Sonia O’Sullivan: Runners are always ruled by numbers

As I was finishing up my run this morning I ran past a neighbour out walking his dog. I gave him a quick wave then turned in for home, and as I looked at my watch to check the numbers the first thing I saw was 13.83km.

Obviously no one can stop on that number. So I ran on a little, past our house and then a quick lap of the estate to bring my run up to a nice even 14.0km. Just as I was finishing up for the second time my neighbour was arriving at his gate, looking over at me curiously, wondering why I’d run past the house, then around it.

It’s something I often wonder about myself, when I find myself ruled by numbers, rather than just stopping at the natural finish line.

I think it’s something that becomes ingrained in your brain when you spend so much time training and racing, calculating how far you should run and how fast you should run. Even when it’s not really that important anymore, it can still trigger a reaction in the brain to balance the books.

It was a foggy morning in Cobh as I set out. I had no distance or time in mind, only a general direction away from town, alongside the sea, through Marlogue woods. Then instead of coming back the same way, I followed a little loop up through Ballymore village and back down to the sea, finishing up the hill again towards home.

There’s simply no avoiding the hills in Cobh, and these days I particularly enjoy the downhill parts, after struggling on the uphill.

I was never one for exact distances, although I do find it hard to run now without the Garmin strapped around my wrist. It’s nice to know how far you’ve run, and also check the map and elevation afterwards.

In a way, though, I’m glad that I didn’t have these gadgets when I was training at my peak, because I know it would have become an obsession with me, to hit the exact times and splits.

Of course, this is good for the key training sessions of the week, but I don’t think it’s a good thing to be monitoring your pace every single day, even for athletes at the very elite end of the sport.

Easy running days are meant to be that, recovery days that should be respected. It’s hard to put a pace on an easy run because one day’s easy run might not feel as easy on another day, or may actually feel easier.

It’s interesting that when I look back, I did many of my easy runs around my London base, with the likes Frank O’Mara and Marcus O’Sullivan, and also Moses Kiptanui from Kenya, who was a world record holder at the time over 5,000m and 3,000m steeplechase. We were all running easy, although relative to the pace we would race at, I was actually running a lot faster. Still it felt easy in my mind.

Records

The perception of effort is the best way to measure the recovery runs between hard training sessions, and I would definitely recommend avoid checking the pace or distance in such a run: on days like this it’s more important to run according to how you feel, rather than how your GPS or stopwatch is making you feel.

It’s much harder to get away from the stopwatch in racing situations, and not just among the elite athletes chasing Olympic qualifying times or national records. Time is much more of an obsession at nearly every level, and you see very little of the more old-fashioned races anymore, that aren’t judged by the time.

In athletics, the result is important but if the time is not somehow impressively fast then the value of the race is often disregarded, especially when you just read the result. It doesn’t matter that there might have been a strong wind or a series of hills in the race; it’s seen as a lesser result if the time is slow.

A bit like fast training and easy days there is also a place for tactical races with a slower time. This is what most athletes call race practice, as most championship races end in some sort of tactical battle.

I saw some good tactical racing in the Phoenix Park on Sunday, watching the Spar Great Ireland Run, which also doubled as the National 10km Road Championship and a match race between Ireland and a Commonwealth selection.

It was a great sight to see three Irish vests at the front of the women’s race, led by Fionnuala McCormack, who pulled in front at the critical time. The men’s race was a closer affair with Mick Clohisey alongside English runner Andy Maud as they entered the final stretch; Maud eventually prevailed with five seconds to spare in what was an exciting race to the end. Still, most runners were looking at the clock as they crossed the line, obsessed with the time as much as how they actually ran.

I certainly noticed the contrast when watching the Grand National the day before, where there was no mention whatsoever of how fast the horses were running. In fact, I’ve rarely ever heard times mentioned at the completion of a horse race.

I’ve always enjoyed the Grand National, and was relaxing in my hotel room last Saturday, after a busy few days in Dublin, wondering which horse I would pick.

Like most people I find watching horse racing much more exciting when you pick a horse; that way the race ends up getting my full attention. As the horses were making their way to the start at Aintree, I scrolled through the start list and stopped at Rule the World.

Hurdle

I couldn’t believe I had picked a horse to cheer for all the way to the last hurdle and into the finish – a quiet afternoon brought to life just because I aligned myself with a random horse a few minutes before it was called to the start line.

It probably wasn’t a very fast race, given the soft conditions and the fact an outsider like Rule the World was victorious, but no one seemed to care whatsoever about the time. It was such an exciting race and got me on my feet shouting at the television and, of course, the time just flew.