ATHLETICS:The inaugural 10-mile road race in Villierstown in celebration of the World and Olympic champion is sure to get his competitive juices flowing freely again, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

A NICE email came in this week inviting me to run with John Treacy in tomorrow’s Villierstown 10-mile road race. Straightaway, I had my suspicions. I’d taken up invitations like this before and paid a high price.

They’re calling it the John Treacy Classic, and it’s the first running of what is to be an annual event – and thus a lasting tribute to Villierstown’s most famous son. It’s timely, given 2009 is effectively a double anniversary – 30 years since his World Cross Country triumph in Limerick, and 25 years since his Olympic marathon silver in LA.

Organised by the Waterford Sports Partnership and Waterford County Council, the idea is that all those who enter get to run alongside one of Ireland’s greatest athletes.

“John will be running easy at his own pace and definitely won’t be making it too competitive,” Karen Phelan, of the Waterford Sports Partnership, told me. “It’s all about participation, about sharing in the tribute to John, back where it all began.”

Sorry, but not a chance. John might have fooled them into thinking he won’t be competitive, but he’s not fooling me. The problem with all great athletes is they never lose their appetite for a contest, even long after they’ve retired.

“John will be tipping along nicely alright; seemingly content to run “easy”, before he gradually lengthens his stride, sneakily injects some pace and eventually starts gunning for the finish-line with the same natural instinct that made him the champion runner to begin with.

All the warning signs are there. Tomorrow’s race heads out from Villierstown around the same roads John ran with ferocious determination as a youngster – the same 10-mile stretch he ran home from school in St Anne’s in Cappoquin, Monday to Friday, while his twin sister Liz carried his schoolbooks. When John gets a taste for these roads again he won’t be able to stop himself.

He’ll no doubt be reminded that his fearless quest for glory began here. His parents, Jack and Gertie, who operated the Post Office in Villierstown, were never sure themselves where that quest began, but John will quickly realise he often ate that 10-mile stretch before breakfast. Inspired, excited, his Olympian spirit will prevail – and I don’t want to be running with him when it does.

He might pretend the pace is too hard, like he did in the 1977 NCAA Cross Country while on scholarship at Providence College. The famous Henry Rono, running for Washington State, sprinted off from the gun, and as they passed the first mile an official called off the split, “4.18, 4.19 . . .” – to which Rono responded “too slow, too slow”.

“Christ, I’ll never survive this,” John thought, but he did, finishing a close second to Rono. And a few months later he won his first World Cross Country title in Glasgow. John’s greatest strength – beyond strength itself – was his deceptively quick stride, which could cover a break, or make a break, and either way prove decisive.

Take my word for it. I first discovered this when I was 10. John had become good friends with my dad and ended up staying in our house in Churchtown whenever he was up from Waterford or back home from America. In the summer of 1982, when the Olympics came to Weston Park, he invited himself into one of our races, pretending to be all cramped and stiff after a long run in the Dublin Mountains earlier in the day.

So we charged off, seizing our chance to beat a real Olympic runner. John, cautious by nature, sat back early on. But approaching the finish-line outside Billy Byrne’s house, he surged past us without even trying, smiling to himself, as we sank to our knees in disgust.

This is all part of the persona of the elite athlete – lure your rivals into thinking you’re tired, before swiftly moving in for the kill.

The face of dedication, meanwhile, has to be maintained at all costs. John occasionally babysat the four O'Riordan kids, and always wanted us off to bed early, claiming he needed his sleep too. Only later did we find out he wanted us off to bed so he could watch The Benny Hill Show.

Champion runners often feel obliged to put on this pious front, or at least act it out. John later got his own apartment in Ashgrove up the road in Dundrum, but would come down most weekends on the offer of a healthy dinner. Before long he’d be stealing chips off our plate, and later would help himself to lashings of my mother’s fruit cake and apple pie before nosing around the biscuit tin.

I believe one of the reasons John won as many races as he did was because his rivals often underestimated this skinny, innocent-looking Irish lad. He was incredibly coy about his tactics, rarely giving anything away – and not just in terms of running. It seemed he didn’t have time to be chasing the ladies, until one evening he arrived down to the house with the gorgeous Fionnuala Moyna, who was dressed in a black leather outfit and boots. Shortly afterwards, they got engaged.

When John hit a rough patch in 1983 he moved back to Providence, along with Fionnuala, and Caoimhe – the first-born of the four Treacy kids. By cosmic coincidence, I ended up going to college nearby, and so called out to their house out on Heritage Drive most weekends on the offer of a healthy dinner. John would often invite me to join him on a run, which almost without fail he ran at snail’s pace.

Occasionally, we would go over to the Brown University track, for a session of, say, eight times 800 metres. Again, I discovered what made John such a great champion. Down the backstretch of the second lap, every time, he would gradually lengthen his stride, sneakily inject some pace, and suddenly he’d be gone. That was another of John’s strengths; to go easy on the easy days, and push it on the hard days. It sounds simple, but few runners ever stick by it.

The other danger about tomorrow’s race is that John may wake up feeling good, like he did in Limerick in 1979. If so it’s race over. He still talks about that triumph as being the “perfect day”, that overwhelming feeling of lightness a distance runner gets on only rare occasions, when “you’re on” and victory is every bit as effortless as it seems.

Or that he might run so tactically astute he’ll surpass all expectations, just like he did in Los Angeles in 1984. John went into that Olympic marathon with little chance of a medal. So he sat back, let the big boys do all the running early on, and cutely saved himself for the last six miles, where he out-gunned them all expect the brilliant Carlos Lopes.

John won that silver medal with his head as much as his heart and his legs.

Even if you think you have John beaten approaching the finish-line tomorrow, watch out. Steve Ovett learnt this lesson after winning the 800 metres at the Moscow Olympics, when in a 5,000 metres at Crystal Palace he came sprinting down the homestretch, waving his arms in his moment victory – only for John to come tearing after him and duck under his arms, right at the tape.

“Oh f***”, Ovett said under his breath, although in fairness he did include the picture in his autobiography.

(Entries for tomorrow’s John Treacy Classic will be taken at Villierstown Hall from 10am-noon, with the race starting at 12.30pm)