O tempora, o mores - oh what times, oh what customs - declaimed the Roman orator Cicero to his fellow senators in 63 BC, in a speech attacking a political rival. Or, to put it (very) loosely, things couldn’t get much stranger than this.
Oh yes they can. To cite...
Running has brought me so many wonderful memories. As the only girl growing up with 3 brothers on a farm, my upbringing always consisted of running in some facet, and I really never stopped falling in love with it. Cross country was a part of the school curriculum from...
Remember when Australia ruled the world at men’s steeple? No: well, I don’t either. In fact, I would never have known of this brief domination had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic.
Until very recently, I had thought that the history of the men’s steeple was pretty much the...
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, is the 2000 Coen Brothers comedy about the adventures – misadventures, mostly – of three escapees from a chain gang on a quest to regain the proceeds of a robbery committed by one of them.
It is a satire loosely based on Homer’s epic Greek...
One day at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, I watched on as the American 5000 metres representative, Duncan MacDonald, did a training session.
My billet was a few metro stations beyond the Olympic stadium. A relatively short run took me down to the stadium and Village precinct. I ran there...
Working towards a 10,000m race and wish to know what your training ‘race pace’ should be, or what time you think you are capable of? Read on…
Athletics can be one of the most democratic of sports, accessible to both the fastest, highest and strongest and the slowest, lowest and puniest.
Such is true of most sports, of course. Tennis is played both at the sublime Federer-Nadal-Williams level and as hit-and-giggle social doubles. Golf is Tiger Woods,...
Throughout the year I train in many different locations. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan, Forster, Falls Creek, Hoyos del Espino, Mount Laguna, Nijmegen, and London. This is partly because as an Australian we have to spend a considerable amount of time overseas for competitions, which means we also...
You don’t have to dive deep into Australian world cross-country history to find yourself immersed in a stream of Steve Moneghetti statistics. From his first appearance in 1985 to his last in 2004, Moneghetti was the dominant force in our men’s teams.
Had the story of Australian participation been written...
The 2004 world cross country (WXC) in Brussels was certainly the highlight of my career. It was my 4th world cross country (my first time in the 8km race) and without a doubt, going into it, I was in my best shape of my career to date.
I had always...
