Rush - Cygnus X-I Book One

We can walk our road together, if our goals are all the same, we can run alone and free, if we pursue a different aim - Neal Peart 1978.

Mick McGeoch

I was talking to my good friend Mick McGeoch today about running and performance. Our conversations are always lively and I find it very inspiring to speak to a runner who has a marathon pb of 2:17:58 and a 40 mile pb of 3:58:40.

What I find most interesting is that the need for speed and performance has always driven Mick hard and his meticulous detailing of ALL of his runs has provided a huge amount of data to draw on to provide the belief for him to perform at ANY distance. It's a real aid to his training and running. Now that I am trying to speed myself up after ALL these years of training to be able to run a massive number of marathons or ultras on consecutive days, it makes me wonder if I EVER would have run a sub-3 marathon?

I'm not sure that the answer is 'YES' you know... even as a child, I wasn't fast. I was just different and at play times I was more interested in how many laps of the playground I could run rather than how fast I was doing them. And changing the last 40 years' notion of quantity being better than quality is not going to be an easy thing to do.

With Mick's help, banter and inspiration I might get under 7 minutes for a mile on Friday Night's Race. I'll try my hardest. However running 26 of them isn't an option - I'll leave that to the Micks of this world or coach people who have the ability to do so.

How fast are you and how fast do you think you could get?

More tomorrow...