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.

Read more of “Running the Bannister mile”