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Tracey Morris
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Currently we're sending people to the Olympics who have qualified with times 9 mins behind the mens world best and 19 mins behind the Womens World best. Traceys performance was terrific and as she is an improving athlete who will do very well in Athens, however we have to look at the reality of the situation and not expect too much in Athens. The athletes selected deserve their place and I hope that the fact they got there inspires more athletes to realise that with sufficient hard training it is possible for them too, and the overall standard of UK marathon running gets back where it should be.
Someone mentioned (might have been on this thread) that Tracey failed to reach a GFA time but with the current dearth of marathons it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so which in turn will surely lead to a relaxation of GFA times to fill the FLM "elite" race and so it goes on.
Tracey wasn't entirely unknown in the sport and the likes of Bud Baldero have the job of checking results and will be aware of people making this kind of progress. Bud and others in UK athletics act as a safety net and will always be able to get athletes showing the right kind of progress into London.
Maybe the people you saw were just really masculine women?
Mind you, my eyesight is getting worse with age. I wonder if there's a friendy optician who could help?!
MG2, I agree that people shouldn't expect too much from TM in Athens, but I am sure she'll do herself justice. Also, do you think you would have done better / gone faster if you didn't hold down a full time job and concentrated all your time and energy on your training?
She wouldn't be able to have those 2 hours kip in the afternoon, for a start! And all that time she spends training at altitude (Mexico, Alps,...), ... and ... and ...
I accept that Tracey isnt the total unknown that many of the papers are making out; however, she is a club runner and the fact that Sunday was only her second marathon (and even then, she got in via unusual means) begs the question, how many more Traceys are out there?
Bud Baldaro cant be everywhere and "pulling strings" (Tracey's words), whilst perfectly acceptable in this case is hardly the basis of future marathon success
BTW Japanese 2:08 marathoner Satoshi Osaki, works full time for NTT, has hardly any holiday, no time for altitude training and does all his training after work.
Notts, Leicester,White Peak, Potteries and Wolves
Is this not the case throughout the rest of England?
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've formed the view that one of the reasons that provincial marathons fold is lack of local support. By that I mean support from councils, police and businesses. Certainly Sheffield suffered from this for years - local businesses whinged that closing the roads for a few hours one sunday a year would send them bankrupt, the police had pressure put on them to keep costs to a minimum and would only keep roads closed for a 4-4.5 hour marathon, and forced the route out of the city centre for "Safety" reasons. The result was that in 2001 the majority of the marathon course was actualy in Rotherham or the wastelands between Sheffield and Rotherham. That for many people was the nadir that the event never recovered from.
What cities like Sheffield need to do is embrace their own culture and stop trying to compete with London.
In Ireland, we used to have some great male marathon runners - John Treacy, Jerry Kiernan, Danny McDaid are just a few - and although we've had a few good successful athletes in the last 10 years or so (Sonia O'Sullivan, Catherina McKiernan, Mark Carroll), we just don't have the depth of talent anymore.
It could be down to all the normal reasons of people doing other sports, not enough money etc., but every time I read the results in the 'Irish Runner' magazine the majority of races are shorter than 10k! It's all 4 mile and 5 mile races. One article mentioned the fact that there were no races longer than 10 miles between about November and April! (I think there are about 6 in total in the whole country over the whole year!) There are very few half-marathons either. We're not overloaded with marathons as you'd imagine (Belfast and Dublin are the main two).
If athletes aren't racing each other over at least these distances then they're not suddenly going to run 2:15 for the marathon - or even 2:20. And that goes for athletes no matter where they come from!
"Just dug out an old marathon book from the early 80s. It lists 97!!!! UK marathons for 1983.
Chimp mentions the dearth of marathons in the North of England. That year we had
Horsforth
Stockport
Bradford
Manchester
Sheffield
North Tyneside
Wear Valley
Wirral
Rotherham
Great Northern (Scarborough)
Mersey
Humber Charity
Cumbria Lakes
Macclesfield Silk
Chesterfield
Leeds
Barnsley."
That's 7 in Yorkshire, 2 in Leeds alone. there's currently not a single road marathon in Yorkshire and only Blackpool in Lancashire.
(Thanks Barnsleyrunner, hope you dont mind)
The big difference is the lack of depth at 10km. At the time we had our best marathoners we also had our best 10km runners, including Steve Jones who set a world best in his first marathon and Eamonn Martin who won London as his first marathon.
There may be some athletes out there who will come through the ranks from 2.20 to 2.10 like Hugh Jones and myself, but even we had 29 min 10km credentials, but most world beaters now must be 27.30 10km runners. Not all good 10km runners will make good marathoners - if their physiology doesn't suit the marathon they won't make it, but the fact is if you can't run sub 30 in a 10km you can't run a 2.09 marathon.
I moved up to the marathon because even as a past English Schools winner I was not fast enough on the track to beat Coe, Ovett, Cram, etc., any one running slower than 27 mins for 10km now has little chance to win at international level and rally should move up to the marathon.
The point you make about 10k races is interesting. I've been in a fair few of these races over the past few years and I'm scratching my head trying to remember a sub-30 minute finish. Must be honest, I hadnt considered the fact that to be a first-rate marathon runner you need to be a first-rate 10k runner. Having said that though, doesnt Tracey somewhat buck that particular trend; although she did an impressive Brass Monkey I'm not aware of any fast 10k's. Even Paula's success as a marathon runner could not have been predicted by her performance at 10k.
DavidB, have you just talked yourself into Abingdon 2005?? Think you have.
I suspect that now Paula has shown the other elite women what is possible some of the current 30 min female 10km runners will target a big city marathon after the Olympics as they offer spectacular pay days to any of them that can challenge Paulas world best.
Don't forget that Tracey is 19 mins slower than Paula over a marathon, so her 10km is also going to be less impressive - but without knowing I guess she has run around 34 mins or quicker.
Funny about PR, once she'd cracked the marathon she really seemed to come alive over 10K as well. Almost like she suddenly believed she could do it.....
"Her new world dawned last November, 15 years after she had hung up her spikes as a Welsh Schools athlete in her native Anglesey, and a year after she had started training with a local Leeds athletics club because her evening jogging was "a bit lonely".
She said: "I went home to Anglesey and I went to see my auntie, who is a PE teacher and a keen runner and she said, 'Oh, why don't you run in our 10-kilometre race this weekend?' Well, it also incorporated the Welsh championship and at the end of the race, they announced that the girl who came second was the new Welsh champion."
It is typical of her unfeigned modesty that Tracey did not mention that she came first - "So my Auntie goes up to the organisers and says, 'Hey, Tracey is Welsh, so why isn't she the champion?' And they look at me and they say, 'Who are you?' "
The Welsh officials obviously liked the answer because they asked Tracey to wear the red of Wales in a 10-kilometre race the next month in Leeds called the Abbey Dash, which she won."