Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
The road distance event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will be a half-marathon, at least compared to its immediate predecessor at Rio 2016.
No, the traditional, 42.195-kilometre distance will not be slashed by 50 percent (fiddling with the distance might be grounds for revolution in...
A column by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
Only one event has had its Gold Coast 2018 trial and already selectors and athletes are in a quandary.
Actually, make that two quandaries if we count the news that Australia may be restricted to a quota of 73 athletes in the able-bodied...
When you can win by losing | A Column By Len Johnson
The descriptors applied to selection trials overwhelmingly emphasise the drama. Cut-throat, sudden-death, fourth is the worst possible place – insert your cliché of choice.
Seldom is it mentioned that trials, along with heats and qualifying rounds, are one of...
Not even the internet had heard of teenage Australian sprinter Jake Doran before he ran 10.15 for 100 metres in Finland last Sunday (1 July).
Even once Doran had run that time – an Australian U20 record, second-fastest in the world this year by an U20 eligible athlete my internet...
For the first time in quite a few years I wasn’t at the nationals. Not by choice: the situation was imposed on me, first by a scheduled trekking trip to Nepal, then by the flaring up of a back condition which forced the cancellation of the former and precluded...
The first time I encountered Maurie Plant was at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games. I heard Maurie before I saw him (a not uncommon occurrence over the next 43 years).
I was on the concourse just inside the ticket entrance, Maurie was high above on the entry ramp to the...
Written by Len Johnson - Runner's Tribe
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo is reputed to once have said.
Like many such ‘quotes’, this may not be a precise rendition of the French poet and novelist’s words, merely the most common paraphrase. Hugo’s observation...
When a runner makes a breakaway move in a marathon, one of the psychological advantages they seek is to disappear. To build enough of a lead that whenever the road crests a hill, turns a corner or rounds a blind bend, the leader cannot be seen by the pursuers....
It’s getting to the end of the year, that time when you start to reflect on your favourite things of the previous 12 months.
Of course, we’ve only had just short of 11 months of 2019, which is one of the perils of end-of-the-year reflection. One of my perennially favourite...
Ask a runner to run a heat and they’ll run a (graded) mile.
That’s the conclusion to be drawn, anyway, from two Victorian meetings in the past two weeks.
First, the Victorian Milers Club staged its opening meeting of the season on 10 November. Almost 250 ran, no fewer than 151...
