Still full of running

THE hair is a fair bit shorter, and the distinctive yellow vest has disappeared, but it still doesn’t take long to identify the runner picking his way through the tracks and trails of Kielder Forest.

Steve Cram won World Championship gold, Olympic Games silver and set three world records in the space of 19 days during an athletics career that saw him become one of the most popular sportsmen in the country.

Enough, you would imagine, to merit a quiet retirement.

Yet, 17 years after hanging up his spikes for the final time, the Jarrow-born 50-year-old remains as competitive and driven as ever.

Immediately recognisable thanks to his past, there is no such thing as a quiet afternoon run for Cram. Spend a few moments in his company, though, and you quickly realise he would not have it any other way.

“Running is a social activity, and it’s great to have that interaction with people when you’re out and about,” he said. “I’ve only recently got back into running and I’m enjoying it now much more than I ever thought I would.

“I don’t live far from Kielder, so I do a lot of my running there, and it’s great to watch people’s reactions as you’re running by.

“I see them watching me and realising who I am, and then I hear them as I’m running past saying, ‘That’s Steve Cram’. The only problem is, because of what I’ve done, they expect me to be super-fit and super-athletic.

“I’m nowhere near as fit as I used to be, but I feel like I have to live up to what they want me to be. Even when I’m feeling a bit tired, I always try to put on a bit of a spurt when I’m going past someone who’s seen who I am. One of these days though, I’m going to embarrass myself and have to stop to catch my breath.”

Like thousands of social runners up and down the country, Cram took up running again when he began to feel his lack of fitness was affecting his everyday life.

Having lapsed into a sedentary lifestyle, the North-Easterner set himself a target of completing this November’s New York marathon and drew up a training programme to get him in peak condition for the race.

Every now and then, he encounters difficulties that most other runners will not experience – last weekend, for example, he struggled to complete a planned 30-minute run because the 30C heat in Doha, Qatar, was hardly conducive to endurance training – but most of the obstacles he is forced to overcome will be familiar to many social athletes.

“I’m like everybody else,” he said. “I have a fairly busy life and it’s hard to fit the running around everything else I have in my schedule.

“It’s all about setting yourself a goal, like I have with the New York marathon, and then ticking off little targets along the way.

“It’s also about dragging yourself out for a run when you really can’t be bothered. I’m sure every runner, no matter what level they’re at, has felt like that at some stage, but generally once you’re out there running, you’re glad you made the effort.”

AS a passionate advocate of the health benefits of social running, Cram is proud to be associated with the Sunderland City 10k race that will start and finish in the city’s Stadium of Light on Sunday, June 26.

With the support of Sunderland AFC and Sunderland City Council, Cram is hoping to attract up to 2,500 runners on to the streets of Sunderland for an event that is set to become a permanent fixture on the North- East sporting calendar.

Building on the success of the Great North 10k that took place in the city last year, Cram envisages a festival of athletics that could include a fulblown marathon in 12 months’ time.

This year’s event will also include a host of family activities based at a “Fun Zone” at the Stadium of Light, with organisers particularly keen to attract youngsters who might otherwise turn their back on exercise and sport.

“The idea is to put on an event that energises Sunderland and the wider North-East area,” said Cram. “I want this year’s race to do two things.

“First, I want it to provide an opportunity for the people of Sunderland and County Durham to experience the thrill of a mass participation race on their own doorstep.

“There’s loads of people involved in running in our part of the world and, hopefully, this will bring them together for a really fun day.

“But I also want this to be the start of something bigger in the future. I’d love to be putting on a marathon next year and then maybe some elite mile races the year after that.

“I’d also like to establish a trust that people can run to raise money for. If they don’t want to run for a specific charity, they can raise money for a trust, and we’d have a board that distributed that money to sporting clubs and organisations in the region.

“It would be great to think, moving forward, we could have people running to help raise money for a football club pavilion or some facilities for a local athletics track.”

• An entry form for this year’s Sunderland City 10k can be found on Page 9 of today’s Northern Echo.

Follow Steve Cram's Sunderland City 10k training blog exclusively on The Northern Echo website from May 23.