Olympic 800m champion is the latest in a long list of runners who have included sand dune workouts in their training with great success
Fashionable training techniques for today’s endurance runners double include tempo efforts, cross-training and of course Norwegian-style double threshold sessions. Thanks to Keely Hodgkinson, though, sand dune running is making a comeback.
The Olympic 800m champion puts herself through gruelling workouts on the beach at Formby, especially during the winter base building period. Situated a short drive from her home in Manchester, the 22-year-old travels there to train with coach Trevor Painter’s group. “It’s a really brutal session,” says Painter. “It’s formulates your mind as well as your physiology.”
Running hard on the beach and especially up sand dunes is nothing new for middle and long distance runners, of course. The efforts build strength and stamina and promote good running form as the body struggles to get a grip on the soft, uneven surface.
Frank Horwill with BMC runners (Mark Shearman)
Coincidentally 124 years before Hodgkinson stormed to gold in Paris, another British 800m runner called Alfred Tysoe won the men’s Olympic title – also in Paris – after having done much of his preparations on the sand dunes of South Shore in Blackpool, a few miles north of Formby.
Not only did Tysoe win that Olympic 800m title in 1900 but soon afterwards won a head-to-head match race over three-quarters of a mile against the Olympic 1500m gold medallist Charles Bennett. The victory over Bennett earned him the title of “undisputed middle-distance champion of the world” and Tysoe’s fitness had been built on the sand dunes of the popular tourist town in Lancashire, although he died aged just 27 after a bout of pleurisy.
An obituary in Athletic News in October 1901 said it was “probable that in distances from 880 yards up to one mile he had no superior in the amateur ranks” and added he was “a natural runner with a graceful, raking stride and splendid finishing powers”.
Neil Caddy on the dunes of Cornwall (Mark Shearman)
What’s more, Tysoe ran similar times to Hodgkinson and the men’s world record at the time for 880 yards was 1:53.4 – a fraction slower than the women’s world 800m record of 1:53.28 that Hodgkinson has in her sights.
Whereas Tysoe is something of a forgotten champion, the training that led to Herb Elliott’s 1960 Olympic 1500m victory – in a world record of 3:35.6 to boot – are better known. Elliott famously went to Portsea on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia, to train under coach Percy Cerutty every weekend. During that period he endured countless repetitions up and down dunes in addition to living off raw food and bathing in the ocean.
Merthyr Mawr (Mark Shearman)
British middle-distance runners have also used sand dunes at Merthyr Mawr in South Wales for many years and Steve Ovett, among others, was a regular visitor to the area to embark on tough hilly workouts, often in bare feet.
Steve Ovett with Harry Wilson (Mark Shearman)
Training on the beach was of course also popularised in the multiple Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. More recently, the ultra-distance race the Marathon d’Sables has become known as one of the toughest footraces on earth, partly because the sand underfoot makes it so challenging.
Red Bull ‘quicksand’ race
There have even beach races in the UK such as the Blyth Sands event in the North East of England, the Red Bull ‘quicksand’ race in Margate and beach races down Blackpool beach too.
Red Bull ‘quicksand’ race
So what are you waiting for? Throw away those super shoes this weekend and hit the beach instead.
(Mark Shearman)
English National in September a shining success
A few years ago Weston Park near Telford played host to a G8 Summit with Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Tony Blair among the visitors. Last weekend the same venue staged the heavily delayed English National Cross Country Champs.
There were fears the fields wouldn’t be strong but it seems the nation’s top distance runners supported it fairly well. Holding the event in September sunshine might seem odd but it’s not always been freezing cold or wet on the traditional February date.
READ MORE: English National coverage
I remember the 2012 National at Parliament Hill – a few months before the London Olympics – being unusually mild with an ice cream van on the edge of the course doing a roaring trade and spectators wearing t-shirts.
It’s a numbers game
I missed the English National Cross this year to attend a football match instead. Sacrilege, I know, for an athletics journalist.
In my defence I haven’t been to a football game for years and I always like to compare ‘other sports’ to athletics. Isn’t it good, after all, to develop a broader view of the sporting spectrum rather than simply attending athletics events and nothing else?
I was one of almost 17,000 spectators watching Plymouth Argyle beat Sunderland 3-2 in a Sky Bet Championship match and for just under £30 I saw plenty of goals during 90 minutes of entertainment.
Was the overall experience better than an athletics grand prix meeting with a similar-sized crowd? No, but then again I am a little biased toward the No.1 Olympic sport.
I was however reminded why the wider media devote more coverage to football than athletics. Even at this ‘second tier’ early season game there were far more people than you’d get at, say, the UK Athletics Championships – and this included around 1700 Sunderland fans making an admirable 400-mile pilgrimage from one corner of England to the other.
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