A Column By Len Johnson Years ago, there were many sets of numbers I had committed to memory. The world all-time list of sub-2:10 marathoners, for example. The top 20 Australians (it helped that my own modest 2:19:32 was on that list!). It also helped that the weren’t that many numbers to...
We’ve barely recovered from New Year’s Eve. And now we’re only a week away from a world cross-country. A common complaint among the more ‘mature’ – don’t call us old! - is that modern life moves too fast, but a world cross-country 10 days into the new year? Too...
What is it with the marathon. Seems like every December a platoon of Australians heads off to Spain and someone – or two – produces an Australian record. Not just anywhere in Spain. Just as the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain, the marathon records stay mainly in...
It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Black Friday sales – the shopping confection which serves as the sprint race to the Christmas F1 Grand Prix – out of the way, things winding down. Of course, there’s always a bit of athletics to December. But this week, suddenly...
Back in the day when ‘Deek’ – sometimes known as Robert de Castella – was king of Australian distance running, Canberra’s Stromlo Forest was his domain. The mobs of kangaroos living in the pine forests knew as much about his training as anyone else. You didn’t see the kangaroos so...
When the women’s 800 metres was restored to the Olympic program in Rome in 1960, Australia had immediate success – Brenda Jones taking the silver medal just eight hundredths of a second behind Lyudmila Shevtsova of the Soviet Union. Success, though not of the medal variety, also came when the...
It can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to talk about Seth. Seth who? Seth being on the Milers program only once a year. O’Donnell that’s who. O’Donnell’s latest exploit came a couple of days ago – 13 November, to be precise – when he broke the Victorian Milers Club record...
In 1937, MGM released A Day at the Races, the seventh movie starring The Marx Brothers. Like most of the previous six, the film attracted favourable reviews and made good box office. One of those reviews was penned by none other than Graham Greene, the English author and journalist regarded...
Besides being at some time the world’s pre-eminent track distance runner, what does Joshua Cheptegei have in common with the likes of Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Paul Tergat and Mo Farah? A transition to the marathon that is a little less than overwhelming, that’s what. Cheptegei ran his third marathon...
I still get out sometimes. Only a couple of days ago I was out celebrating the 45th anniversary of event, publications and retail company Sole Motive which, in another lifetime it seems now, started out as Australian Runner magazine and through the hard work and resilience of founders Terry...
