Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography by Mo Farah Page B

career was ended early by knee troubles, he turned to coaching. He was smartly dressed, well-spoken – a thinker. Conrad coached Hayley Yelling, the British runner who was a three-time champion at 5000 and 10,000 metres in the Nationals. In addition to Hayley, he also coached a steeplechase athlete called Benedict Whitby. Benedict was a few years older than me, although I can’t talk about him too much – these days he’s a policeman with City of London! Benedict was that extra level above me at the time. He had a kit contract with Nike and everything.
    We used to go on
fartlek
runs together, Benedict and me. We’d meet up with ten or twelve other guys from the club and do a route through Feltham, the twelve of us running at a fast pace along the slip road leading to Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Four. We’d be pushing hard, with the constant roar of planes overhead. Then, at the big roundabout in front of the terminal building, we’d hook a left and head back towards Feltham.
    But for me, the runner I looked up to the most was Sam Haughian.
    Sam was three years older than me. He was a class apart, pure and simple. He had a reputation as one of the brightest prospects in British endurance running at the time. In 1997 Sam had won the Inter Counties Championship. The following year he added the English Schools Cross Country senior title.
    One time Sam had competed in an Italian 5 kilometre race packed with Kenyans – the Rome Golden Gala, I think it was. He finished in 13:25.56, his previous best being 13:38.52, which was a huge improvement in one fell swoop. With two laps to go, Sam was out of it. His legs were gone. In a tough race like that he could easily have drifted out of it. However he regrouped and with a 2:04 last 800m was able to improve his PB by 13 seconds. That was Sam. He was a really tough runner. He had records coming out of his ears, including the biggest winning margin in English Schools, and he ran in five World Cross Countries. He got salmonella poisoning the day before the 1998 World Cross Country Championships in Morocco. The doctors told him not to run, but Sam went against their wishes. He was in fourteenth position going into the last 400 metres, the highest-placed European in the field, when he blacked out. The smallest winning margin Sam had in any big domestic race was usually over a minute.
    Without a doubt, Sam was one of the best cross country runners in Britain.
    While I was with the juniors, I’d watch Conrad training Hayley, Benedict and Sam at the club. I took a special interest in them because all three were running for Great Britain. They were talented athletes who were clearly going places. I’d look at them and think, ‘That’s where I want to be.’ Sometimes I would race against these guys in the league. Sam always beat me. Benedict too, although I did beat him once as a junior.
    Training with the guys in Conrad’s group gave me an instant lift. All of a sudden, instead of breezing through races, I was having to chase older, more developed runners like Benedict and Sam, having to push very hard to keep up with them. I really had to up my game. Conrad would point out aspects of my running that I needed to work on, such as my bad habit of reaching (leaning forward) when I drew near the finish line. A lot of athletes do this. You see it on TV all the time, especially in the sprint events. But if you lean too early, you change your running gait and start losing pace.
    If there was one runner at the club that I wanted to be like, it was Sam Haughian. I already knew his younger brother, Tim. He was a couple of years younger than me but we immediately hit it off and became good mates. I guess athletics must run in the Haughian family genes because Tim was also an outstanding running prospect. Tim and Sam were similar runners. They even shared the same running style. I had a few things in common with Sam too. Neither of us was exactly star students. We both liked to push ourselves