Seb Coe

Look, I pay homage.

That group of people were the smartest group of people I've ever worked with in anything I've ever done.

And they were focused and they were committed.

They spent all their waking hours and probably far too many of their sleeping hours trying to figure out how to turn me into one of the fastest middle distance runners of my generation.

And they succeeded.

What they did absolutely imperiously

was to remove every inhibitor in my life or anything that would have prevented me from delivering in a final.

And so I had the luxury of walking onto the track knowing that on most occasions there was no stone unturned and there was nothing I was going to get thrown.

on the track and particularly in a final that we hadn't road tested and hadn't been thrown at me a thousand times on the training track.

And I think somewhere in that rather long-winded answer, which I accept it is, is the answer to the question.

I think that's why it lasted as long as it did.

And the absorption of oxygen too.

I mean, everybody gets transfixed on VO2 max, right?

which is an interesting indices, but it doesn't really tell you at what level and what level of efficiency that you're using that oxygen.

This was the stuff that we used to do with the physiological testing at Georgia State University, the blood chemistry analysis that told me when I was approaching overload or overtraining, which reduced, again,

the potential for injuries, all that stuff was really carefully calibrated.

I work with a nutritionist.

And I have really good...

Good, competent nutritionist, again, out of a really sports based university in the US.

And they were quite liberal about this.