Andy Baddeley is a middle-distance runner who competed in the European and World championships, and Commonwealth and Olympic games. He also happens to be the holder of the global parkrun record, running the Bushy Park course in 2012 in 13:48
You actually studied engineering. Do your parents ask you when you are going to stop running and get a proper job? Ha, that’s what people have been saying to me for the last 10 years. When are you going to use that degree you worked so hard for and get a proper job? Because running only started for me as a one-year thing. I was running at a reasonable level through university and then I met my coach in my final year. And it was either do a Phd or move to London, train for a year and see if I get any better. Ten years later I’ve been a professional and went to the Olympics. Never went back to academia.
So what have you been up to recently? In the last month or two I’ve decided to retire. I’ll still run because I love it, but I won’t commit the same. It’s been my be-all and end-all for 10 years. And you know, you actually have to be pretty selfish to be an athlete so being a dad has been nice. It’s been a long time coming. I had serious injuries after 2012, then I had a bit of a comeback last year. Then I had a series of small injuries. I wasn’t going to be able to do what I wanted and that would have taken a lot of time, effort and concentration away from my family. And I didn’t want to do that any more. So in the last year I’ve been working on Performance Team – we will be running training camps to try and give amateur athletes all the stuff I got to experience.
Where’s your favourite place to run? I lived in Barnes on the river, the whole time I lived in London.
Ah I know it well! I spend a lot of time on Barn Elms Track, with the world’s most aggressive geese … Yes, it’s just by the Wetlands Centre so it’s always covered in goose poo!
Got to be worth 10 seconds a mile, right? Definitely! So I used to run along the river there, and I did a lot of training in Bushy Park and Richmond Park. Probably 80% of my training was done there. I really miss it. People who have never been don’t understand what it’s like. How huge it is, this incredible green space where you can see the London skyline from the top of the hill. It was perfect for every kind of training. For eight years my Saturday hill sessions were running up the hill at Ham Gate.
Going back to your first memories of running. Did you run at school? Yes, from about 10 or 11, the last year of primary school. But I get asked to talk at schools and I’ll often say that I wasn’t that good. My first few years of senior school I wouldn’t make the A team – there’d be 10 guys in my school who could beat me, let alone the rest of the country. So that’s always my message to the youngsters – plenty of people give up. Keep going! I ended up being quite good by default, because so many people stopped! I did take it seriously though. After my A-levels my friends were all going off on big holidays to Europe, but the English Schools track was that summer and I wanted to run well so I didn’t go. As it turns out I didn’t run that well so I should probably have just gone on holiday …
What is your top training tip? You know, so many people ask me, “What do you eat?” They might be training for a 5/10k and I ask how much running they are doing and it’s maybe once or twice a week. And I say, well, it’s not your food that’s going to make you better at running. It’s doing more running. Obviously you can’t just double the amount of running you do, you have to be sensible. But don’t look for the quick fix. There’s plenty of stuff from elite sport, the latest supplement or superfood and yes, they might help with that last few per cent. But that’s when you’ve done your training. Keep it simple.
Do you ever struggle with motivation? Yes, everyone does. It’s a bit different as a professional I suppose, when it’s raining or snowing and your job depends on it. For me, my next two or four years’ salary was dependent on three minutes of effort on a particular day. And if I happen to have a cold, or an injury, then that wipes that out. The key thing for me, though, was always meeting people. I could make myself do it alone, run on bleak days when I was really tired and sore and everything hurt. But it was so much easier when I was meeting people.
There’s always been a huge social aspect to running for me. I love parkrun – to me, why they are so successful is because they are a community. People want to meet up with their friends at parkrun, that’s what gets them out of bed when it’s raining or freezing cold. And I had brilliant training partners and I wanted to go and train with them. When we set foot on the start line, then yes, that was game time, this is business and we are super professional. But the rest of the time there was a lot of banter and fun. They are some of my best friends. These are the people that see you at your worst. And you know they are going through the same stuff so some days you want to turn up to help them, and other days you know they are going to be helping you.
Do you listen to music when you run? Yes. Not for what I’d consider my sessions, my intervals and never with other people. But those runs I had to do by myself, I’d often listen to a playlist or shuffle a thousand songs so I’d end up listening to some really weird stuff … And also podcasts. Mainly music or radio though.
How about gadgets, or Strava? I never would have posted my training while I was competing, probably I was a little bit protective. But I used a Garmin selectively. I dislike monitoring all of my runs, because my coach would also coach by time. He’d tell me to go out for an hour run. And for those runs, the reasons I never monitor them is because my hour’s run was the same route every time. Sometimes it might take me 57 minutes, others 66 … There was a big variation depending on how I felt.
But, the one tip I’d give, the thing that made the single biggest difference to my running was threshold running. Running at just below your lactate threshold. I’d religiously use a heart rate monitor for that, over the main bulk of my career. Then I’d have a similar set of data I could compare and see real progression.
What’s the worst thing about running? Some days being alone running is what I need, it’s that release from all other stuff I might be worrying about. But the thing I enjoyed the least was the loneliness. There is nothing more lonely than the call room before the Olympics or a big race. Because you get called through and that’s you and 11 other athletes, all nervous in complete silence. I was fine on the start line. But the anxiety in that hour, when you’ve realised no one else can help you …
And the best thing? The running community, by a mile. I actually did some writing about mental health and sport, and how it affected me, and the response was so positive. So many people associated with some aspect of what I’d written about. Sometimes even something I’d not really considered a big part. The way people responded, and the way people support one another from elite level down to someone just getting around their first 5k. That’s just amazing.
What’s your post-race indulgence? I definitely keep it simple. A burger. A big burger, milkshake, beer. That sort of combination.
What about before, what’s a pre-session breakfast? I’m quite conservative, I just stuck with porridge with some seeds and fruit. Maybe some fruit juice. I wouldn’t ever have any products before training. And just water in training. Then recovery stuff afterwards. Pretty basic though.
Who is your favourite runner to watch? I grew up just after the era of Coe and Ovett. Live, I was watching Hicham El Guerrouj. He was just incredible. And his story –falling at one Olympics, getting beaten on the line then getting his double in Athens. And he had the most beautiful running style.
So who is the greatest ever runner? Gebrselassie has got to be up there. People have run quicker since in the 5k, the 10k and the marathon but he was the first one in all of those. He did it in that that way he did it – and everyone loved him. And all of the cool stuff he’s doing in Ethiopia.
Andy Baddeley is running the London 10 Mile, a major new closed road event held in the stunning Richmond Park, on Sunday 4 June 2017. A percentage of the event entry fee goes to parkrun to support grassroots running. More info: london10mile.com
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