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Twice recently I have had occasion to curse runners - under my breath, admittedly. I fundamentally will always defend runners almost to the hilt, but on these two occasions I bemoaned their gross stupidity. Runners are humans, after all, and most humans are stupid. On each occasion one of these runners ran out into the road that I was turning into in my car, complete with precious cargo of three-year-old daughter strapped into the back seat. They didn’t look, and they didn’t slow down, so both times I had to make an emergency stop and risk getting rammed from behind, which with my daughter in the back was a horrifying thought. (I’m not too keen on the idea of her daddy getting hurt, either, actually).

Now the reason these runners stepped blithely off the kerb into the path of my not-speeding motor was that they were listening to their iPods. How would the law view it if my nightmare scenario ensued, and in stopping suddenly for this cretinous, moronic, irresponsible, iPod-listening runner in order not to cause them harm, I was rammed from behind and my tiny, vulnerable precious little girl was hurt? First of all I suppose the driver of the car behind would be responsible, because you always are when you hit the car in front, no matter how suddenly it stops. But if was shown that I had stopped unreasonably - for example, in the eyes of the law, stopping for a dog is reasonable, but stopping for a cat is not - then could a third party, the stupid runner could be invoked?

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Next year the world Athletics Championships will be in Berlin. Now every two years, these championships were kicked off in 1983, intended to be held every four years, and the first host city was the Finnish capital and athletics hotbed Helsinki. Last year it was Osaka, Japan. In 2011 Daegu in Korea will play host. After Helsinki it was Rome, then Tokyo, Stuttgart, Gothenburg… not in the UK, and not the US either, surprisingly. 2013 will be Moscow, by the way.

The London Olympic bid was won because it promised a legacy, for London and for Britain. The International Olympic Committee were very close to handing the games to Paris because the French infrastructure is so good: the transport system is in need of little improvement, and the main stadium is already there. But the IOC was swayed by the gaggle of smiling little Londoners who featured in the bid, and with their future in mind, awarded the 2012 Olympic Games to London. That legacy is about participating in sport, getting fitter and healthier, against a tide of vacuous, shallow, materialsitic, self-serving X-Factor aspiring, Premiership ogling ambitions that promise millionaire status for one or two, and obese oblivion for the rest.

Since that day, the question of what to do with the London stadium after the three weeks of the Olympcs has been a knotty one. To pay for itself, and hence avoid the taxpayer being heavily out of pocket, the stadium must go to a big football club, with the all the attendant huge revenue that that would imply, ran the first argument, and then it seemed to be just a question of seeing whether that club would be West Ham, or Leyton Orient, or whoever.

Then it looked like one or two people remembered why that stadium is being built in the first place - to provide a legacy for those little Londoners - and then the talk was of keeping the stadium for athletics.

Then IOC boss Jacques Rogge, bless him, said it was probably better to have the stadium converted to some big professional sport (football, maybe?), citing the stadium built for the Atlanta Olympics (remember them?) in 1996 now being used for pro baseball - ‘which keeps people interested in sport’, he says. Keeps fat Americans interested in sitting in a stand eating hotdogs, keeps dollars going into the same old pot of pro baseball, gets kids to think of how they will spend their dollars and behave when they are older, on watching baseball, some might say. Not a great legacy for the future health of kids in Atlanta, but there are so many good college tracks that access to facilities for the few who choose to run and jump and throw is not a huge problem.

Now IAAF President Lamine Diack has expressed his great regret that this is the case. The USA does not have an athletics stadium, he says, that can host the World Championships. This despite the fact that the USA has hosted two recent Games. In both cases the stadiums are now used for pro sport, LA for American football, Atlanta for baseball. This is ‘nothing to be proud of’ says Diack, pointing out that athletics is the core Olympic sport, yet it is struggling to attract kids to it, when football in the UK, and basketball and football in the US, for example, have such a stranglehold; and urging London to keep a venue where world class runners can duke out a World championship and where kids who watched them can turn up and train or compete a week later.

Let us keep the Olympic Stadium for athletics. Dual use is a possibility - the success of the Stade de France, which has hosted an Athletics World Championships, and World Cup finals in rugby and football, is a shining example. I like football a lot - hate how it is developing, though - and if the end result of all these Olympic shenanigans is more football, more money going into the same pot, more promotion for Sky and Nike and adidas, then I won’t be held responsible for my actions. (Only joking, arson was the furthest thing from my mind.)

Happy campaigning!

‘I hate the way the media fawn over Paula Radcliffe’. - Comment on BBC site.

‘The marathon has moved on now, she has been left behind.’ Ditto.

‘Paula Radcliffe has been accused by her critics of being a bottler’, and:

‘When Radcliffe collapsed in Athens four years ago, notable columnists descended upon her as if she had brought shame on the nation simply by being human.’  Both from a national newspaper, the first from a commment, the second from an article by an athletics correspondent.

As everyone knows, Paula Radcliffe won the New York Marathon in style yesterday (as we predicted she would), and there seems to have been some surprise at the fact in the media. Due possibly to her showing in Beijing, or more generally to the common perception that she can’t perform on the global stage and runs for money in big city marathons.

Steve Ovett is quite rightly lauded as one of the greatest runners ever to lace up a pair of spikes. He was a godlike runner who added dedication to his huge talent to produce a string of world records and championship victories. Hang on, though. He couldn’t win the 1500m in Helsinki, in the inaugural World Championships, and his performances in Los Angeles in 1984 were nowhere. He ended his career with one Olympic gold and one bronze, both from Moscow 1980, and on the world stage, that was it. For someone of his talent, his medal tally has got ‘bottler’ written all over it. But we know this is not true, and as far as I am aware, no one has ever labelled him as such. When Ovett didn’t perform it was down to interruptions to his preparations due to illness or injury. This happens to every elite runner. Sometimes a bad patch coincides with the big global championships, and that’s life. Shortly after being beaten into a very disappointing 4th in Helsinki in 1983, Ovett broke the world 1500m record. He had swiftly got back to a peak of fitness, and back to his unbeatable self.

Steve Cram, who was the winner of that 1500m race in Helsinki, and also one of the greatest runners in history, finished his career with one Olympic medal, a silver, and that World gold. Not much better than
Ovett’s haul, so presumably, given again the mismatch betwen talent, world record performances and global medals, also a bottler? Of course not, and no one would ever say so. Cram was considered a very hot favourite for 1500m gold in Seoul in 1988 but injury got in the way. It’s part and parcel of running. He certainly didn’t bottle it.

Now, as a middle-distance runner, you can race a lot. While you are at your peak, you might be able to produce quite a few top-class races in, say, a three-week window. So if you fail in a global race, you can, as Ovett did, go out and wow the world a moment or two later. And of course you can use the first race in a sequence of five or six races as a sharpener, part of the training process. And have a little rest midseason. and come back strong in August or September.

Life is not like that for a marathoner. Which is something the lard-arsed media seem to conveniently overlook when it comes to someone like Paula Radcliffe. She didn’t bottle it at Athens, she was ill. She didn’t bottle it in Beijing either, she had a stress-fracture. But it simply not feasible as a marathoner to go out 10 days later and make amends for letting down the fickle and for the most part equally lard-arsed British public by setting a new world record. When a top marathon runner steps up to the line and then fails, that failure is magnified by the fact that it stands out starkly in a season of little or no other races. But it’s a fairly simple concept to grasp, isn’t it?

Let’s be clear. Ms Radcliffe has a record, 2.15.25 that many elite men would not beat, let alone women. She has come back from injury to beat a quality marathon field  - make that ‘destroy a quality marathon field’ - by two minutes. She did the same to win the World Championship in 2005. As we said in an earlier blog, when she is fit, she is untouchable - still. The media do fawn over her, because that is what the media tend to do. But being fawned over for being the very best in the world is to be expected. Look at the fawning David Beckham gets/got, and he was just a fairly good player with one very refined skill.

The marathon hasn’t moved on - no one is getting near Paula’s record. She’s not a bottler. The media have in them several hypocritical, ignorant backstabbers who are happy to berate her if she fails to reach her high standards every time she chooses to race. Let’s celebrate the fact that one of the greatest runners of all time is a Brit and a wonderful human and ignore the media bleating.

Happy running!

After Paula Radcliffe’s searing victory at this weekend’s Great South Run, turning on the heat in a cold, wet and windy Portsmouth, the question is: how will Paula do in next week’s biggie, the New York City Marathon?

First of all, is she fit? A fully-fit Radcliffe is, on paper, a favourite to win pretty much any race of 10 miles and upwards. Very few athletes have the capacity to throw in a 4.57 mile early on in a race and not crash and burn afterwards (winning in New York a year ago, mile 2 went by in 4.59!). And it looks very much as though the weather, not her fitness, prevented her from breaking Lornah Kiplagat’s world best over the 10-mile distance.

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In the first of this series on speed I looked at one of the basic requirements: how much force you apply to the ground. Now it’s time to expand a little on how to get stronger without getting heavier, and how weight loss can play a part in improving your distance running.

In a nutshell, heavy weights lifted for a small number of repetitions will produce strength gains without bulk. And since we’re talking about strength for running, then the range of exercises required is small too. So we’re thinking about doing a small number of exercises - let’s think about two, the deadlift and the squat - for a small number of reps and sets - let’s say 2 x 3-5, with a pretty heavy weight - what would be defined as around 85% of 1RM, or 85% of the most you can lift at one attempt. There, that might be all you need to know. Simple, and effective.

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Do you want to go faster? There’s no catch, no hard sell, say yes if you want to. Oh, so you do. Now, is that ‘I WANT to go faster’ (and will do what it takes), or is that ‘Yes, well I’d quite like to go faster,’ as in ‘I’d quite like to play the saxophone,’ (but can’t really be arsed to practise for an hour a day for the next two years, do exams, perform in front of people and risk humiliation, let alone actually buy a sax.’? Getting faster when you are a novice and intermediate comes naturally. It will happen whether you want it to or not, as long as you run consistently and train with variety, and race fairly regularly. Eventually a runner reaches a plateau, and maybe assumes that that is their speed ceiling. This is where apathy can kick in. It’s all too easy to choose the path of least resistance, and decide to move up a distance in your events: my 10k time has plateau’d, so I’ll start doing half marathons.

If you WANT speed, then you’ll want to have a think about what makes you faster, and then to train those components of your fitness. Put some focused work in. Runnersdaily is going to look at these components over the next few training blogs, and help you work out how to make yourself run faster.

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For Runnersdaily, this is a fairly recent shoe to be reviewing. Who knows, one day we’ll be reviewing shoes before they’re released…

Inov-8 describe their philosophy as building a shoe around the mechanics of the foot, which might be just so much glib shoe-company marketing bullshit if it didn’t actually seem to be the reality. I have long raved about their base model, the Mudroc 290, for exactly those reasons, a quick try of a Terroc model a while ago confirmed the impression, and now I’ve been striding out in a pair of these minimalist - even for Inov-8! - F-lites, I can say that Inov-8 must have made some kind of pact with the devil, so spookily accommodating is the shoe to the human foot.

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Variety is the spice of running. Just as running in different types of shoes will challenge and stimulate your biomechanics, so will varying the surfaces you run on. You become more durable, with better lower leg strength and sharper reflexes. A more complete runner, let’s say. Runnersdaily casts a critical eye over what’s out there.

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The above figures are how much diabetes is costing the health services of Northern Ireland and Wales respectively. (I don’t know how the £55,000 per hour was calculated, but if you multiply that by 24 hours in a day, it comes out at well over a million pounds too). Reports by Diabetes UK, and Diabetes UK Cymru claim diabetes is one of the biggest health challenges facing the nation.

Iain Foster, Diabetes UK Northern Ireland director, said: “Diabetes…causes more deaths than breast and prostate cancer combined. But how avoidable is diabetes? Correct diet, correct activity and exercise levels are key, obviously, but how easy is it to know what constitutes ‘correct’?

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I was so sad when the Eastway, aka Lee Valley Cycling Circuit closed down to make way for the Olympic Park. It was an undulating, hilly, closed one-mile loop in east London, just by Hackney Marsh, and possibly the perfect location for run training. Hill reps on the main hill. Mile reps, obviously, with the happy knowledge that your time there was equivalent to a faster flat mile. Long tempo runs with built-in mile splits. All that on Tarmac, but you could run on the MTB loops, or on the verge alongside the road surface too if you wanted softer or less even terrain. With its car-free environment, it had everything any runner could want. But it is no more.

Where are the other good running locations in London? Here are 10 of the best - and we’d love to hear about your faves too!

1. Hackney Marsh. How long it survives under the Olympic onslaught we don’t know, but this is a very popular running venue. Flat firm, footing, road or grass to run on, two fields, the smaller measuring almost exactly 1500m around its perimeter, which is good reference for your interval training.
2. Richmond Park. Beautiful and very big, this park has flat stretches, hills, road and off-road. Cars are allowed here, so sunny weekends are less than perfect from that point of view.
3. Bushy Park. Not far from Richmond, this park has traditionally been the stamping ground of some of the world’s best runners - Sonia O’Sullivan, Benita Johnson, Craig Mottram and hosts of Kenyan and Moroccan stars have all been found putting the miles in here.
4. Regents Park. As well as being a gracious and spacious green space, Regents Park has a quirky old running track which I love. It’s got a slight slope, it’s gravel, it’s so narrow that running the bends too fast would make you wipe out, and it’s about 385m. And free to use. Go and get a 770m PB now!
5. Epping Forest. The forest proper is outside London, but there are a few strands creeping down into the borough of Waltham Forest, with trails that take you out of London and into the main forest. Try not to get lost.
6. Hampstead Heath. Parliament Hill Fields usually hosts cross-country championships, testament to the demanding naure of the hills there. Maybe too much male socialising going on in certain areas of the Heath, but an excellent running venue nevertheless.
7. Clapham Common. London’s well-bred youth and yummy mummys can be found making sure they are slim enough to fit into their designer gear. Usually plenty of runners out, so the vibe is good.
8. Greenwich Park. Steep hills make this the obvious alternative to the flatter venues listed, like Wimbledon and Clapham. A beautiful park in a lovely setting by the river.
9. Wimbledon Common. Maybe a little scruffy, but plenty of room to follow the trails.
10. Hyde Park. Despite its central location, Hyde Park is not too manicured, and it is surprisingly big. A great central running venue.

Do let us know your fave London runs, and happy running!