‘Twas the night before Nitro, when all through the house . . . ‘, well, actually, all through most athletics houses people were tossing and turning, sleeping fitfully, if at all, hoping Nitro Athletics would be a Boltaway success.
A lot is riding on Nitro. It is kicking goals, though...
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
The Wages of Fear is a 1953 movie about four men who are asked to transport a dangerous cargo of nitroglycerine.
The plot of the Franco-Italian, noir-nero drama is simple: four men, broke and stranded in a South American oil town, are contracted...
Tiernan fastest Australian 10,000 debutant
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
For those of us yet to meet a statistic we don’t like*, there were some interesting figures surrounding Patrick Tiernan’s Zatopek win.
One, Tiernan’s was the fastest debut 10,000 by an Australian male. Two, he became the first Australian...
Signifying What, Exactly?
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Never hold an inquiry unless you already know the outcome, goes a wise old political maxim.
It’s a saying I’ve cited before, but as it is a few years since its last mention I refer to it again.
Political inquiries have an...
Did ye get healed?
A Column By Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Nitro Athletics has been and gone. It seems to have had an overwhelmingly positive reception – 1.4-million viewers Australia-wide on the first of three nights on free-to-air television, Melbourne’s boutique lakeside Stadium jammed to its 9000-ish capacity for the...
A Column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
There wasn’t much reason to remember the 1970s – apart from the fact that we could. It was the decade we regained our memories. It followed the ‘60s and, as everyone knows, if you can remember the ‘60s, you probably weren’t there.
Athletically,...
A Column by Len Johnson – Runner’s Tribe
When someone refers to a cat-and-mouse struggle, there is usually only one possible outcome (spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for the mouse).
Especially when it is a marathon, and the ‘cats’ in question are Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele, both with claims...
Twenty years ago, I ran the Host City Marathon, the selection ‘trial’ race over the Sydney Olympic course.
It was a decision which sits near the top of my ‘why on earth did I do that?’ list. In fact, it was added before the marathon even finished, just past the...
Sunday morning, Melbourne, 18 October, 2015 and the Australian women’s Olympic marathon picture seemed to crystallise as Jess Trengove ran 2:27:45 in the Melbourne marathon and Lisa Weightman won the half-marathon in an even 71 minutes.
Like a kid’s jigsaw, the picture did not stay in place long. Less than...
A column by Len Johnson
Few runners kept up with Emil Zatopek during his brilliant career. Even fewer got past the Czechoslovakian champion. And of those who did, hardly any stayed ahead of ‘Zato’ all the way to the line.
If it was hard enough catching up with Zatopek through his...
