It was New Year’s Day 2012. I’d returned to the scene of my first parkrun around the University of Southampton playing fields in Eastleigh. Ten months earlier, it had been a cold, frosty February morning and I’d gone haring off the start line slowly fading to get round in 23:38. Now with another thirty-five parkruns under my belt, I’d almost broken twenty minutes.

As we stood listening to the briefings, applauding new runners and visitors; it became apparent we had an Olympian in midst. Standing 6’2” with bleached blonde hair and broad chested it was hard to miss Iwan Thomas, especially as he stood head and shoulders above many of the other runners present. Like me, this would be his second Eastleigh parkrun.

As we set off running, I kept an eye on him but my legs were fatigued. I’d run all-out the day before at Poole so gradually he opened up a lead of fifty metres. It stayed like that for the first two laps then on the final one, the gap extended and he finished in 20:45; I trailed in almost a minute behind in 21:35. Of course he never even knew we were racing!

These days Iwan Thomas is often seen on television either as a panellist, contestant or doing roving reports on The One Show. As an international athlete, he was a key part of Great Britain’s 400m success in the 1990s. He won silver in the 4x400m relay at the Atlanta Olympics and gold at the World Championships a year later. He and compatriot Roger Black competed in the Olympic 400m final which was easily won by the legendary Michael Johnson. Roger raced as the 400m British record holder and held it until Iwan broke it in a time of 44.36s. This stood for almost twenty-five years and it was only in May 2022 that Matthew Hudson-Smith finally ran faster than either of these legends.

When his athletics career wound down Iwan began trying longer distances. The London Marathon was an obvious choice where he clocked 3hr58 in 2009 and over the next six years he set personal bests of 40:16 for 10K, 1hr12 for 10 miles and 1hr37 for half marathon. He also took up parkrunning and has racked up over one hundred with a best of 19:18 at Netley Abbey where he usually runs. Currently he’s running around 22-23 minutes there as he approaches fifty.

A couple of years ago in the October 2021 edition of Runners World they detailed his ultrarunning in the South Downs Way 100. That’s one hundred miles from Winchester to Eastbourne. A significant motivator for doing this was to raise money for charity due to difficulties his son suffered after birth. Iwan recognised he’s not built to run ultras saying “I’m 15½ stone. I was designed to go from A to B in 44 seconds. I wasn’t meant to conserve energy and not have high knee lift or a long stride.” When it came to the race, he ended up finishing 304^th of 308 finishers in 29hr35. It was a tough race and he was left believing he might have completed it faster as he wasn’t physically ready for it. He’d barely trained in the preceding months due to a tendinitis injury and motorway accident; although race organisers had got him to run a 50-mile ultra as evidence he would capable of the longer event.

Back at Eastleigh parkrun, with only 68 of us having braved any New Year’s Eve hangovers it was easy to find the opportunity to say a brief “Hello”. What struck me wasn’t anything he had to say – it was his size and build. I was looking eye-to-eye with him, standing just as tall and strong.

While Iwan is now 15½ stone, I’d guess he was somewhere around 13-14stone in his prime. Research on other elite 400m runners shows Matthew Hudson-Smith is 6’4” / 12st4lbs, Martin Rooney is 6’6” / 12st 11lbs, Roger Black ran at 6’3” / 12st 6lbs and Michael Johnson at 6’1” / 12st 7lbs.  Those physiques are very comparable to my own. I’m 6’2” and have slimmed down over the past two years to just over 12stone and under 10% body fat. In my younger days, I was usually around 14 stone and more muscular.

I’ve been training and running consistently for the past decade and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not particularly suited to distance running. This fits with me being built more like a 400m runner. I’ve always believed everybody is capable of doing everything to a decent standard so it’s a bit galling to have to admit that perhaps you can be genetically limited. My personal bests are all similar to Iwan’s and it’s fair to say they are decent times and many runners would be happy with them. Yet they’re a long way off the best – about 50% worse than the world records and I see many runners around me who naturally run faster off less training.

Does this mean I should give up distance running? Not at all, I’m still determined to get the best out of myself. It just means I’m reconsidering my approach. If speed is where my strengths lie then I need to keep working at that. Looking back to when I started parkrunning, I had good speed but I didn’t understand how to create endurance and stamina or how to convert that speed into better parkrun times. In my pursuit of figuring this out, I got away from speed, allowing it to decay as I spent sessions logging miles and experimenting with different training systems. Now I’m going to dedicating myself to redeveloping my speed.

If you too are interested in improving your speed then contact me to purchase my Get Faster … Speed Training course.