6th at Olympic trials and sub 4 @morton mile..

Again my career has never gone quite to plan and at the Olympic trials this was becoming true again.

My training going in was very good, but in the days leading up to the champs my achilles was starting to hurt again and my heat days was very painful. I ran a good race in the heats just following fellow 30 year old mike East. We have been racing each other for years and it was no surprise when we started to pull away with 250m to go. I eased up at the end and was passed by young talent Ricky Stevenson, but knew we had a big gap to 4th with to 3 straight through. After the heat my achilles was very bad and had some treatment which seemed to help. I went to bed that night thinking that i might not be able to start or finish, let alone get in the race for medals.

I started at a solid pace and kind of ran around in a trance of thinking about my achilles the end result was 6th in 3:41.1 a seasons best and only 1.2secs off a medal and only 2.5secs off gold. Thats how close it is and this is off a very bad achilles and not being able to run over 40mins for a while (with anything on a bike!) Still i was very disappointed as i was 6th 8 years ago in 2000 and 5th four years later, talk about progress!! But people keep telling me i should be proud to still be in the mix and even after all the problems, but im left with the felling of 'what if??'.

The achilles is still hurting but i decided that ive gone too far to stop until i cant run a step further. Week after the trials i took 2nd in the BMC at manchester in 3:45.3- i led as pace maker messed up. 59/2:02/2:48 then i kicked a 56.8 last 400m but got pipped on line.

I then race in the Morton Mile in Dublin and ran a solid sub 4 with 3:58.05 just 0.3secs off my best ever.

Morton Mile

Place Name Club Time

1 Rob Myers USA/NIKE 3.56.23

2 Will Leer USA/NIKE 3.56.75

3 Stephen Pifer USA/NIKE 3.57.27

4 Collis Birmingham AUS/NB 3.57.62

5 Youcef Abdi AUS/NIKE 3.57.71

6 James Thie WAL/NYAC 3.58.05

7 Graeme Wells CAN 3.58.22

8 Darren Brown USA 3.58.35

9 John Jefferson USA/OCT 3.59.55

10 David Campbell IRL/NIKE 4.00.14

11 Brian Olinger USA/REEBOK 4.00.19

12 Mark Hanrahan IRL 4.00.73

13 Mark Christie IRL 4.09.11

I then travelled the next morning to Nottingham and took the Tim weatherall mile in 4:02.1, a tired win but pleasing after a busy few weeks. The next morning i ran easy 10km with steve jones and nick rose at the great welsh run. This was great fun to run with two legends of the sport and also support Cystic Fibrosis who i was running for.

My next race is the British league and then the BMC final at Eton the following week. So hopefully my achilles can hold out!!