All I needed was to follow nature’s lead and attitude and it paid off handsomely

It took a keen observation of cormorants to change my life, finds Russell Wardrop

Watchingmofarahcompeting in the World Athletics Championships while in my Costa Brava hotel reminded me of a gig I did a decade ago with Frank Dick, then head of UK Athletics. He asked the audience which was the most important: natural ability, hard work or good coaching?

It is also a decade since I first watched a couple of cormorants catching breakfast in the bay at Tossa de Mar.

They were the reason my partner got up early and eventually into the water at 7.30am, surprising herself by loving every minute. We would meet after I had done an hour of running, press-ups and all that jazz along the prom and up the castle ramparts. Ten years later we are in a beach-front gaff rather than a kilometre back inland.

Every morning is a short walk to the shallows, shouldering plump hotel towels. After reading the ipapers on the balcony at sunrise I jog along the prom and back, trying a few press ups at the far end.

I meet my other half at the bottom of the ramparts, which remained unconquered half way through the week.

The cormorants take an hour to have their fill then dry off, wings akimbo, on a nearby rock.

One morning they really put on a show, beaching sand eels then popping out to grab a few more. The herring gulls like this because of the free fish. Twenty times I saw the sleek green bullets dive and twenty times they came up with noth-