In these strange days, normal life has been firmly placed on the back burner, the masses are forced to stay at home, while the “few” have taken up the fight against the relentless COVID-19 Virus which is covering the world, infecting people and taking lives. It is a scary time, and for those of us who are not fighting on the front line as Healthcare workers, Key workers and Shop workers, we must do our bit to help turn the tide. Its quite simple, we’re not being conscripted to fight in battlefields, we are being asked to stay at home. Stay home watch TV and help to stop the spread of infection.

As club runners for “the best club” we are used to training a lot and attending race meets and linking up with our running buddies and enjoying our lovely sport. The Government has rightly suspended all organised events, which means training is cancelled and Hearthside (like everything else) is closed. We’ve all had races postponed and cancelled this spring. At first we watched from afar and hoped it might not reach us, and we hoped that the Marathon would still go ahead, but it soon dawned on us just how serious this thing is, and so our hobbies and goals must go on pause. We must prioritise. We need to be sensible and comply, and ride this thing out, and hopefully we can return to normality at some point soon.

For now, lets make the best of the current situation. Lets try to have a positive experience. Lets try to learn from this. Lets be patient. Lets catch up on some rest. Lets appreciate that one lone session of outside exercise a day that we are allowed to take. Lets not abuse it, make sure we stay away from everyone else and use the time to maintain our fitness and clear our heads. We can look forward to reuniting on a Tuesday at Finsbury Park track for the monster session with our wonderful coaching team, or the 20 miler on a Sunday with the huge 9am groups owning the roads and chatting away with our friends, or churning up the mud on Parliament Hill at the next Cross Country season. Those days will be back soon. We’re lucky to have our creative members putting fun things together for us to do, like Lenny’s Segment Daily Challenges on Strava, and Joe Mc’s online Core Sessions. Keep the ideas coming, keep the banter flowing on the club’s Facebook page. Share your recipes. Bake some nice cake. Thank goodness for the internet and all the fun stuff that is cropping up. Thank goodness for the Spring weather.

Lets keep smiling and keep safe and help to keep everyone else safe.

Jimbob

Me Part 2 “USA” Aug 1977 to May 1982 - by Jerry Odlin

Take a boy from North London (used to the occasional (!) pub crawl around Crouch End, Highgate or Hampstead) and put him in a rural community in Western Kentucky on an athletic scholarship at Murray State University (yes i know, you’ve never heard of it). It’s a bit of a culture shock, almost a different planet. Some 70% of the population went to church on a Sunday, it was a “dry” county within the state ( no alcohol sold …legally that is), guys driving trucks with a shotgun racked on the back window (true red necks), my first roommate in the dorms, a young lad from Missouri, has a pistol under his bed in case people of the wrong colour broke in and so on. Internet, mobile phones not yet invented, communication back home was by the occasional telephone call and via the great “air mail” letter.

Murray State with approx. 8000 students did have however a 16000-seater outdoor stadium with an all-weather track, massive gym for those on athletic scholarships only, luxurious changing rooms, full equipped physio room and 5000 seater basketball court with a 2 lane 200m running track along the edge of the arena for use in the cold weather and with most of the long runs on dirt farm roads. All uni expenses were paid for in the scholarship, except for personal items and getting to and from home and all I have to do is, run for the university for the next four years whereas the previous 4 years i had been a 9-5 office worker in Pall Mall.

The coach was originally from Chelmsford, Bill Cornell. He was the first English guy to pick up an athletic scholarship for an American college in 1961, where he ran 1:48 for 800m and a bang on 4 mins for a mile. There were 6-8 English guys in the team, depending on the year, 3-4 sub 1:50 800m runners, including David Warren who along with Seb Coe and Steve Ovett made the final of the 800m at the Moscow Olympics, most of us capable of running around 3:45 or quicker for 1500m, a couple of 8:30 steeplechasers over 3km and some very decent long distance guys. This is my new training squad. Small unknown universities like Murray State often recruited their athletes from abroad, whereas the well-known colleges could easily pick up their team from the best high school kids in the US. On campus we English guys stuck out a little, with our long hair vs the normal rural American crew cut and our funny accents. There are many many stories I can tell you on how our social life progressed.

As you can imagine the volume and intensity of training went up a notch. Back home i had been hitting 60-70 miles a week, now in the US, 80—90 miles a week was the norm with two weight sessions each week and pretty intense interval sessions. Mon-Friday each morning we were out on a 5 miler at 7am (steady, around 6-6;30 per mile pace) and then back again at 3pm for our afternoon session. Training completed by 5pm each day. Steady runs of around 8-10 mile were often circa 5:30 per mile pace. There was always someone feeling good on the day ready to push it. Uni lectures are all fit into the morning or by lunch time, by 6pm the rest of the evening was free. Just for the record yes i did get a degree, in Marketing…“summa cum laude”…look it up. We raced most Saturdays. To get to the venue this more than often involved driving for 4-6 hours on Friday evenings, an overnight stay in all the classic US motels followed by a long trip home. Sometimes we flew using another uni’s own Douglas DC3 propeller driven aircraft. It was a little different to jumping on the Victoria Line.

The US seasons are very different from the UK. Setup different too. Due to the distances involved there is no real club system. If you want to carry on after graduating, if you are good enough you maybe join one of the professional clubs (a la the Nike Oregon Project), a team sponsored by a local running store maybe or there are a myriad of clubs who are loosely based around road racing. The US college season is broken down; cross country: late August to the first week of December, indoor track season: mid Jan to early March, outdoor track: early March to the first week of June.

Getting to the final races of each season, the US wide national college champs, the NCAA’s, was extremely tough. You had to qualify by time or in the case of the cross-country champs by placing high up as a team or in the first 20 odd individuals in various regional championships across the country, SE USA, NE USA etc etc. I made the National XC Champs twice, a third season out through injury and just missed it by a whisker in my final year. My first NCAA XC Champs (10k) were in Spokane Washington, the temperature at the start time, -8deg C. Somehow, I went through the first ½ mile in around 50th position with a guy on the side lines calling out the ½ m split, 1;59, 2;00, 2;01…gulp! Ahead world record holder for the SC, Kenyan athlete Henry Rono and the now infamous Alberto Salazar and an old nemesis from the u20’s days, John Treacy. I also made it to 3 or 4 either indoor or outdoor national track champs. The best being after I had qualified for the NCAA indoor champs by running 13;21 for 3 miles on a 200m track set around the edge of a basketball arena. At the championships in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, 11 laps to the mile wooden track, I ran 13:37 and finished fourth behind two East Africans and one American. That earnt me the coveted “All American” status. Again, easier to look up rather than explain the term. My 5k PB 13:51, came at the Drake Relays in Des Moines Iowa in 1979, managing a 59sec last lap. My 28;56 for 10k was back in the UK at Meadowbank Stadium, Edinburgh 1978, on one of my summer trips home. You’ll see from the rankings list with this article how very ordinary 28:56 was in this era.

In 1979 I had a little foray onto the roads. The Christmas/New Year of 78/79 I stayed with my friend Bob Fernee and his English parents in Jacksonville Florida. They provided a sanctuary for me when the uni was closed for a break and I couldn’t afford to go home. Bob was a member of our running club back in London in the mid 70’s. This to avoid Uncle Sam’s invitation to head to Vietnam. He took me up to run a ½ marathon in Savannah Georgia, my first race beyond 10 miles. It was pancake flat on a US Airforce base, so my track background served me well, winning the race in around 65:40. This earnt me an invitation back to Jacksonville Florida in March, to compete in the 2nd Jacksonville River Run over 15km. The year before it had been won by Bill Rodgers, four-time winner of the Boston Marathon. Thankfully he never showed for year 2 so I managed a second win on the roads, this time a much bigger affair with approx. 4000 competitors. It was still the days when all athletes were “amateurs”, so this was the first time I had received the classic “brown envelope” stuffed with cash for the win. That wasn’t a bad weekend.

I wont list my top races, way too many in each year to remember but attached are a few pictures with some explanations which hopefully gives you a flavour of my time there. After graduating in 1981 I headed back to Jacksonville Florida with my soon to be wife but as my university time had finished I became an illegal alien, a la “Bob” in the film Green Card. We lived there for about a year, running in road races and the very occasional track race for Jacksonville Track Club or for the running shoe store where I worked, 1st Place Sports. I ran my PB for ½ marathon, 65:08, that year in Orlando. We moved back to the UK in the summer of ’82 (long story for another day) got a job, house and soon after a family. More running club highlights were to come but for that I have to consult with our historian Peter Holland for maybe a part 3 

I may have had a better running career and maybe a much longer career, if I had not gone to the States and stayed at home, who knows. But I loved my time there and can honestly say I wouldn’t swap it at all.

Captions (for the photos below)

Murray 3 legs - My favourite pic. L-R David Warren, 8th at Moscow Olympics in the 800m, David Rafferty sub 3;40 1500m runner and myself. En route to an 8:05 clocking for 3k in a duel meet ( 2 uni’s competing against each other) at Murray.
Detroit 79 - Detroit’s Cobo Hall 11 laps to the mile wooden track. NCAA Indoor Champs 13;37 for 3 miles, finished 4th and awarded “All American” status
Drake 79 - PB for 5km at the Drake Relays Des Moines Iowa. The great Jesse Owens handing out medals except you don’t get one for 4th! Quite a tight finish.
AAA Champs 1982. Back in the UK, another sub 29 10k but again showing it didn’t get you very far.
The Plane - are we in business class?
River Run x 3. River Run Jacksonville Florida 15km 1st place. In the end my chief guy battling it out with me, Malcolm East was a Middlesex boy from Twickenham. Not a carbon plate in sight, just waffles
1978 Rankings - Showing how average my 10k PB was at the time.