Sunderland Harriers welcomed North-East Athletics royalty to Silksworth last night in the shape of Ian Hudspith, and what great shape the 45 year-old Morpeth Harrier proved he's in!
The former club mate of Albert James joined in the club's weekly track session, running 5 x 1200m/400m (@10k pace/3k pace, with 90 seconds recovery and three minutes between sets) and showed his undoubted class, whilst also pulling our own seniors to impressive performances of their own.
Prior to the track session Ian shared his thoughts with Harriers young and old in an entertaining and informative 20-minutes Q&A.
The key to his longevity, it would appear, is consistency, and a fairly large dollop of luck.
"For me, there are several factors why I can continue to run at a reasonable level," he says modestly, "I've been quite lucky with injuries, I've had a few over the years but not too many, and I've managed to be able to keep running 100 miles a week every week since I was 20, so that's 25 years of running 100 miles a week and I haven't missed much."
Ian runs twice a day most days, with his first run usually at around 05.45 to fit in with his job as a schoolteacher, and thereafter his weekly programme is not dissimilar to that advocated by Richie Tough. Sunday, as for many athletes, is long run day, 18 miles being about the average, with a track or road session on Tuesday night, another longer run on Thursday and a session on Saturday morning if there is no race. Anything in between is steady running at 6:30 - 7:00 mile pace.
"All my steady runs are just that; steady," he says "I don't run quickly. Same for the long run, 6:30's to 7's. I read about these runners who run 5-minute miles in training and I think 'that's not for me'. If you're doing two sessions and two long runs, which I class as sessions anyway, then anything else has got to be sensible. The purpose of the steady run is recovery."
Despite joining his local club, Morpeth Harriers, nearly 35 years ago, getting out of the door to push himself round track sessions on windy winter nights like the one at Silksworth has never been a problem.
"I'm very enthusiastic about running," he says, "I've never had a problem with motivation. I do love running, I love training, I look forward to the sessions, and I look forward to the races."
"There comes a point in your career when you have to accept you're not going to break any more PB's and that's not easy. I got that in my late-30's but once you've come to terms with it you just continue with what you're doing."
Ian is 'continuing what he's doing' to considerable effect, as illustrated by his 24:49 for 5 miles a couple of weeks ago finishing fifth at Alsager, and this weekend he will be part of a strong Morpeth squad hoping to take the North-East road race title at Hetton, although they will be pressed all the way by a full-strength Gateshead team, with the Royal Blues also hopefully in the mix.
Last night's track session was a Masterclass from a class Master, but the Q&A was equally insightful and inspiring and hopefully our athletes found it useful. Ian's is a no frills, fairly straightforward approach to the sport, based on hard work and a sensible approach to running high mileage. We can learn a lot from top athletes like this, and similarly Ian too seemed to appreciate the experience. At least he was able to enjoy this visit to Silksworth considerably more than his last.
"I ran The National here a few years ago," he recalls, "and it was the biggest mistake of my career! I just really, really struggled, and then the elastic went on my shorts aswell, so I ran the last lap, having the worst run of my life, desperately trying to hold my shorts up!" He finished 75th.
Luckily the elastic held this time, and with any luck he will be back in future to run with the Harriers and discuss even more secrets of Masters success