Twenty-two year old British middle distance runner, Michael Rimmer, is one of the most promising middle distance runners England has seen in quite some time. Rimmer is part of a contingent of British runners, including Andy Baddeley, who are hoping to return Britain to the forefront of world middle distance running.

Rimmer has had some encouraging results in a career which is still in it’s infancy. He finished 8th in the 800m final at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg and 2nd in his first European Cup in Munich (2007). Interestingly, he is the first male 800m runner in British history to win national titles in the under 15, 17 and 20 age groups as well as a senior athlete. In 2007, Michael was without a doubt England’s best 800m runner, running a total of four 1:45 800m races. Rimmer is currently in the best form of his life, running a PR of 1:44.68 to finish 6th in the Monaco Super GP (29th July 2008). This breakthrough run has elevated Rimmer to 13th on the Brtish all time list. More importantly, Rimmer now has a real chance of making the Olympic 800m final, and as Nils Schumann lies as a testament too, in an Olympic final, anything can happen.

RunnersTribe: Michael, thanks for your time. How have things been going in 2008, you seem to be peaking at the right time with a 1:47.1 at the Ostrava Golden spike in June 12, a 1:46.10 at the Notturna di Milano on July 2, a 1:45.89 at the Barcelona GP on July 20 and most recently a 1:44.68 at the Monaco Super GP.

MR: Things have been a little up and down so far this year. After a really successful winter i caught quite a bad chest infection which caused me to miss the first 3-4 weeks of transition work from the winter to summer. I surprised myself by coming back so quickly from the infection, running a comfortable 2.19 for 1000m and 1.47.16 after two and half weeks of training. However the lack of specific 800m work caught up on me and I suffered with my races in June. Getting back to basics was very important so the decision to miss the Europa Cup and get into a training block has definitely paid off!

RT: So obviously you are now over the set-back and all ready for Beijing?

MR: I had many chances to rectify the June races and put my good training into practice in Milan on 2nd July and now with the 1:44.68 in Monaco. Since the British trials (which he won in 1:49) things have been going well. In Barcelona I was on the shoulder of the leader for 700m but was obstructed quite badly and within 30 metres found myself back in sixth! But it was just nice to be competitive again and mix it with the best in the world like Bungei and Yego etc. The 1:44.6 is solid, but it could have been so much better, roll on Beijing.

RT: Mark Sesay (former No.1 British 800m runner) said about you in an article for the Guardian back in July 2006: “As for Liverpool's Michael Rimmer, who has impressed so much recently, he needs wrapping up and looking after. He is a superb talent but seems to have stalled. It is very worrying”. Two years on, what are your thoughts on his views?

MR: He was probably spot on to be fair! I think he made that comment at just the right time as i ran 1.45. about 2 weeks after his comments were made, but my progression had stalled quite badly for two years. However, i think it has definitely worked out for the best as I am probably one of the only athletes who has made it all the way through from a top Under 13 athlete all the way to senior level.

RT: Numerous high profiles figures in Britain over the years have criticised the way athletics is run in Britain. One common argument is that there isn't the infrastructure in place to help young athletes fulfil their talent. What are your thoughts on this?

MR : I think there are a lot of plus points and negatives points with the way things are at the moment but I feel that the people at the top are learning all the time and I believe they will have everything in place by 2012. The one thing I would like to see is the use of experienced and proven coaches around the UK, it seems to me that too many of our young athletes go running off to Loughborough or St.Marys when there are much better options closer to home. I think publishing where the top coaches are (for example Gordon Suertes and Norman Poole etc) and simply using the coaches who have been there and done it before would improve our junior to senior ratio.

RT: How important has the influence of your Manchester based coach Norman Poole been on your career?

MR: Norman has been the icing on the cake! There aren’t so many differences in training compared to my previous coach however the things that have changed are the key to why im now running so much quicker than before.

RT: Andy Badderly has attributed some of his recent success to extensive training camps he undertook at altitude in Australia. Do you go on may training camps or do you mainly stay based up North with your coach and support network?

MR: Im definitely a stay at home athlete. I have everything i need in Manchester so there isn’t any real need to go looking for that extra ingredient anywhere else.

RT: Your flat 200m speed is solid (PB of 22.50 for 200m). It’s fair to say however that your 1500m time is not quite as strong (PB of 3:45). Is this something you have been addressing in training?

MR: I dont think either of those PB’s are a true reflection of what I can do. A time comfortably under 3.40 and a sub 22 would be more realistic. Concentrating on endurance has been a big part of the last two winter seasons, not so much to improve the 1500m p.b but to put a series of great races together at the major championships.

RT: To finish off, do you have any favorite gut wrenching track sessions that you like doing and/or stand out as being key indicators to you that you are in form and ready to roll?

MR: The high lactate 800m type sessions are key for me. Anything at 800m pace with short recovery always brings on the lactate monster!!

RT: Michael, thanks for the interview, all the best for beijing

© 2008 The Runner's Tribe, all rights reserved.

5000m - Australia Telstra A series 5000m

At this year's World Athletics Tour meet in Melbourne a bomb was dropped by twenty year old Sydney-sider, Lachlan Renshaw. Renshaw won the 800m race in emphatic fashion in a time of 1:45.79. The time was a huge personal best and more importantly, an Olympic A qualifier. Renshaw thus catapulted himself into the spotlight as Australia's most promising 800m talent since the likes of Grant Cremer and Kris McCarthy. Lachlan then backed up this breakthrough shortly after, by winning the 2008 Australian 800m title.

Renshaw brings to the track true 400m speed (having clocked a 45:84 split for a 4 x 400m relay). The Runner's Tribe catches up with Lachlan to discuss his breakthrough and build up to his first Olympic games.

RunnersTribe: Lachlan, thanks for your time. You have been one of the top 800m runners in Australia for a few years now, but this year you rose to another level. Why this year?

LR: Well I hadn't recorded a PB for a year and a half prior to this season, but at the same time it was easy for me and my coach to see that my training was improving steadily. I was getting stronger and fitter but 2007 was not the best year for me as I was carrying a few little injuries and the fast times just didn't happen with the races I was dealt. So the run in Melbourne was coming for a while, I just had to get in the right race.

2008 Melbourne GP: 1:45.79

RT: You are coached by John Atterton, how important has his role been in your breakthroughs?

LR: Johnny is the big cheese of 800m coaching. Without him there's no way I could have run as fast as I have. He leaves nothing to chance in the training program, every base has to be covered. The old boy knows exactly how to get the best out of his athletes; you only have to look at his past success to see that.

RT:John Atterton has been the coach of many leading 800m runners. There was a period in which he coached both yourself as well as Nick Bromley. How did you find training with and being around one of your fiercest rivals so much?

LR: When I finished school I didn't have a coach because I'd always just trained with the school coaches during the athletics season. Johnny called me up and invited me to come and train with the National Champion and I jumped at the opportunity. Training with Bromley was a great opportunity for me to see what it took to be at that elite level. Having Bromers to aspire to every session meant I improved rapidly in that first year of training. That season we were more of a team than rivals, we just tried to smash each other every session, and we ended up taking out Gold and Bronze at the Nationals so it was good times.

RT: On the flip side, currently your main training partner is Werner Botha (another top Aussie 800m runner). How important is having such a talented training partner to work with week in week out?

LR: Werner and I train great together. With Nick we were such different athletes. Nick is from a 3k background and me from a 400m background. Wern and I are very similar as we're both 400/800m runners, which makes every rep in training a race to the finish. It's so important to have good runners to train with because they push you to that next level in the hard sessions whereas if you were doing it by yourself it is much harder to push past the pain barriers.

RT: I know people never shut up about Ralph Doubell and you are probably sick of hearing it. Are your sights set on the Australian record? What sort of areas in training do you feel that you need to work on in order to break his 40 year old national 800m record of 1:44.40?

LR: The Australian record is definitely in my sights! At the moment 1:44.40 would place you in about the top 10 in the world. It may be a while off, but the goal is to be the best in the world at what I do, so if that happens, the Australian record should fall somewhere along the way. The great thing is that there are still so many places that I can improve. My 400m speed is getting there, but to run 1:44 I'll have to improve my strength over the 1k and 1500, and there is lots of improvement to be had. Other areas to improve are technique and general strength which are things that can be worked on endlessly.

2008 Australian Championships

RT: So do you plan on ever doing any 1500m races?

LR: Ha ha, ever? Probably. Soon? Probably not… I've done three 1500's in my life and hated them all! Johnny reckons anything over 801m is a meter too far for me, and I won't argue with him. My PB as it stands is 4:11 so I should probably try to improve that some day.

RT: Can you give us a brief description of your training during both the summer season period as well as the winter base period.

LR: The number of sessions I do stays pretty constant, but the quality verse quantity of the sessions is obviously more focused towards the faster stuff in the Summer domestic season. An average week for me would be:

Mon - Weights (am) + track or hills (pm)
Tues - Cross training (am) + Hills (pm)
Weds - Easy run + Weights
Thurs - Usually just track session
Friday - Easy run + Weights
Sat - Quality session or race
Sun - Recovery run

RT: So you do a fair few weight sessions?

LR: I do weights 2 or 3 times a week with the NSWIS strength and conditioning coach Rudolph Sopko. He's a guru in the weights room and can make you hurt in places you didn't know you had. I'm a big believer in needing to have a high power to weight ratio in order to run fast.

Winning the 2008 Balmoral Burn for the third time

RT: Do you have any track sessions which stand out as being your favourite or most worthwhile?

LR:My favourite session is definitely 3 sets of 2x200's (30 secs recovery between reps, 4 minutes recovery between sets). We usually do that towards the end of a competition block to really get some speed lactic tolerance happening. Most worthwhile for me would probably be 4x1k. It's just not fun.

RT: Your time of 1:45.79 is getting down into the arena of world-class times. The 2000 Sydney Olympics was won in 1:45 by German Nils Shumman, off a slow first lap. I presume you are not traveling to Beijing for the scenery and that you are ambitious and positive about your chances of getting past the first round and challenging for a berth in the final?

LR: Definitely, you can't go in half hearted. I've put my life on hold this year to go to Beijing and done everything possible to make sure a good result comes of it. What you don't want is to look back and have regrets about the preparation.

Just to be going to the Olympics is amazing, and to toe the line wearing the Green and Gold on the world's biggest sporting stage is a dream come true. But without a doubt the competition is going to be fierce. The top 2 go through to the semis from each heat, so one mistake and you're gone. But the semis are definitely an achievable goal, and if you're in the semis, anything can happen! You just have to look at Tamsyn in the World Indoors this year, in the right place at the right time.

RT: What do you have planned pre Olympics?

LR:At the moment I'm at our training base in Cologne in Germany. Over here you can just focus on the training 100% and not have the distractions of normal life getting in the way. My first race will just be a low key meet in Jerez in Spain on the 24th of June, then Milan in Italy on the 2nd of July. I'll have 2 or 3 races towards the end of July depending on how I'm running, but the full focus is the heats in Beijing on the 20th of August, so that's when I'll be peaked and ready to open a can.

RT: Do you have any financial backers or sponsors at this stage?

LR: I'm sponsored by Adidas. They have an amazing athlete support system in place. I'm very lucky that I was picked up by them, because they make life as an athlete so much easier. I'm also supported by the NSWIS and Sydney University who both provide great training facilities and athlete environments.

RT:Lachlan, thanks for the interview, all the best with your Olympic build-up and the Olympics themselves. We hope to see you line up in that final.

Lachlan's website

Twenty-two year old British middle distance runner, Michael Rimmer, is one of the most promising middle distance runners England has seen in quite some time. Rimmer is part of a contingent of British runners, including Andy Baddeley, who are hoping to return Britain to the forefront of world middle distance running.

Rimmer has had some encouraging results in a career which is still in it’s infancy. He finished 8th in the 800m final at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg and 2nd in his first European Cup in Munich (2007). Interestingly, he is the first male 800m runner in British history to win national titles in the under 15, 17 and 20 age groups as well as a senior athlete. In 2007, Michael was without a doubt England’s best 800m runner, running a total of four 1:45 800m races. Rimmer is currently in the best form of his life, running a PR of 1:44.68 to finish 6th in the Monaco Super GP (29th July 2008). This breakthrough run has elevated Rimmer to 13th on the Brtish all time list. More importantly, Rimmer now has a real chance of making the Olympic 800m final, and as Nils Schumann lies as a testament too, in an Olympic final, anything can happen.

RunnersTribe: Michael, thanks for your time. How have things been going in 2008, you seem to be peaking at the right time with a 1:47.1 at the Ostrava Golden spike in June 12, a 1:46.10 at the Notturna di Milano on July 2, a 1:45.89 at the Barcelona GP on July 20 and most recently a 1:44.68 at the Monaco Super GP.

MR: Things have been a little up and down so far this year. After a really successful winter i caught quite a bad chest infection which caused me to miss the first 3-4 weeks of transition work from the winter to summer. I surprised myself by coming back so quickly from the infection, running a comfortable 2.19 for 1000m and 1.47.16 after two and half weeks of training. However the lack of specific 800m work caught up on me and I suffered with my races in June. Getting back to basics was very important so the decision to miss the Europa Cup and get into a training block has definitely paid off!

RT: So obviously you are now over the set-back and all ready for Beijing?

MR: I had many chances to rectify the June races and put my good training into practice in Milan on 2nd July and now with the 1:44.68 in Monaco. Since the British trials (which he won in 1:49) things have been going well. In Barcelona I was on the shoulder of the leader for 700m but was obstructed quite badly and within 30 metres found myself back in sixth! But it was just nice to be competitive again and mix it with the best in the world like Bungei and Yego etc. The 1:44.6 is solid, but it could have been so much better, roll on Beijing.

RT: Mark Sesay (former No.1 British 800m runner) said about you in an article for the Guardian back in July 2006: “As for Liverpool's Michael Rimmer, who has impressed so much recently, he needs wrapping up and looking after. He is a superb talent but seems to have stalled. It is very worrying”. Two years on, what are your thoughts on his views?

MR: He was probably spot on to be fair! I think he made that comment at just the right time as i ran 1.45. about 2 weeks after his comments were made, but my progression had stalled quite badly for two years. However, i think it has definitely worked out for the best as I am probably one of the only athletes who has made it all the way through from a top Under 13 athlete all the way to senior level.

RT: Numerous high profiles figures in Britain over the years have criticised the way athletics is run in Britain. One common argument is that there isn't the infrastructure in place to help young athletes fulfil their talent. What are your thoughts on this?

MR : I think there are a lot of plus points and negatives points with the way things are at the moment but I feel that the people at the top are learning all the time and I believe they will have everything in place by 2012. The one thing I would like to see is the use of experienced and proven coaches around the UK, it seems to me that too many of our young athletes go running off to Loughborough or St.Marys when there are much better options closer to home. I think publishing where the top coaches are (for example Gordon Suertes and Norman Poole etc) and simply using the coaches who have been there and done it before would improve our junior to senior ratio.

RT: How important has the influence of your Manchester based coach Norman Poole been on your career?

MR: Norman has been the icing on the cake! There aren’t so many differences in training compared to my previous coach however the things that have changed are the key to why im now running so much quicker than before.

RT: Andy Badderly has attributed some of his recent success to extensive training camps he undertook at altitude in Australia. Do you go on may training camps or do you mainly stay based up North with your coach and support network?

MR: Im definitely a stay at home athlete. I have everything i need in Manchester so there isn’t any real need to go looking for that extra ingredient anywhere else.

RT: Your flat 200m speed is solid (PB of 22.50 for 200m). It’s fair to say however that your 1500m time is not quite as strong (PB of 3:45). Is this something you have been addressing in training?

MR: I dont think either of those PB’s are a true reflection of what I can do. A time comfortably under 3.40 and a sub 22 would be more realistic. Concentrating on endurance has been a big part of the last two winter seasons, not so much to improve the 1500m p.b but to put a series of great races together at the major championships.

RT: To finish off, do you have any favorite gut wrenching track sessions that you like doing and/or stand out as being key indicators to you that you are in form and ready to roll?

MR: The high lactate 800m type sessions are key for me. Anything at 800m pace with short recovery always brings on the lactate monster!!

RT: Michael, thanks for the interview, all the best for beijing

© 2008 The Runner's Tribe, all rights reserved.

© 2008 The Runner's Tribe, all rights reserved.

"He is not Jesus Christ because he can't walk on water. But on land, no one can beat Kenenisa Bekele" - Jos Hermans, Manager. 

It must be true that legends help create legends. If it wasn't for Abebe Bikila, Haile Gebrselassie may still be "a farmer in the hills of Arsi", and if it wasn't for Gebrselassie then perhaps a man by the name of Kenenisa Bekele would never have been inspired to begin running. Just how many young runners are out there pounding around the streets and tracks throughout Africa, with big dreams of being the next Bekele? Only the years will tell. But the message to these youngsters is pretty clear: dream big, work hard and anything may happen.

We catch up with Kenenisa breifly during a training phase as he prepares for his 2009 onslaught.

RunnersTribe: Kenenisa, thanks for your time. How is your health and injury status going?

Kenenisa Bekele: At the moment, I am in full training. I had a slight injury at the end of 2008, but I didn't lose too much time and it is going very well. I am feeling good.

RT: What are you up to at the moment? And can you tell us a little bit about your 2009 racing schedule?

KB: The schedule for the summer season 2009 is not clear yet.

RT: You have had so many highlights in your short career to date. Do you have a personal favorite moment or race?

KB: Winning the double cross country in France after the death of my fiancée Alem in 2005. And of course the double in Beijing.

RT: The world has watched with amazement as Haile Gebrselassie has re-written the world record books for the marathon. Do you see yourself switching to the marathon sometime in the future and trying to better his times and performances?

KB: I would like to run the marathon one day. Probably after the London Olympics. But the switch will not be so easy. Of course I would like to better the world record for the marathon, but I think that the world record will surely be faster after 2012 than it is now. I will have to run much faster.

RT: What's your relationship with Haile like?

KB: We respect each other a lot. Haile inspired me to begin running. I am not focusing on Haile's career or records. We just both want to be the best long distance runner ever, so we will clash sometimes.