A Column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
When someone refers to a cat-and-mouse struggle, there is usually only one possible outcome (spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for the mouse).
Especially when it is a marathon, and the ‘cats’ in question are Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele, both with claims...
A Column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
There wasn’t much reason to remember the 1970s – apart from the fact that we could. It was the decade we regained our memories. It followed the ‘60s and, as everyone knows, if you can remember the ‘60s, you probably weren’t there.
Athletically,...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
When Nike announced recently that its ‘window’ for the attempt to run the first sub-two hour marathon was 5-7 May, an intriguing possibility was raised.
The date dead-centre in the window, 6 May, is the sixty-third anniversary of the breaking of another famous...
A Column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Crikey. No sooner do we write in defence of Matt Centrowitz’s tactics in the Rio Olympic men’s 1500 metres final than we get an Australian championships replete with races run on what we might now call the Centrowitz-Kipyegon model: slow as a...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Ladies and Gentleman, we present for your entertainment a battle for one of the heavyweight titles of athletics – the world cross-country championships.
In the red corner, the defending champion, a course over 10 kilometers, multiple laps over a flat (and maybe a...
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
It is entirely fitting that Steve Moneghetti’s induction into the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame should have been announced the week of the world cross-country championships.
Despite his great achievements at the marathon and on the track, it was the world cross-country which...
From Rabat to Kampala
A Colum By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
This Sunday, the Australian teams to contest the world cross-country championships leave for Kampala. It is just on 42 years since Australia first contested the event in Rabat, Morocco, on 16 March, 1975.
Now, 42 might seem a strange anniversary...
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Being a selector is often a thankless task – literally, in the sense that not many of those selected ever think to say ‘thank you’, and, figuratively, in the sense that it is bloody hard work.
So perhaps it is fitting that the...
Written by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo is reputed to once have said.
Like many such ‘quotes’, this may not be a precise rendition of the French poet and novelist’s words, merely the most common paraphrase. Hugo’s observation...
Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
One of the beneficiaries of the decision to compete in Moscow was Rob de Castella, who made his first of four Olympic teams in the marathon.
‘Deek’ finished tenth in the marathon in Moscow, his first experience of the surging sort of running required to win...
