A Column By Len Johnson

Len Johnson wrote for The Melbourne Age as an athletics writer for over 20 years, covering five Olympics, 10 world championships and five Commonwealth Games.

He has been the long-time lead columnist on RT and is one of the world’s most respected athletic writers.

He is also a former national class distance runner (2.19.32 marathon) and trained with Chris Wardlaw and Robert de Castella among other running legends. He is the author of The Landy Era.

Brady chats with Runner’s Tribe columnist, journalist and author Len Johnson about his time in running and how he got into it via footy. Len shares with Brady how he made the transition from the 400m to marathon running via amateur footy, and the factors and series of events that lead to running his personal best of 2:19:32 at Fukuoka.
When Australia first demonstrated interest in competing internationally at cross-country, we started at the very top. Not for us the heavy slog of starting small and building, step by step, to something big. No; Australia wanted to bypass the ridiculous and proceed directly to the sublime - to the heights...
If Victoria has a home of cross-country, it would have to be Bundoora Park, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, across the road from LaTrobe University. They’ve been racing there almost 50 years. For most of that period Victoria has been the powerhouse of Australian distance running, which gives Bundoora Park strong...
runners tribe 07-06-2019forget the samba, it's the rhythm of the event that counts Abderrahman Samba may be on the verge of re-writing the 400-meter hurdles record books, but the headlines – not so much. The 23-year-old Qatari – he turns 24 in September, just a few days before his home world championships commence in Doha – ran 46.98 at the Paris Diamond League last year, becoming just the second man ever to break 47 seconds in the event. The only one faster is Kevin Young, who set the current world record of 46.78 in winning the Olympic gold medal in Barcelona in 1992.
Briefly, we all became multi-event fans last weekend, what with Ashley Moloney, Cedric Dubler and Celeste Mucci competing in the Austrian town of Gotzis, long-time host to the top non-championship meeting in the world for those who take their competitions seven or 10 events at a time. Gotzis piqued our interest. And our interest peaked after each made a great start on day one. After five events, book-ended by a personal best 10.41 in the 100 and near-personal best 46.97 in the 400, world U20 champion Moloney was in second place to Canada’s Damian Warner with an impressive 4436 points.
As the lead pack in the senior women’s race battled its way around the second half of the tough Aarhus course in the recent world cross-country championships, it wasn’t easy to pick the likely winner. The next runner to drop off, now that was another matter altogether. Hellen Obiri always...
When my wife and I started going out back in 1983, one of our first dates was to attend an ALP campaign rally at Melbourne’s Box Hill town hall. In reality, it was more an acclamation than a rally for Australian Labor Party leader Bob Hawke who, two days...
I’ve only been to Bathurst twice in my lifetime, but each time I’ve approached it with a sense of excitement. Not as great, no doubt, as the excitement experienced by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth who became, in 1813, the first European settlers to cross the Blue Mountains, of which Bathurst...
By Len Johnson Eliud Kipchoge is re-defining men’s marathon running. An Olympic gold medal, a world record, 11 wins from 12 major marathons (12 from 13 if you include the Breaking 2 project), the last 10 consecutive - will tend to do that. A better question might be: is Kipchoge also...
Remember when sport and politics didn’t mix (Yes: I know they always have, but let’s pretend the perfect world in which they don’t actually exists). Seeking some respite from the tedium of an Australian election campaign that has not yet left – and probably will not leave – the tit-for-tat...
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