Injury scared hell out me but I used time out to regain focus
THERE’S nothing like an injury to remind you of how badly you want something. I had a slight setback recently when I hurt my hamstring during the Bislett Dream Mile in Oslo. I damaged the same muscle in exactly the same area last year, but this time I knew how to look after it and I’m not worried at all that it will be an issue.
It did feel like a setback at the time, though. I went for a whole week of not training, then just a week of easy running as part of the recovery. If you were designing a training program, you wouldn’t put that in the schedule four weeks before the Commonwealth Games, but you’ve got to take it as a bit of a blessing in disguise.
I obviously needed a bit of a rest and really the only way to get distance runners to take a rest is to hurt them and force them to stop.
Maybe I did need it, to really focus my mind on what I actually want from the Commonwealths because it is easy to say: ‘I want to make the final’ or ‘I want to medal’ but it’s not really until you are hurt and you realise that, potentially, you might not be there at all ... well, it scares the hell out of you.
It’s not very easy for me to back off and not run. It almost feels like a personal attack when somebody tells me I can’t do it — it’s like taking away one of my rights and it feels like I’ve been imprisoned. But the physios know best and you do need to listen to them sometimes.
I often wish I did a sport where I could train more. I’ve always thought that about basketball or football because, if I could, I would stay for three hours after training and hit balls or take free-kicks, but with running you can only run so much every day.
If you do too much, you can deplete your stores and vitamin levels to the point where you’ve done yourself more damage than good.
It’s a fine line to deal with at the best of times and when you’re hurt it’s even worse because all you can think about is what you could be doing with your time.
When I was injured, I had recovery exercises that I was only meant to do once a day but I found myself doing them eight or nine times a day because I needed to do something.
You fight every day to get that bit better and you get knocked back but, really, in terms of fitness, how much did I actually lose? Probably not very much.
If anything, if you’re able to get back into it as quickly as I was, it sharpens the mind, the body and the soul to get you really fired up again.
I decided not to run at the British Championships last week, which was difficult. In any other year, I would have taken a risk and run it but the Commonwealth Games has always been my priority.
It means now that the Glasgow Diamond League and the London Anniversary Games will be my two races before Glasgow 2014.
I’m looking forward to getting my first taste of the Hampden track at the Diamond League meeting next weekend — my brother Dominic got there first when he came third in the 1,500m at the Scottish Schools Championships recently.
I’ll treat the Diamond League like it’s a championship-style race and I’ll do my best to go through the same motions as I will when it comes to the Games. This will be a carbon copy of my plan and it will flag up any imperfections in it.
It’s also exciting that I may get the chance to race against Mo Farah in the 1,500m. He’s obviously going to be hard to beat, but I’m there to learn everything I can about the environment, the race, the warm-up procedure.
Racing someone like Mo, or whether it’s one of the Kenyans, gives me someone else to worry about in the dress rehearsal, so it’s another factor I can learn from.
Up until the injury, I had been happy with my form and I know I’m in much better shape than I was last year, despite this hiccup.
I also saw that former world champion Bernard Lagat was saying some very kind things about me recently. We did a training session together in Glasgow in January.
Bernard’s been at it for so long that he knows every trick in the book, and he wrote most of it.
I feel I know quite a lot of the tricks but there are pages I haven’t even unlocked yet so, talking to people like Bernard, it feels like you are being given the key for the next part.
To still be as good as he is at the age of 39 is kind of crazy. It gives you confidence that you’ve still got more years to come but, in saying that, I’ve almost got to approach the Games like this is my last championship — it’s important to get it right.
I remember watching Bernard in the 2004 Olympics when it was him and Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj going head to head the whole way down the home straight and Bernard lost by a whisker.
Everybody watches it for El Guerrouj because he wins but, if you look at Bernard, he has given it all he’s got and he’s devastated. He thought, coming off the bend: ‘I’m going to get this’ and he didn’t.
I don’t want to come away from the Commonwealths feeling like he did after those Olympics. That’s one of the experiences he learned the most from — you could see by the look in his eyes that there was a burning desire that wasn’t fulfilled.
I’ll use that look, that fire in his eyes, and try to emulate it. I feel myself doing that in training when I’m perhaps not having a good workout. Then you come back the next time and you crush it.