Hi Christine! Hope you are well. First of all, what’s your favourite place to run? Well I train at Mile End, and I really enjoy running along the canal. They have a canal in the park, and during the winter we spend a lot of time running up and down the length of the canal, it’s just really, really nice, I mean it’s just peaceful. It’s probably not a part of East London people think to go to, but I just think for us it’s a nice length for us to run along.
Do you remember your first ever race? It would have been in primary school, um, but that’s school sports day, it was nothing serious.
Did you win? No, it was always like a duel between me and this other girl, yeah she was quite fast as well, and it’s quite funny because I remember thinking like, when you know, like the day before you can’t sleep, and you’re thinking about this race and thinking about your competitors, it was kind of always the same when I was a kid. But I think sometimes she won and I think sometimes I won. It was always like this duel, every, every year between me and her.
What about your first professional race? My first professional race would have come a lot later on, I think it was about 2001, because I used to play netball, so I didn’t really race properly until a lot later when I decided to leave netball and then concentrate on athletics. So the first race was for my club and I got picked because nobody wanted to do 400m. I remember at the time because I started training but I didn’t really know what the specific distances were, I thought you just ran. In typical fashion, kids like to gravitate towards the sprints because they’re a lot shorter and a lot more exciting. I only knew about 100m and 200m, but then both races they already had people to run them, so obviously I was left in the lurch so I think they kind of asked if I wanted to do 400m. At the time I didn’t know what it was but I said ‘yeah, OK fine’, me being as polite as I was, and so that’s pretty much where my 400m career started. I did win it by the way – just to throw that in there!
So when someone asks you for some training tips, what do you tell them? I think that the most important thing in training is that you have to enjoy it. It’s hard to say you enjoy pain, but you have to find some way of doing what you’re doing and being satisfied with what you’ve done when you’ve finished. If you don’t enjoy it when you’ve finished, you couldn’t really care less what happened, but I think a deep enjoyment for what you do is probably what drives a lot of people. At least, I think it’s what should drive you.
Do you like running gadgets? Yeah, I think for occasional sessions it’s important to know what your heart rate is, more as background information so you know when you’re working too hard, and maybe when you need to take a longer recovery. It’s important to start listening to your body and understand when it’s saying “enough is enough”, and when it’s saying you know what, I’m tired but I can do a little bit more. I think that’s really important for any kind of runner, you have to really understand your body because once you get running you become very sadistic and we just want the pain no matter what – but sometimes too much pain isn’t good, you have to know when your body is saying let me rest.
I also just think it’s good to run with music, and have good gear. Sometimes I have a pedometer but that’s not always necessary. Oh, I have a good watch, a really good watch, because you know when you’re tired, you want to make sure you actually hit the right button, but no I don’t really have any other gadgets. Yeah, I’m a simple girl, nothing too crazy.
So you do run to music? I do for long runs – I always have an iPod Shuffle. I think a Shuffle is one of the best things to have because you can just put a hundred songs on that you like and it’s easy to change them. It’s not cumbersome, it’s just really little, and I find a good playlist just keeps you going and going and going.
What’s your post-race indulgence? It depends on where I’m going after that, if it’s a quick turnover – like if I’ve got to get home after that and get ready for another race or get ready for another event then there’s no time for indulgence. I think it’s just a matter of trying to keep focused. I think if you indulge too much you kind of lose a little bit of focus. But if there’s no quick turnover, I will have my pizza, or my burger, I like a big fat burger or sometimes I want something sweet.
What’s the worst thing about running? The worst thing I think for me, well not the worst thing, but one of the least enjoyable parts about training is you have to do it, you just have to do it, there’s no in or out or halfway house, you have to get the work done. I think for me that’s the worst thing because I don’t leave anything incomplete, I like to get everything done, so sometimes I wish I didn’t have to, but in order for me to get to where I get to I have to make sure I get it all completed.
What’s the best thing about training? The best thing is that when you do get it done, you feel really good about yourself and you know that’s one box you can tick off and it gives you confidence for the next day’s work out. You can say “OK, well I survived doing XYZ so I know I can come back today and do ABC” – and it’s that rolling confidence you pick up. Even if the day before didn’t go so well, you can say: “Well today I will try a bit harder.” You’ve always got that element of hope in training and the fact that you can always keep working toward something.
What’s the furthest you’ve ever run? I think the furthest I’ve ever run officially, would be about 5k but we do half-an-hour runs and stuff so I don’t know … I don’t know if that’s further or less than 5k – it’s a long way though! I’m running for a long time, but officially I’ve got a 5k time somewhere in the archives.
What do you eat on the morning of a long run or hard session? If I’ve got a really hard session I probably won’t eat so much because a hard session would mean some kind of pain and I know it will come straight back out so I keep it quite minimal. Something light, like yoghurt. But if I eat something light before I train I have to make sure I really refuel afterwards and make sure that I have a good meal afterwards.
So what do you have for that meal afterwards? It depends on whether it’s lunchtime or later, but I would probably go back and have porridge so I kind of do it in reverse. I have porridge, oats, nuts, that of thing just to refuel to make sure I get the protein I need.
Have you ever run barefoot? Not properly round the track – that would hurt! I think there have been times in my warm down where it’s been really, really hot, so you kind of just take off your shoes and just run in the grass, which is quite nice.
What’s been your greatest running achievement? I think it has to be last year winning in Moscow. It wasn’t just the fact that I won it for the second time, but I think it was nice to have won and check in the British record, which had stood for so long. It’s nice to finally to get it, because if I don’t get the record it would probably stand for another 30 years and it’s nice to be the first person in 30 years to have broken it so that was cool. Kathy Cooke is a phenomenal athlete, she was really good, so it was nice to be able to take a record from her.
Mo Farah or Usain Bolt? Ugh gosh, well I’ll pick them both for different reasons. I’ll have Usain one day because he’ll make me laugh and then I can have Mo on the other day because he’ll make me laugh as well. I am very diplomatic.
Who is the greatest ever runner? Greatest ever? Wow. Ever, ever, ever. Um, that’s so hard to say, um, the greatest ever runner? Foreign or British, any? Ever, so living or dead? I don’t know, I can’t. The thing is I’d pick different athletes for different reasons, or because of what they went through like maybe even certain times, I’m not making this any easier I know. I just can’t answer it because I don’t know!
Christine Ohuruogu is wearing the new adidas Energy boost – a revolutionary running shoe for women, combining energy return innovation with style-led design. Available now at adidas.co.uk/boost
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