A Season In The Life

New Year. Fresh diary. Legs feeling good and 365 days of possibility to be conquered. On the first day of the year, while the world slept away its cares, Sonia O'Sullivan was on a grass track in Tasmania, running a handicap race. The only way to pop the cork on a new life.

It was a handicap race where they give each runner a starting mark depending on their ability. She'd run one a couple of days before and her competitive instinct filtered through the sunshine and babble. The mark she'd been given assumed she could run 3.58 for the mile, not the 4.10 pace she was handling then. Same old Sonia. No win. No fun.

"So I harassed the judges and got a fair start an extra 20 metres on. I even tried to get into the junior race. I still didn't win, but I ran half decent."

And off the next day to Falls Creek. Plane to Melbourne, five hours drive to Falls Creek, stopping at the last available supermarket for provisions to last a while. Living in Peppercorn Lodge with the distance-running freaks. Some of them went up the day after Christmas. Couldn't wait to be 5,000 feet above sea level.

The first day she ran out on a bit of a session, there was a hill and they all got a bit macho running up it. Sonia got involved. Rewarded with pains in the head, nausea, everything. It was cold windy and raining. Hello, New Year. Hello hard work.

"We stayed in Falls Creek until the end of January, 'til it started to feel like we were running at sea level again. Altitude becomes normal to you. I did 10 miles in the mornings and six in the evenings. Well over a hundred miles a week."

Sunday was a day of work. Sunday runs were long and hilly, way out in the middle of nowhere. One Sunday she ran by herself for miles, nobody in sight but cows. Thought of home, but the cows half scared the life out of her.

"You'd be running along and you'd come upon a pack of them and most of them would run to the side in fright, but sometimes two or three of them couldn't jump off to the side and they were running along in front of us, panicked and crapping all over the place, and us behind them splashing about in it."

They'd finish running and stand up to their waists in an ice-cold rock pool. "Supposed to be good for us. So they said anyway.".

At the end of January they came down from the Creek. Four weeks exactly. Sonia was keen to see if her legs had absorbed the strength. Very keen. Got stopped on the road for speeding and had to play dumb and Irish. Hit home at about midnight.

"I jumped up next morning and went for a 10-mile run. Thought I would feel fantastic. Felt terrible altogether. Awful. Did a hill session the day after. Nothing special either. So much for Falls Creek."

February

Back to business with a weekend cross country in Canberra, the cool strange city. The race snaked through the flat gardens of Parliament buildings. Runners in a ghost town. Everyone in Canberra goes home for the weekend, leaving their eerie shell of a city behind.

"The race was three laps of two kilometres. I decided to run the first one with everyone else, see how they were going and how I was going. I felt good, so I stretched the legs for the second lap. Then went away on the third lap. Won by about 30 seconds. Happy with it all, but you never really know with cross country."

Next to Auckland, winning a 3,000 track race by 30 seconds. Wet and windy Auckland. The streets and the houses piled together like Irish towns. She liked the feel of the place.

Then a 5,000 metres in Melbourne. Another 30 seconds margin, but the first half decent race of the year. Grand prix points at stake and all.

"I was feeling good. Marcus (O'Sullivan) was down there, I was running with him a bit. After Melbourne I knew there was a race in Sydney and I hadn't decided whether to run it or not. Felt if I win all these races by 30 seconds, I'd better find something a bit competitive. Marcus was doubtful, thought I was getting too greedy too quick. I argued for one more. "

Sydney was a 1,500 metres, with Regina Jacobs in the field. Jacobs had run an 800 in Melbourne and ran it well. Sonia and herself hadn't spoken since almost coming to blows in the stadium in Athens a year previously. Tasty.

"Everyone was worried for me. Alan (Storey, her coach) was thinking `you don't need to run, but if it doesn't hurt you, then do it'. I convinced him I could run it and that would be the end of it. I was cool about it. I went off to see U2 the night before."

Sonia blew Jacobs away off the last bend. That was February 28th. Rolling. Rolling. Rolling.

March

Nearly two more weeks of training in Melbourne geared to cross country. Running on the track, but slower, longer stuff, taking in some hill sessions. She'd decided back in Falls Creek to pitch her cap at the World Cross Country in Marrakesh. The longer race. "I entered the short one in case I ran bad and needed to run better for rehabilitation."

That's not how it turned out. She flew back to Europe on Thursday, March 12th. Straight to London. Spanning the globe brought no interruption of schedule.

"I trained on the Thursday in Melbourne. Got in early and stayed awake all day. When I got tired that evening I went out for a run. Woke me up. Slept that night and got back into the rhythm."

To Marrakesh six days later. Arriving in the middle of the night and checking into the wrong hotel, a dive down a back alley. Dirty and scary. Checked out again. Found the right location. She read last week that it was Winston Churchill's favourite hotel. Good track record anyway.

They rose the next morning and talked problems - food, heat - and ran for 40 minutes. "Always in a new place we just come out and ask which direction the track is. Then head that way."

The course was being watered. The terrain was all olive groves. People everywhere doing odd jobs. Mad frantic scenes. Her mind was still only on one race. When it began they burst from these odd wooden stalls.

"They started the race without saying anything. No chance to think about it or edge up to a tape or anything. We were running before we knew it. The Kenyans went flying off. It was half a mile to this wooden ramp that we had to go over and it didn't calm till then. You could get stuck behind a hundred people."

Then it stopped and they cantered like they were training. Running along like a training session. Keeping up. Keeping up. Waiting for the moment.

The pace quickened on the last lap. Paula Radcliffe and the Kenyans all looked around, waiting for someone to make a jump. Keeping up. Keeping up. The last half of the last lap got hard. Sonia noticed suddenly that everyone who was making it hard for her was tired. And she wasn't. "I just had to make up my mind. Just try and get to the finish. Never imagined it would be so easy."

Emotional. She remember that Kim McDonald was standing just over the line. He had a phone in his hand and he was talking to Alan Storey. She spoke to Alan Storey. Never mentioned the next day's race.

"I lost my bag with my mobile phone that day. For hours I didn't get back to the start where I'd left it and when I did, it was gone. I spent half the day looking for it. Then, sitting with Bob Kennedy (the American middle distance runner), I was thinking about running the next day, thinking I wouldn't bother.

"I knew people were against me running it, but I had no phone, so I didn't call anyone. I thought to myself that there would be four cross country champions out of Marrakesh and maybe to do something different would be memorable."

So she was walking to the start for the short race next morning when she rang Alan Storey to tell him.

"I was more nervous about telling him than I was about running the race. I knew I was more telling him than asking him. He paused. I told him it was only a bonus. I said if it was tennis, I'd have won the singles and sure this is just the doubles. I promised him I wouldn't be upset if I lost. I rang him afterwards and he said I'm glad there's no mixed doubles."

Then the Moroccan officials took her off to meet Primo Nebiolo. "Thees is heestoric moment," said the god of athletics.

April/May

After Marrakesh the phone started to ring again. You have two bad dream years and you go cold as a corpse. You win the double World Cross Country and, hey, you are real hot, real quick.

"For a while everyone wanted a piece of me. It was great. You go out and do everything. Then you get tired of it again. You start making these things fit into the time that you have, not the time that people think you have."

She went to America soon after. Short trip to clean out her flat near Philadelphia and to see the folks at Nike. She moved to the mainstream church of Nike after the bad years. Before the World Cross Country, they had her on a performance-related deal. Flushed with her success, Nike put her on the books. She skipped down to San Francisco for a few days, took in the cool grey city and loped around Stanford. Work beckoned.

Back to London on April 12th. Normal training. The annual grind before the track season unfolds. Took in the London Marathon as a spectator. Ran a relay race in Richmond Park one evening. Beat all the men. Before she knew it the summer was breathing down her neck.

"I sat down with Alan to look at the track season and decide what races to do. I made all my bad decisions for the year in one swoop. I looked too far ahead too soon. You are given a list and you decide. I didn't look at it from a technical point of view and it was Alan's first season with me. I agreed to do all these races. Later it was difficult to unagree them."

The Golden League system meant she entered mainly 1,500 metre races, while her training under Storey was geared towards the longer distances. She picked the races "because I decided I was back and I wanted to be in all these places". Weeks later, if she could, she would have gone back to scratch and picked them all over again.

June/July

Same old rollercoaster. "As soon as I ran the 5,000 in St Denis I knew it was going to be difficult. I ran okay and finished behind Ouaziz and Wame, but it was the wrong race for me." She ran a 1,500 a couple of days later in Bratislava and ran great without winning and convinced herself she was in good enough shape, but just not ready for the 5,000 metres yet. The four minutes one second time was her best over the distance in two years.

"I was up and down. I knew a lot of people were losing faith in me very quickly. There you go again. What next? I was sort of naive. I was going well, but should have been better. I hadn't trained as well as I should have. I had injured myself a little bit and should have decided not to run, but I was drawn into it and committed myself to a load of things I shouldn't have."

After Bratislava she interred St Denis in the vault with the bad memories. That's how it goes. Run bad and there is something wrong. Run well and everything is fine. Just keep going. She had enough of it after a while, though.

"It was only June and I was going to tracks and I realised I'd been in too many of these places too many times before. The only times I was running well was when I really had to, when I was really interested. "I went to Oslo and got thrown around the place in that race, and came fourth which seemed really bad to me. Ran a 4:03 maybe. I was disappointed, but looking back it wasn't so bad. Especially looking back after I just finished ninth in Rome."

She struggled to find a silver lining. Oslo was bad. Rome was hopeless. Nice, in late June, was a relief. A 3,000 metre race that sort of set her up again.

"Nice was a good race. Fast time. Told me that I could handle the longer races. I didn't win, but I realised that I made a mistake that I wouldn't have done in the old days."

The season trundled on. She remembers going to Zurich, the last big race before the Europeans. Finished seventh maybe. Wasn't disappointed. Just went out about 4.02 for the 1,500, in and around her average for the year. Then she went out and did an hour on the track when the meet finished. Dismissed it all as a training day. The 10,000 metres in Budapest was already taking up most of the space in her head.

August

"I went out to Budapest on the 17th of August, a Monday. I trained twice on the day before I went. A session in the morning, an easy run in the evening, that wrapped it up. Nothing more I could do."

She was tuned in, which was a relief. She hadn't run many races related to the training she was doing and her mind wandered with her mood. "The 10,000 was early in the week. In the 10,000 I had to keep up for as long as possible. That was my only tactic. Just don't do anything different to the others unless they start walking. I'd never run it before, but it was a fairly decent time. The laps were dull until after the 5,000 mark, just running around wondering when is it going to start. Suddenly you are involved in a race."

Suddenly you are European champion in a distance you have never run before.

She ran home from the stadium that night and decided to think about the 5,000. The world had turned. Everyone thought she should run it. So she stayed away from the track for the rest of the week. She watched Dieter Baummann on the box. He went in the men's 5,000 after the 10,000. Didn't go so well. Hmmm.

The field for the 5,000 wasn't daunting. People close to her felt it was there for the taking. She tucked in on Szabo's shoulder and played it just like the 10,000.

"Szabo hasn't spoken to me since then. I'll soon have no friends. 1997 and Regina Jacobs wouldn't speak. Now Szabo. I'm collecting enemies. Szabo said she moved out to let me go in front. I was running beside her, so she stepped out into my path. Not like there is any advantage in hiding behind her she's so small.

"She used to be very friendly. She says nothing these days, but I think she's a bit mad anyway. She seems that way. Really intense."

If the double coup was a little bit of history, it didn't feel like it. Sonia's leg was whining for attention.

"I had a sore calf, so I got a 6.30 a.m. flight out of Budapest to try and catch Gerard Hartmann (her physio) in London before he left.

"It was good to get back to London. To do the washing and get back to running my old route, do one of my own runs. I did a quick trip to Dublin on the night the team came home. I met them on the runway. Just got off my plane across the tarmac and on to their plane. Then got off their plane. In the back door, out the front door. Swoosh. Here we are."

But no air miles.

September

She thought after Budapest that she could fly. With a flap of her cape she hit the circuit for Brussels, Berlin and Moscow "I don't know where my head was. I remember I came back one night and Alan (Storey) told me to do a few 300 sprints. I thought for some reason he said three. So I did three really hard. And stopped. And Alan said `no, do the six'. I told him I thought he said three. He said `no, do the six, just because you won two golds doesn't mean you take short cuts'. I was almost sick."

Berlin was the start of the nightmare epilogue. In Hitler's old stadium she ran 14.51 on a night she thought she'd do 14.21. Szabo, Ouaziz and Wame ran brilliantly, relegating her to the postscript place.

"I just got to a point where I was running to beat these other girls who I was determined wouldn't beat me. I had expected so much out of that night. The leaders were so far ahead I knew I hadn't a chance. One of those things. "

Coming around for each lap somehow, mysteriously, the clock hadn't the time on it that it was supposed to show. "What's wrong? It's a grand prix and we'd built it up as a really fast race. It was, but I wasn't really in it. I decided then I'll probably do fewer races next year. There will be a reason for every race, fit it into training for specific things. I stayed in Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday. It was horrible really. Hanging around in Berlin is okay, but not when you've run really badly and don't want to be there. It's easy now to see what I should have done. Rationally I should have gone home. Instead I went to Moscow for the Grand Prix final and ran useless altogether. Just crap."

She got up the next day, dragging a depression around with her. Decided not to run that day. Nick (Bideau, her boyfriend) wanted to go to Red Square and took out a map and discovered how to run to the landmark.

"I didn't want to go, but out of habit I'm putting on my running clothes. So eventually we went out and it took maybe 55 minutes. I was really dragging on the way there, complaining about everything. Moaning.

"On the way back, even though I liked Red Square, I had just had it. No more running. Then I had this idea about the World Cup on the way back. What if I don't feel like the World Cup in four years. That will be the last one I can enter. So I decided there and then to go to the World Cup. And in the last five minutes of the run I felt better already."

She came home and, for the umpteenth time this summer, spoke softly to Alan Storey about hard things.

"I convinced him I could do it. I thought I could win it. I came home and flew around the park, went to the gym. I was hooked again, just switched on again."

So she was packed and off on the September 12th, exactly one week after Moscow. She went to the track on the Tuesday night and did some 700-metre runs, a distance which means nothing to anybody in the athletics world. "Which I think is why I did it. It meant nothing to me either. I got to Johannesburg on Thursday and lay in the sun for an hour when I got there. Then the sun disappeared till I left." She'd heard about the Great North run in Moscow. Brendan Foster sent an invite, seeing as how Liz McColgan wasn't running and the field needed some sparkle. So going to the World Cup she decided on the climax to her season.

First, though, in Johannesburg she wrapped up the high profile end of the year in a downbeat race.

"I think the walkers covered 5,000 metres quicker than we did. The only fear was Regina Jacobs, but I got the edge on her after the bend and she later acknowledged me for the first time in a year. No handshakes. She smiled and then we were running opposite directions, warming down, and as she passed she said `well done' and next time around we passed I said `good luck tomorrow'."

She ran for an hour and a half the next day. Harder than the race was. Back to London and trained for something new and different. The Great North.

In between she went to the All-Ireland football final in Dublin. Lapped Croke Park for GOAL. A good day which nearly went wrong. Nick and herself stayed the weekend with John Treacy.

"We went for a run in what I have written in my diary are the Dublin hills, but I have since learned they are mountains and John gave us a bit of a loop to follow, but we ended up in Kildare. Totally lost on the morning of the All-Ireland. We stopped in somebody's house and asked directions. He was quite detailed. He says `it's about three miles, sure I'll give you a lift, but the battery in the car is flat'.

"We stood and looked at it and said `ah thanks, but we'll have to run'. So we went 50 yards up the road and started it all again - `We're lost. Help! We don't know where we are'.

"The week's training was good. I was tired in the week before the Great North. On the day before it, the junior race was on. I had to go start one of the races and meet all the kids. I was standing about in the cold. After that I went for a run and I felt awful. Thought I was going to die. The usual. Complaining. Moaning. I feel terrible. How am I going go feel good tomorrow? Just like that it lifted."

October

"Now I'm ready to move again. Australia next week. I live near the local track in London where I have been running fast all the time. It's not very encouraging to run around now and not be doing the times that I do in summer. Wondering where the speed went. So I'm off again."

She has been running around doing some television. Last Sunday it was Manchester for a Question of Sport. With Michael Owen. Made her feel old.

"I wouldn't mind, but a cousin gave me a jersey for him to sign and all my cousins were looking for autographs and I'm flying to Manchester worrying about how am I going to ask this kid for his autograph. Lucky there was a little queue so I threw mine down. There you go Michael." The last two weeks, running around the place, tying loose ends, have been more tiring. Last week she hardly ran at all. This week she's been making a big effort to get out before she leaves for Australia.

"It's not always easy when you have a break to get back into it. It's wet and windy, but one day in Australia I'll go back out and I'll feel fantastic and the corner will be turned and I'll be addicted again."

Incurable.