Former England and New Zealand distance running international clocked 88 minutes at the Great South Run this month and has also written another book about the sport
Runner-author Roger Robinson talked to AW after his outstanding age-group win in the recent Great South Run 10-Miles in Portsmouth. Aged 83, and running on two knee replacements, Robinson ran 1:28:57 to finish in the top 20% of the 20,000 field.
AW: When you were last in England in 2019, you were just getting back to cautious racing after your second knee replacement surgery. What happened?
RR: A lot of careful training, as always. My advice to runners with knee problems is you can run and race on knee replacements, but the build-up has to very be slow, patient and persistent. For the body to adjust to a huge change like that takes years, not weeks.
AW: Any set-backs?
RR: Yes, just after my 5km time came down under 26 minutes, I rolled an ankle one day and cracked the fibula bone. Was it because of knee inflexibility? Probably. Or maybe age. Or bad luck. That was another five months off running. I have just got back to that 2020 level – but now I’m two years older, and the downward curve of age works against the improvement you train for.
AW: What motivates you to keep racing hard at 83?
RR: Few things in life match the satisfaction of an age-group win, or achieving an improved time, even though I can’t run 14:00 for 5km anymore, or 29:00 for 10km. I still love the challenge of the race, when there’s no hiding place or excuses, when you have to get everything right, from long-term preparation to pace-judgement and focus on the day. People ask why don’t I just have fun, but my reply is this is how I have most fun. I still make great friends from those I race against. I’m visiting some this week who I raced 60 years ago.
AW: What brings you back to England?
RR: My new book, Running Throughout Time: the Greatest Running Stories Ever Told, has just reached the UK. It got raves in America and Canada, and there’s so much British content that it should go well here.
AW: Tell us more.
RR: All my running life I’ve heard or read versions of Pheidippides dropping dead, or how the 1908 Olympic marathon set the marathon distance, or how in the 1928 Olympic 800 metres all the women collapsed, or how cross-country and track athletics began. I’ve kept reading and researching. This book does two things with the great stories of running – it tells them better than they have ever been told, and it gets them right.
AW: Give us one significant discovery.
RR: I found the world’s first piece of sports and running journalism. That should get your attention – the first begetter of AW. It’s a paragraph describing a two mile race on Newmarket Racecourse in February 1719, when newspapers were just beginning. And it’s by Daniel Defoe. “And both of ’em ran with such fury and violence that they dropped down for dead at the finish.” Sounds familiar.
AW: Give us the short version of your career.
RR: Modest running talent but persistent. Won Surrey cross-country and three miles, ran for England 1966-67, moved to New Zealand for university work and ran for New Zealand in 1977-80, set masters marathon records in my 40s and 50s (2:20:15 record at Boston), and came back to elite age-group racing after the first knee replacement in my mid-seventies. And always a writer, from the first article in AW in 1960. My best-known book is When Running Made History (which AW liked) and now Running Throughout Time is as good or better. My Heroes and Sparrows in 1986 was probably the first book to show that running was becoming a people’s sport, not only for elites or club runners. I got that one right, as the Great South Run proved. How lucky, to make my Great Run debut at 83.
» Roger Robinson’s latest book Running Throughout Time: the Greatest Running Stories Ever Told (Meyer & Meyer) is available on Amazon and all online outlets, and from your usual bookshop
