Running: The Autobiography Read Online Free
Author: Ronnie O'Sullivan
train Tuesday, then go steady Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and your legs are fresh Saturday and you’d have a good race.
Eventually I got 10 kilometres down to 34 minutes. I’d say anything under 36 minutes is decent club running, and this was 5.40 minutes a mile. I couldn’t believe I was running that fast. Having said that, this is not great running: it’s decent club running.
I learnt so much from the training regime and started applying it to snooker. If you run all the time you end up physically exhausted. I’d always thought you had to give your all to training in the build-up to a snooker tournament. Six hours a day for a month building up to, say, the World Championship. But the running taught me you can overdo it. Sometimes you can do half an hour, and that’s just fine. The week before a tournament your practice should be done, and you should have started winding down.
I want to do it, I’m chomping at the bit, but the reality is it’s not that good for you. Sometimes I wouldn’t practise at all and just trust myself. Maybe a month before a tournament I’d put the hours in, but now the week before I just relax. A week before a marathon, runners will hardly run; they just do a mile or two or three to keep their legs ticking over. No more intensive stuff; that’s already in the bank, and you’ve got to let yourbody recover. Then, boom! Whether you’re playing well or not, now it’s time to switch on and be ready mentally. As long as you’ve got a full tank to draw on, there’s no point going to an event driving yourself mad and leaving your best form on the practice table.
The more I ran, the more obsessed I became. Now I had a new dream. I wanted to represent my county at cross-country. (To put this in context, my fastest at 10 kilometres put me in the top 1,500 in the UK, so I wasn’t reckoning on an Olympic medal.) To do that you had to get into the top six in Essex, and I thought that was doable. I’d come 27th in my first year running, and I thought if I could just devote more time to it, give me two years, maybe three. But that was the problem. I couldn’t devote more time to it. I was still a full-time snooker player and everyone in the game was telling me I was mad giving so much to the running.
I was doing a lot of road races – local ones within a 10-to 20-mile radius of where we lived. At one stage I was racing every other weekend, and running really had become the most important thing in my life. It was the only thing I talked about, yattering away on the phone every night.
‘Alright, Alan?’
‘Alright, Ron, how you doing?’
‘Yeah, good. But not good enough. Got to get under six minutes. Getting there, I think. Fuckin’ ’ell, I was done for by the end of my ten kilometres. Lovely out there, fresh, crisp, cold, but it killed me.’ But I loved the fact that it took so much out of me.
I loved the routine. My mate would come over to me, we’d get there for 11.30, get dressed, ready for 12, ready to race at 12.30, timings done, shower, boom boom boom. In the pub for 3.30–4 p.m., just on the orange juice, focused, everyonetalking about their time, the race, where they’d come.
It’s funny that it became such a huge ambition to represent Essex. Let’s face it, there was no money in it for me, and no status – you’re not going to be remembered for having run for your county, are you? Certainly, I’d be better off concentrating on the snooker from a financial point of view. And yet still there was something pushing me on. I was desperate to do it. I began to think if I did represent Essex it would be the same as winning the World Championship. The running replaced AA and NA meetings in my life. There wasn’t time for meetings, snooker and running. One had to give way, so it was the meetings. By now I looked totally different. I weighed 11½ stone and was down to a 31-inch waist. Everybody would go, you look really ill, and I’d think, great, that must mean I’m
Eventually I got 10 kilometres down to 34 minutes. I’d say anything under 36 minutes is decent club running, and this was 5.40 minutes a mile. I couldn’t believe I was running that fast. Having said that, this is not great running: it’s decent club running.
I learnt so much from the training regime and started applying it to snooker. If you run all the time you end up physically exhausted. I’d always thought you had to give your all to training in the build-up to a snooker tournament. Six hours a day for a month building up to, say, the World Championship. But the running taught me you can overdo it. Sometimes you can do half an hour, and that’s just fine. The week before a tournament your practice should be done, and you should have started winding down.
I want to do it, I’m chomping at the bit, but the reality is it’s not that good for you. Sometimes I wouldn’t practise at all and just trust myself. Maybe a month before a tournament I’d put the hours in, but now the week before I just relax. A week before a marathon, runners will hardly run; they just do a mile or two or three to keep their legs ticking over. No more intensive stuff; that’s already in the bank, and you’ve got to let yourbody recover. Then, boom! Whether you’re playing well or not, now it’s time to switch on and be ready mentally. As long as you’ve got a full tank to draw on, there’s no point going to an event driving yourself mad and leaving your best form on the practice table.
The more I ran, the more obsessed I became. Now I had a new dream. I wanted to represent my county at cross-country. (To put this in context, my fastest at 10 kilometres put me in the top 1,500 in the UK, so I wasn’t reckoning on an Olympic medal.) To do that you had to get into the top six in Essex, and I thought that was doable. I’d come 27th in my first year running, and I thought if I could just devote more time to it, give me two years, maybe three. But that was the problem. I couldn’t devote more time to it. I was still a full-time snooker player and everyone in the game was telling me I was mad giving so much to the running.
I was doing a lot of road races – local ones within a 10-to 20-mile radius of where we lived. At one stage I was racing every other weekend, and running really had become the most important thing in my life. It was the only thing I talked about, yattering away on the phone every night.
‘Alright, Alan?’
‘Alright, Ron, how you doing?’
‘Yeah, good. But not good enough. Got to get under six minutes. Getting there, I think. Fuckin’ ’ell, I was done for by the end of my ten kilometres. Lovely out there, fresh, crisp, cold, but it killed me.’ But I loved the fact that it took so much out of me.
I loved the routine. My mate would come over to me, we’d get there for 11.30, get dressed, ready for 12, ready to race at 12.30, timings done, shower, boom boom boom. In the pub for 3.30–4 p.m., just on the orange juice, focused, everyonetalking about their time, the race, where they’d come.
It’s funny that it became such a huge ambition to represent Essex. Let’s face it, there was no money in it for me, and no status – you’re not going to be remembered for having run for your county, are you? Certainly, I’d be better off concentrating on the snooker from a financial point of view. And yet still there was something pushing me on. I was desperate to do it. I began to think if I did represent Essex it would be the same as winning the World Championship. The running replaced AA and NA meetings in my life. There wasn’t time for meetings, snooker and running. One had to give way, so it was the meetings. By now I looked totally different. I weighed 11½ stone and was down to a 31-inch waist. Everybody would go, you look really ill, and I’d think, great, that must mean I’m
Readers choose
Maggie Brendan
R. N. Morris
Helen Lucas
Rachel Hauck
Michael Meyerhofer
Bobby Adair
Ernest Hemingway
James Oliver Curwood
Amos Oz
Adele Clee