Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography (41 page)

Happy days working at the Sweatshop branch in Teddington.

Bushy Park – where I’d often go for training runs with the Kenyans.

I’d go running in Richmond Park with Benedict Whitby and Sam Haughian on our lunch break at the Sweatshop. They ran insanely fast.

At Alan Watkinson’s wedding in July 2003. I presented Alan with a poster of me winning my first English Schools Cross Country at Newark.

At St Mary’s in 2004 where I did most of my training.

Running in ‘Sam’s Run’ in memory of Sam Haughian, a year after his death in a car accident in Johannesburg in April 2004.

I finished a disappointing ninth in Melbourne in 2006. Craig Mottram is wearing yellow, behind Benjamin Limo (
left
) and eventual winner Augustine Choge. I stayed with Benjamin Limo’s family the following year on my first trip to Kaptagat and we remain close friends.

Jesús España nudges ahead of me to win the 5000 metres in Gothenburg. There was one hundredth of a second between us.

Back to winning ways at the European Cross Country Championships in San Giorgio, Italy. I crushed Sergiy Lebid, the hot favourite.

Running the Great North Mile in 2006 – competing on the Saturday before the Great North Run is something of a tradition for me.

With the two Alans – Alan Storey (
left
), my coach at St Mary’s and beyond, and Alan Watkinson. In the background is my old sixth-form school, Isleworth and Syon.

I badly overcooked it in the lead-up to Beijing and failed to qualify from the heats. I was devastated.

Me and Hassan wore the same clothes when I returned to Hargeisa; it was like reliving our childhood all over again. Hassan even shaved his head in honour of me, so we now had the same bald head!