at the vanguard of the RFU’s recent endeavours to better understand and treat the numerous, often serious, injuries rugby players sustain, including concussion. You’ve probably seen him being interviewed on the news. Like I say, Simon Kemp may just be the best sports injury doctor out there. I’m lucky to see him in person in his clinic in Wimbledon. I still have a hurty knee.
It’s long before the Ironman, even before the Great North Run, and I’m refusing to believe physio Scott’s assertion that I should take a long break from running. Instead, I’m hoping that someone used to putting rugby players back together will have a magic bullet where an amateur runner is concerned.
Simon assesses me, interrogates me, gets me balancing on one bare foot then the other, examines, pokes, prods, asks more pertinent questions – then confirms Scott’s diagnosis of severe ITBS. I had been worried about needing an operation, but Simon reassures me that’s extremely unlikely. Rest and rehab will see you right, he confidently asserts. And as he prepares to welcome in the next patient (a
woman apparently more injured than I am who’s about to attempt a half-Ironman), he cheerfully suggests I go to see Mike at The Running School to try to stop the problem at source.
The thing that never fails to impress about Simon Kemp is his straightforward attitude to sports injury. The two issues I’ve been to see him about both cleared up precisely how and exactly when he said they would. He’s also borderline obsessed with his own performances on a road bike, and I can relate to that too. Middle-aged bloke trying to recapture some of his lost youth by getting infatuated with his own mediocre sporting efforts and achievements? Yep!
Anyway, Simon’s agreed to answer some questions and quite honestly, if you’re a runner or considering becoming one – you could do a lot worse than read on.
So what’s the typical injury a new runner will come to see you with?
They usually come with a lower leg overload problem that’s developed because they’ve increased their running load (a combination of distance, frequency and speed) too quickly – greater than the recommended maximum 10% increase per week – and they don’t have a background as a runner. The common running problems are all theoretically preventable. Achilles tendonopathy. Patellar tendonopathy. Patellofemoral knee pain. Gluteal tendonopathy. Hamstring tendonopathy. Or, much less commonly, lower limb stress fractures. All should be preventable with a sensible approach to planning a training programme.
So how would you prevent them?
Rather than just taking on board the standard advice, the runner needs to think about their potential risk of injury. I think it’s helpful to categorise themselves into red, amber or green risk categories. Both their initial running loads and first running goal need to be proportionate to where they are starting from. And really, the approach for each of these three groups needs to be different.
Green is: I’ve always been a regular runner. I may have lapsed for a little while, but I ran at school and/or university, and I haven’t had long periods of not running.
Amber is: I’ve run on and off, I’ve done other sports, I’ve remained fit and active. Maybe I’ve not been running that much recently but I’ve been doing running-related activities – football, tennis, hockey etc. regularly.
The Red group is: I don’t have any significant previous regular running experience. I may be heavy. Any exercise that I’ve done recently has been on a bike (limited weight-bearing) or in the swimming pool. I may have had previous problems when I have run, I may know that I have knee pain, hip pain. I may have had previous lower limb surgery. I may have had a previous fracture to the leg or ankle.
Whilst the Green group might start training for a half-marathon, the Red group needs to set more realistic goals – possibly 5km or 10km rather than a half-marathon and start running less often each week, at a slower pace for less time until they develop the robustness they need to increase the amount they run. They can get there but they need to take it more slowly than the green group and allow more time for recovery between runs. They may well benefit from some non-running-based training to help them become more ‘robust’.
Why have you got me standing barefoot on one leg when I’ve come to see you?
Running involves absorbing load with each foot strike. Think about the legs as a chain. You need to make sure that you’re as stable at the contact of your foot with the ground and the junction of the leg with the pelvis as possible. In order to do that you need to be running in a shoe that makes your foot–ground contact as effective as possible. And if you have rapidly collapsing arches to your feet, if you’re a marked pronator*, you may need a shoe that in some way limits that. Equally at the top end of the chain, where your thigh joins your pelvis, you need enough gluteal/lower back/abdominal stability, for your pelvis to remain stable when you are weight bearing on one leg and the other leg is swinging forwards. This stability can be developed relatively easily with specific exercises. And when I get you to stand on one leg, what I’m doing is assessing both ends. The key here is that you may need to work on both ends of the chain and not just one end. So if you’re strong in your glutes but you’re in the wrong shoes, you may have a problem. And if you’ve got the right shoes but you’ve still got weak glutes, that’s also often an issue.
People who have a strong core, well-conditioned glutes and legs that have been exposed to some resistance training are likely to be able to tolerate a running load better than somebody who’s trained on a bike or only done irregular yoga.
But there’s another accepted principle that may override all of this. There is huge variation between individuals (who appear broadly similar) in their risk of injury. In cycling people talk about macro-absorbers and micro-adjusters. The macro-absorbers can ride without problems irrespective of how the bike is set up. And there are others (the micro-adjusters) for whom a 2mm change in the seat position is enough to give them lower back pain so bad it may preclude them from cycling. The same is true for runners: if you have flat or pronating feet but those feet don’t cause you any problems, then you don’t need to do anything about it. You need to think about the whole person.
I thank Simon and tell him I hope to see him soon. That’s not entirely truthful; I hope I don’t see him soon in his professional capacity as that would mean another injury. And as he’s keen to stress, you don’t necessarily have to end up in his clinic just because you decide to start running.
You’ve asked me about injury and it’s all too easy to stress the downside of exercise without promoting the upside. Running is a convenient, effective and accessible way to improve your health whether that is lowering your blood pressure, losing weight or reducing your risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke or cancer. Exercise is the most effective medicine and the overall health benefits of running are overwhelmingly positive.
Jenson Button MBE
Formula One World Champion, and an exceptionally accomplished runner and triathlete. Jenson has even founded his own triathlon, the popular Jenson Button Trust Triathlon, to raise money for cancer charities.
I don’t remember when I first started running. I think we were all running as kids, weren’t we? I’m an eighties child so we didn’t have iPhones and tablets and what have you back then, so it was outside sports all the way. I was always active but really I didn’t start training or running until I got seriously into karting. When I was 14 I started racing in go-karts in Europe and also racing in Japan and America and that’s when I realised I needed to be a bit fitter. In fact it came from a big push from my dad who told me how important fitness was. That got me hooked at a really early age – and I’ve been hooked ever since.
For me, it’s so peaceful getting out and going for a run. I live in the South of France in Monaco so it’s perfect to head down the coast or up into the hills. It’s more of a release than anything else for me. I really enjoy my time when I’m running. There’s also the fun runs round circuits of course. Every race we go to, many of the extended Formula One family, from drivers to mechanics to broadcasters, run the circuit for charity. So there are lots of people, hundreds of people sometimes, out on the circuit running for charity. And that is pretty awesome, and creates an amazing atmosphere.
Whilst I’m out on my runs I’ve listened to music in the past but recently I’ve started taking in my surroundings a bit more. I’m very lucky that I get to go to some great places with F1, so I do think it’s more important to enjoy your surroundings than to listen to music. And when I was in training for the London Marathon, I really had to learn to take in my surroundings a lot, because many of the training runs were so long!
Before I ran London for the first time, I’d only ever run one marathon before, and that was in Hawaii where I just managed to break three hours. 2:58 was my previous best finish, so my aim was to better that in London. With the British public out there supporting everyone, I hoped I would manage to push a bit harder. Which I did. I was really pleased with 2:52.
I’ve also got into triathlon. It started back in 2007 when the F1 car wasn’t work
ing so well, and I thought it was nice to do something where it was all down to me as an individual. I’ve also made it part of my fitness training for F1 and I’ve continued from there. I’ve got an addictive personality and a competitive spirit and I’ve been really enjoying my triathlon journey over the years too. I’ve done half-Ironman distance but it’s back down the sprint distance for my own triathlon which I hold every year. That’s the good thing about the Jenson Button Trust Tri: anybody can do it as long as you can paddle your way around 200 metres. It’s a 200m swim, 10km bike and 2.5km run – then double the distance for the finals. So for me, it’s proper, full on, lungs burning for about an hour. Brilliant!
* Pronation is the inward movement of the foot to distribute the force of impact as you run. Everybody does it, but runners who do it too much, who over-pronate, often need orthotics or motion control shoes.
10
Jackson Browne, Running on Empty
‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 10
Into mile 10, and I think I’ve worked out why my stomach has been hurting so much. It’s hunger, pure and simple.
Well, maybe not pure and simple. Hunger, grim and tortuous might be more appropriate. And completely my fault for being so inept and unable to plan properly.
If I’m at one end of the Ironman ability spectrum with my current, paltry efforts to complete this one, Chrissie Wellington is at the other. She’s raced 13, won 13. She’s also four times world champion, and world record holder by masses. Chrissie once told me that if you get your nutrition wrong in an Ironman, you measure the mistake in hours. Well, I almost got it right.
Don't Stop Me Now Page 8
