At this weekend’s London Grand Prix, Mo Farah was aiming to break Dave Moorcroft’s long-held British 5000m record. Moorcroft had a successful background in middle distance running, winning the 1500m at the Commonwealth Games. However, the British abundance of talent in these events in the early 80s led him to move up to 5000m. On a balmy night in Oslo in 1982, Moorcroft smashed the world record and almost ran the first sub 13 minute 5000m. And he still holds the British record 27 years later – why? To run a world class 5k, you need speed. At world record pace, the runners are almost running at 4 minute mile pace – for over 3 miles!! To enable them to maintain such a pace, they also have to be capable of running very economically … [Read more...]