Ran into Khalid Skah yesterday

I bumped into Khalid Skah yesterday and had a very interesting talk with him. He is probably (after Gebrselassie) one of the most credited runners ever in the long distances. He won the Olympic 10000 Gold in 1992, has a silver and bronze from the…

World Track Championships, has won World Cross Country (twice), the World Cup plus World Half Marathon. He also had a world record (two mile I think). A very complete runner – with great endurance and at his best under 12 seconds for the last 100 in a race and 24 for the last 200.

I like talking to him once in a while because he has extremely high natural training intelligence. He is always hunting for the right kind of training and knows his body much better than most other elites I have met. So you always get something clever out of the conversations. We had a discussion around training progress, hill work, training cycles, altitude training and race preparations. His next big race will be in Paris, the World Champs in the marathon (already selected for Marrocco)

He came to Norway as a 14.20 kind of runner and progressed down to winning the Olympics and running 13.00 in the 5000 (when the WR was 12.58) An incredible story. We decided to talk some more while in St.Moritz at the same time this summer (most of July for both)

Tomorrow is another track workout. I had a great threshold session yesterday and am slowly preparing myself for Florø.

Marius