London 2012 blog

About one and half months ago, I was sent an e-mail by the athletic club captain at Oxford Uni, asking whether or not I’d be interested in running a mile race at the Iffley Road track when Roger Bannister and Seb Coe re-opened it.

Unsurprisingly, as a distance runner, I responded very quickly that I would!

In the build-up to the race, I didn’t really have time to get nervous – spent time working and just treated it as an ordinary race approaching. It did really strike me what an unique experience this was going to be on the morning of the race.

I wasn’t sure whether to feel nervous or excited about the race, and switched quite a lot between those emotions at times, but was fairly calm by the time I’d walked down to the track, and headed off for my warm-up jog.

I started doing my warm-up drills and strides as the speeches started, and while I didn’t manage to catch all of the speeches, it was somewhat nerve wracking to hear the University Vice-Chancellor list all the achievements of Seb Coe and Roger Bannister, but as the speeches ended and we prepared for the race to start, I calmed and focused on the race.

During the race, I didn’t feel any nerves or pressure (due to their presence at least!), and managed to keep my head focused on the race for most of the time.

I took the lead pretty much from the start, and focussed on running the race at the right pace and with the right tacics. I worried early on that I was just sheltering people into the wind, and they we going to come past on the last lap, but I managed to pull away from them.

As I came up to the bell on the last lap, I saw everyone standing there and my mind momentarily began to wander, and began to get slightly nervous at the people who were watching me race. However, I quickly put this out of my mind and I completed the last lap to win.

Unfortunately, it was not as quick as I’d have liked, thoguh it was faster than I'd run a mile before, and it was still a great feeling. The pictures of me crossing the line possibly don’t reflect this though.

The most nervous I was all day was probably after the race, when Roger Bannister and Seb Coe, came and spoke the group of us – we weren’t really sure what to say, and I felt somewhat embarrassed given how much slower my run was than what the two of them had managed!

But they were both friendly, and it was really fantastic to speak to two greats in the world of athletics.

The day really was a unique experience, and it’ll be hard to train at the track now renamed after Roger Bannister, without thinking about that day, nor how impressive his achievement was!