We are just not made up to be middle distance runners.
I remember, in 1999, the first time I met Steve Cram, I didn't know who he was. It was only later, on YouTube, I started watching Seb Coe, Ovett. So it's nice to be recognised as one of the best guys in the world.
I have been dreaming of an outdoor world record forever. Now I want them all: the 1500, the 5000, even the 800.
The single biggest change in middle-distance running, from the 1500 metres to 10,000 metres, has been the track surface.
The 200 meters is my baby. To me, it's the perfect distance. It's still a true sprint, but it unravels more. You get to enjoy the race a little bit more than the 100.
And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky—so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.
I like to think of myself as a pretty good athlete, I don't think I'm a great sprinter, but 200, 400, maybe 800. I won't say excel in them, but I'd do pretty good.
I'm probably a lot more closer in the 1500m to the world record than I am in the 5000m.
Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding.
Prior to the 1976 Olympics, I was a 5,000m runner.
I still do intense interval training. I like miles and quarters best. In races I can set my mind, and I believe I could break 2:20 again.
Everybody in middle-distance running knows each other, and we all know what we are capable of.
