IT’S DOG EAT JOG FOR MO
Farah: I was chased by African mutts during my training for the Marathon
SIR MO FARAH’S training camp in Ethiopia, where he prepared for tomorrow’s London Marathon, turned into the day of the jackal.
Britain’s four-time Olympic champion was chased by wild dogs and he had to frighten them off by hurling rocks.
Farah feared they wanted to make a dogs’ dinner of his “skinny legs”.
But he will be keeping more reputable company with an estimated 750,000 fans at the roadside along 26.2 miles of the capital’s streets as he tackles the big beasts of endurance running – Kenya’s Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge, last year’s London Marathon winner Daniel Wanjiru and Ethiopians Kenenisa Bekele and Guye Adola (all pictured right).
Farah finished a disappointing eighth in his previous appearance in 2014, missing out on Steve Jones’ British record.
Jones is resigned to Farah breaking his 33-year-old record of 2hr 7min 13sec. Farah is also confident of eclipsing Norwegian Sondre Nordstad Moen’s European record (2hr 5min 48sec) – although some of the hottest conditions in the race’s 38-year history may scupper any threat to Dennis Kimetto’s world record 2hr 2min 57sec.
But Farah, who quit the track after last year’s World Championships in London, is grateful to be lining up unscathed after his close encounter with the dogs.
He said: “I’m more confident than I was in 2014 – it was all new to me then, I didn’t want to lose my track speed and I was gritting my teeth at 17 miles.
“It was under a bridge and I was thinking, ‘This is so hard’.
“The marathon is one of those events where you are found out if you are not in shape and I felt so wet and heavy, but I couldn’t drop out. They talk about hitting the wall. Did I? It felt like it.
“But this year has felt different in training – just being on the road more, doing the longer runs. Sometimes you think, ‘Do I really need to do this every day?’ And yes, I do! But you gain confidence from that.
“Training in Ethiopia for three months has been fun. The guys look up to me and they have been helping me out, but once I was chased by dogs at 17 miles on a long run.
“There were two of them and they looked pretty big to me. There were farmers out there, but I don’t know if they were strays or wild dogs and it was right out of town.
“We looked behind and there were these two dogs. Skinny legs – that’s what they were looking for. There was just me and Abdi Abdirahman with the car up ahead.
“After 20 metres we had to pick up rocks to scare them off.”
Farah, who flew in from Addis Ababa this week, added: “It was the right time to end it on the track. Now for a new challenge.”