“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything only happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.”
Paul Bowles didn’t exactly have running in mind when he wrote that epilogue in The Sheltering Sky, his classic novel of existential despair, but maybe it’s the backdrop to all our lives.
Something about this time of year, and especially Wednesday’s harvest moon, also brings those words to life. For most runners, autumn is the season of hope and renewal. Not spring. It’s the time to once again delve into that seemingly inexhaustible well, possibly realising it might be for the last time. For the elite runner of a certain age, that must ring true.
Often their hardest decision is knowing when to retire. Some are lucky to end their career on a high. Most will quietly exit on a low. Then there is Mark English, the Donegal runner who has just endured the kindest and cruellest of seasons in one go – and is perhaps experiencing some existential despair of his own.
Because at the age 32 he’d unquestionably reached new heights over the 800 metres, breaking the Irish record indoors and outdoors four times, and winning another European Indoor bronze medal, his fifth championship medal in all. That made him the most decorated male athlete in Irish athletics history.
In the weeks before the World Championships in Tokyo, English ran his third Irish outdoor record this season when clocking 1:43.37 in Budapest, over a full second faster than he’d ever run before this year. He also wrapped up his 10th Irish 800m title, to sit alongside his nine indoor titles, the first of which was won 14 years ago. Not since the heyday of middle-distance running at Morton Stadium was there a more popular or celebrated victory.
Some of us in attendance that day suspected English might have a race on his hands, and it looked that way coming into the homestretch when 23-year-old Cian McPhillips from Longford sat right on his shoulder. Without once glancing back, English shifted gear again and fairly blew him away.
By the time English got to Tokyo, his seventh successive World Championships, he’d run six of his fastest 800m times ever and won more races than in any previous season. Including his last tune-up in Beijing. At that point he’d made no secret of his desire to write some more Irish athletics history by becoming the first Irish runner to make a World Championship 800m final.
“I’m the fittest I’ve ever been in my life,” English said more than once, and there was ample evidence of that. He credited part of his resurgence this season to his new Australian coach Justin Rinaldi, who like English is a meticulous student of the event, and a connoisseur of two-lap racing. English also trained at altitude for the first time since 2018, and his closing speed over the last 100m, the ally of every 800m runner, had never looked stronger.
But no one, least of all English, could have predicted the revolution in Irish 800m running that unfolded in Tokyo inside 48 hours. After both English and McPhillips safely negotiated their 800m heats, English was up first in the semi-finals, where despite a bold move to the front with 200m to go, he ended up third in 1:45.47. Only the top two progressed to the final, although there was still a chance English might get through as a fastest non-qualifier.
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That was until the second semi-final was won by McPhillips in 1:43.18, the fastest semi-final winning time in World Championship history, a time which would have won him the gold medal in the last two editions. It improved his own best by over a second, McPhillips taking the Irish record from English.
It did create another bit of history involving English, just not the kind he’d imagined, as it was the first time the Irish 800m record was broken by two different athletes in the same season.
And there was a lot more to come from McPhillips. English may have become the first Irish athlete to break 1:44 this season, but McPhillips smashed through the 1:43 barrier when running 1:42.15 to finish fourth in the final, just 0.2 of a second off bronze.
The stats behind that race continue to stagger: McPhillips was only beaten by the three medallists from last summer’s Paris Olympics, and his 1:42.15, the sixth fastest time in European athletics history, would have won him gold at every previous World Championships bar none.
It’s not hard to imagine how English must have felt, seeing his times and ambitions suddenly wiped clean by McPhillips, effectively 10 years his junior, and still only getting started. Respect and envy would naturally exist for any competitive runner.
Despite our strong tradition in the event, the Irish 800m record has been slow to budge over the years. Ronnie Delany took it down to 1:47.1 in 1961, and only five men have broken the record since; Niall O’Shaughnessy, Marcus O’Sullivan, David Matthews, then English and McPhillips.
It took 26 years before English first broke the record set by Matthews in 1995, and in one fell swoop McPhillips has put the record within reach of the 1:42 barrier.
Unlike many athletes of his age, English also has his medical career to fall back on. All that might be enough to leave him contemplating retirement, but if you take McPhillips out of the picture, English still produced the most extraordinary season for Irish 800m running. And even though he turns 33 next March, there is nothing whatsoever to suggest his well has run dry.
It’s likely he’ll join Rinaldi’s training group in Australia over the winter months, and there’s a European Championships in Birmingham next August where he has the chance to win a sixth championship medal. Better still, the rivalry like he now has with McPhillips only happens a certain number of times in any sport.
And a very small number, really.
