As his peers slow down, Mark English is only getting better
At the FBK Games in Hengelo on Monday, Mark English became the first Irishman to break 1:44 for 800m. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
It was just after 11pm on Monday when Mark English laced up his shoes, left his hotel in the centre of Hengelo, and set off running around the dark streets of the Dutch city.
A few hours before, the Donegal man had become the first Irishman in history to break 1:44 for 800m, clocking 1:43.92 to win at the FBK Games. It was the best run of his career. But his work wasn’t done. Past bars where he got cheers from well-oiled locals, along with the odd quizzical look, English churned out a session of 10 x 3 minutes, keen to keep building a foundation for what’s coming down the track.
Post-race workouts are now common among elite athletes and given English, like most, takes caffeine before races, he knew he’d be awake until the early hours regardless. So once he’d given his dinner time to digest, he went to work on something that’s been part of his breakthrough this year: endurance.
English turned 32 in March, shortly after winning his fifth major medal: a bronze at the European Indoors. It’s an age when many of his peers are either retired or past their best – the average age of last year’s Olympic final was 24 – but English is the exception, and he has no thoughts of stepping away.
“I don’t really like to put a clock on my career,” he says. “If you think you’re retiring at a certain point, that might change how you come into a race, it might change your motivation.”
There are several reasons he’s running so well. One is consistency, which he says has been “really important.” English has been free of injuries in the past several months, with everything from hamstring to Achilles to knee or back issues shackling his full ability at times over the years.
Another is altitude training. Before this year, he’d only tried it once, but two long stints – one in Spain, another in the US – have shown him its benefits.
English is also now a full-time athlete, having taken time out of his medical career two years ago to give athletics his full focus. “When you’re trying to train twice a day (and work) it can get quite taxing and I’m looking back wondering how I ever managed to do it,” he says. “I think it was the right decision.”
He says he’s also benefited from training alongside some of the world’s best such as Josh Hoey, the reigning world indoor 800m champion, having linked up with Australian coach Justin Rinaldi last October.
“When you’re around guys like that every day, it does rub off on you. It’s more of a mindset thing. Josh is someone who believes he can do anything and that’s the kind of mindset I’ve tried to take into this year. You learn something from every athlete.”
Another big piece of the performance puzzle has been endurance. Its importance has been stressed to English in the past, but never has he applied it to the extent he does now.
“At the end of last year, I basically doubled my training volume and I didn’t think I was capable of doing that,” he says. “That’s allowed me to be more durable in terms of training and races, and that showed in the number of races I’ve been able to put back to back. You learn over the years what you’re capable of doing. You’re always surprising yourself. You really do never stop learning. All these things are multifactorial. It’s never just one thing.”
The 800m requires a delicate blend of speed and endurance, and English has experimented over the years in how to strengthen his weaknesses without weakening his strengths. “I think I’ve always had the speed, it’s just trying to patch together the different components that have allowed me to have the endurance from 600 metres into the race.”
He recalls a chat in 2020 with one of his rivals, Adam Kszczot of Poland, a two-time world outdoor medallist and six-time European gold medallist. “He said the 800m is all about getting to 600 metres feeling good,” says English. “That’s what I tried to work on over the last while.” He has also tweaked his weights routine, being careful to make sure it complements his running rather than leaving him tight or heavy-legged before key sessions or races. “In the 800, you need to get all these things right and you can’t neglect what makes you good in the first place, which for me is my speed.”
English has utilised his many gears to great effect in recent weeks, winning races in Los Angeles, Bydgoszcz and Hengelo. Now it’s time to face the world’s best. At the Oslo Diamond League on Thursday, he will take on five of the eight finalists from last year’s Olympics, including gold medallist Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya and bronze medallist Djamel Sedjati of Algeria. His goal? “It’s to test myself against the best. It’ll be an opportunity to run a fast time and it’ll be a fun experience.”
He will race in Ostrava on 24 June, then return to altitude for another training block ahead of the London Diamond League on 19 July. While he’s firmly looking ahead, it’s a week where he can also reflect on achieving a long-held ambition, one that fuelled him in recent years.
“I knew I had a 1:43 in me and I felt it would be very hard to hang up my spikes if I didn’t achieve what I knew I was capable of doing. I always see 1:43 as world-class territory and to do it the way I did it was really special. I’ve run PBs in the past and I might have come in fifth or sixth, but to win was special. It was a massive step forward.”
He knows that in this era, it guarantees nothing ahead of the World Championships in Tokyo. Twelve men broke 1:43 last year, and 23 broke 1:44. English has yet to reach a global 800m final and while he says that’s “always a goal,” he knows there are many rivers to cross over the next three months before he gets a shot.
It’s early days in the season, but he couldn’t be in a better place. As good as that run in Hengelo was, he knows he has not yet reached the ceiling. “There’s a faster time in me,” he says.
