A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe Down here in Melbourne we’re yet to get our feet wet, but winter season’s already here. Rain is falling as I write, so the first muddy cross-country race can’t be too far away – maybe as close as the 12km cross-country next weekend...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe Next year’s world championships in Doha will feature another Breaking 2 event. Not two hours this time, but two days. To ameliorate the brutally hot conditions of a Persian Gulf summer, the two marathons will start at midnight. OK, that’s actually not two separate...
A column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe Out of Africa, always something new, wrote Pliny the Elder back in the first century A.D. Pliny was referencing a quote from the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, but if you paraphrase slightly to “out of Africa, always something in the news,” then you’ve just...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe Funny race the marathon. Last Sunday in London, the British capital’s warmest (I would say hottest, but London doesn’t really do heat) London marathon day ever, Mary Keitany covered the 42.195 kilometres from Greenwich to the finish near Buckingham Palace entirely on her...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe Australia’s most famous open-water yacht contest is the annual Sydney to Hobart race. Most years in these modern times, line honours are taken out by a sleek Maxi (length greater than 21m) boat crammed full of the latest technology. The fastest of these...
A column by Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast Championship marathons seem to attract more than their fair share of brutal weather. Put on any championship, pick any day for the marathons and it’s a better than even-money bet that the day will dawn warm and sunny. Indeed, that it...
Don’t bring a knife to a gun-fight By Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast In the movie The Untouchables, the Sean Connery character offers the memorable line to one of his victims: “Never bring a knife to a gun-fight.” It took a while for Kenya to cotton on to this logic,...
Cheptegei doubles, Kipruto orchestrates sweep By Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast It’s getting harder to write new things about Joshua Cheptegei. When he won the 5000 metres at the Commonwealth Games last Sunday, it was easy to dwell on the development of the young man who had crashed and burned...
Dreams fulfilled on field A column by Len Johnson - Reporting from the Gold Coast It might be stretching things too far to call Carrara Stadium a field of dreams – the so-far-hapless Gold Coast Suns might object, for a start. But it has been on the field that Australian dreams have...
By Len Johnson reporting from the Gold Coast Standing on the runway for her last throw of the Commonwealth Games javelin competition at Carrara Stadium on Wednesday night, Kathryn Mitchell dissolved into tears. These were tears of joy, however, not those born of the frustration at having to wait so long...
