Running: The Autobiography (3 page)

I’d been at the club around six months and was loving it. Then I started on the 10 kilometres. I don’t know why 10 kilometres is such a perfect distance, but it is. I suppose it’s a sprint, but still a long way. If you can run six miles you can run 10 miles, and if you can run 10 miles you can run 13. And the thing is, once I started running – really running – I wasn’t interested in jogging, I wanted to give it my all. I’m not the first sportsman to get obsessed by the 10 kilometres – though maybe the others didn’t to the same extent. The great England batsman Kevin Pietersen had the same thing. There was a time he was touring India, and all he seemed bothered about was getting his 10 kilometres down. He’d finish a day at a Test
match, the team would all get in the coach and then he’d be, like, right I’m running six miles back to the hotel. At one point he said he had to decide whether to focus on getting a PB with his running or his cricket. I could understand it because that’s just how I was.

I became a running bore. Just talked about it all the time. I knew I couldn’t go to the snooker and bore them all with it because they weren’t interested, but I could talk endlessly about it to the fellas at the club. In the end I stopped hanging round snooker venues or with players except when there was a match on. I used to get my mate to ring up the local running club if I was playing in, say, Telford, tell them I was coming down and that I’d like to join them for a run.

And if I wasn’t out running I’d be having dinner with one of the runners I’d made friends with. The only way I could enjoy my snooker was if I could run while I was away, so snooker tournaments became like training camps – an opportunity to run with different runners and try different routes.

Running became so much more important to me than snooker. After a while I wasn’t worried if I won the World Championship, so long as I could get my runs in and improve my PB. Everything else was secondary. I’d established ages ago that I had an addictive personality and that I tend to pursue things to the end. Now it was just about trying to make the addictions healthy ones. I knew if I was sitting in the pub or in a snooker hall I’d get bored and need a bit of excitement in my life – and that meant benders. So I thought, well, as long as I stay away from those places and hang around gyms and running clubs then I can channel that addiction for the good.

Running is such a different world from snooker. It’s outdoors, it’s physical and the very opposite of that claustrophobic snooker hall. Sometimes when I’m on TV I’m so aware of the
camera picking up every tiny thing I’m doing – flicking my ear, picking my nose, twitching my eyes. It interrogates you. Horrible. But in some ways running and snooker aren’t so different. You’re still on your own – you get the disappointments, you get the glory, it’s all for yourself. It’s still a one-man-band sport. Whereas snooker is all about technique, running is much more blood, guts, determination and finding something within yourself to keep going. There are times when you think you can’t keep going, but you do. And after a race you swear you’re never going to put yourself through that again, as you cross the finishing line, but invariably you do. It’s so painful, and you just wonder what made you do it. Nearly all runners feel the same – even those who make it look easy and win all the races. But when you see you had a good race, and you’re getting somewhere, and getting rewards for it, it makes it all worthwhile.

When I did my first 10 kilometres at the club, it took me 39 minutes. Then I whittled it down by a couple of minutes – almost six-minute miling. The next goal was to get under six-minute miling. It was becoming an obsession. I thought if I could only run 5.50-minute miles I’d be happy. I did the Southend 10 kilometres and started off terribly. I felt really heavy legged because I’d been on a bender the night before; not a heavy bender, but I’d been smoking a few spliffs and that, and I remember getting out and feeling lethargic. The first three miles I thought, I’m going to have a nightmare here, then after that I started to get going. I picked a few off and ended up coming in my best time, which was 36.30 minutes. But I was still really pissed off because it meant I was just outside sub-six-minute miles.

Then I did the Essex cross-country, a tough 8½-mile race, and I came 27th. A decent result. I was cream-crackered by the end, no energy; I was just gone. I could have fallen asleep
standing up. But everybody was saying to me, that was a really good race.

The biggest race I did was the Southern England cross-country. All the top boys who run in the European cross-countries and the World Championship were competing, and I finished 180th out of a field of 1,200. I came off saying that was horrible, and I never wanted to do it again. A friend said exactly the same, and he told me it was the hardest race I’ll ever do – a three-mile loop over Parliament Hill that you have to go around three times. What a fantastic run, though – nine miles cross-country; it took me just over an hour up-and downhill. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that was a good achievement.

The only time I’d miss my Tuesday nights at the club was when I found other runners to run with. For example, I found this Irish fella, Matt, and he could only run between 6 and 8 a.m., so I’d have to meet him in the morning. He was much faster than anybody else I’d run with on the track, and I was looking for somebody to push me on, so I’d run with him two or three times a week. They would be eight-mile runs and from the go it was fast. So I’d get to 3–4 miles and be knackered, but hanging on, and he wouldn’t stop, he just kept going. Most of the time I didn’t even know where I was, and I just had to keep him within my sight so I didn’t get lost. Eventually that took my running on to another level.

I’ve often wondered if it’s the same competitive instinct that makes me run and makes me play snooker. I’m pretty sure it is. It’s not that I’m a bad loser but I don’t like losing, and they are two different things. And with the running, it wasn’t always about the winning, it was about how could I improve. Running taught me a lot about snooker as well. Even though the sports are so different, the tips I picked up running translated into the day job. In running, you could be a great trainer or
a great racer, but you couldn’t be both. What I mean is, you can’t give your all to both. You either have to cut back on your training to be fresh for your races, or concentrate more on the training than the actual races. You’d get people flying round on a Tuesday night and you’d think they’re unbeatable and they’d do the same on Thursday but come Saturday they’ve got dead legs. They’d still race, but they were well past their best by then. You had to leave a little bit in the tank in training: train your bollocks off Tuesday and Thursday but don’t race Saturday; or train Tuesday, then go steady Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and your legs are fresh Saturday and you’d have a good race.

Eventually I got 10 kilometres down to 34 minutes. I’d say anything under 36 minutes is decent club running, and this was 5.40 minutes a mile. I couldn’t believe I was running that fast. Having said that, this is not great running: it’s decent club running.

I learnt so much from the training regime and started applying it to snooker. If you run all the time you end up physically exhausted. I’d always thought you had to give your all to training in the build-up to a snooker tournament. Six hours a day for a month building up to, say, the World Championship. But the running taught me you can overdo it. Sometimes you can do half an hour, and that’s just fine. The week before a tournament your practice should be done, and you should have started winding down.

I want to do it, I’m chomping at the bit, but the reality is it’s not that good for you. Sometimes I wouldn’t practise at all and just trust myself. Maybe a month before a tournament I’d put the hours in, but now the week before I just relax. A week before a marathon, runners will hardly run; they just do a mile or two or three to keep their legs ticking over. No more intensive stuff; that’s already in the bank, and you’ve got to let your
body recover. Then, boom! Whether you’re playing well or not, now it’s time to switch on and be ready mentally. As long as you’ve got a full tank to draw on, there’s no point going to an event driving yourself mad and leaving your best form on the practice table.

The more I ran, the more obsessed I became. Now I had a new dream. I wanted to represent my county at cross-country. (To put this in context, my fastest at 10 kilometres put me in the top 1,500 in the UK, so I wasn’t reckoning on an Olympic medal.) To do that you had to get into the top six in Essex, and I thought that was doable. I’d come 27th in my first year running, and I thought if I could just devote more time to it, give me two years, maybe three. But that was the problem. I couldn’t devote more time to it. I was still a full-time snooker player and everyone in the game was telling me I was mad giving so much to the running.

I was doing a lot of road races – local ones within a 10-to 20-mile radius of where we lived. At one stage I was racing every other weekend, and running really had become the most important thing in my life. It was the only thing I talked about, yattering away on the phone every night.

‘Alright, Alan?’

‘Alright, Ron, how you doing?’

‘Yeah, good. But not good enough. Got to get under six minutes. Getting there, I think. Fuckin’ ’ell, I was done for by the end of my ten kilometres. Lovely out there, fresh, crisp, cold, but it killed me.’ But I loved the fact that it took so much out of me.

I loved the routine. My mate would come over to me, we’d get there for 11.30, get dressed, ready for 12, ready to race at 12.30, timings done, shower, boom boom boom. In the pub for 3.30–4 p.m., just on the orange juice, focused, everyone
talking about their time, the race, where they’d come.

It’s funny that it became such a huge ambition to represent Essex. Let’s face it, there was no money in it for me, and no status – you’re not going to be remembered for having run for your county, are you? Certainly, I’d be better off concentrating on the snooker from a financial point of view. And yet still there was something pushing me on. I was desperate to do it. I began to think if I
did
represent Essex it would be the same as winning the World Championship. The running replaced AA and NA meetings in my life. There wasn’t time for meetings, snooker and running. One had to give way, so it was the meetings. By now I looked totally different. I weighed 11½ stone and was down to a 31-inch waist. Everybody would go, you look really ill, and I’d think, great, that must mean I’m really fit. Then, when they said to me: ‘You look really well’, I’d think: ‘Shit, I’ve put weight on.’ I knew when I looked gaunt that I was in good shape and could run a good race. I’d be flush, I’d think, cor I’m flying.

In 2008 I was playing well and won the World Championship for the third time. I really was flying then. I’d beaten Ali Carter in the final, my daughter Lily was just over a year old, little Ronnie had just been born, I was world champion: life was good. About a week after the Crucible final I won my first race and I did it for charity. There were 150 to 200 people racing. When I was overweight and did it, I came about 100th. Middle of the pack.

This time round we got to the race in Epping Forest and my mate the mad Irishman’s running. He was about 42, and he could run – about 33 minutes for 10 kilometres. He was a class act. I thought, there’s no way I’m going to beat him so I just sat in behind him in about fourth or fifth. I thought, I’ll stick on his shoulder and I did till mile two. After about two and a
half miles I got in front of him and I thought, come on, you’re in front, just push on. So I pushed on and pushed on and won it by 40 to 50 seconds. And I’d done five miles in 27 minutes. I couldn’t believe it – the thrill of running through the tape, and winning £80 worth of vouchers. I was buzzing. Ecstatic. It was on the back page of the local Epping Forest paper. Me on the sports pages – and not for my snooker. I’d always wanted to make
Athletics Weekly
and I thought the only way I was going to do that was through running.

But that day in Epping Forest I peaked. I don’t know why but it all went downhill from there. I’m still hoping it hasn’t – that I’ll get back and beat my PB. Maybe I just got a bit lazy. Maybe I didn’t know where to go on to once I’d won a race. I suppose it was always going to be impossible balancing the running and snooker.

One of the problems was with Jo, my then partner and the mother of Lily and Ronnie. She always felt my running was selfish because she’d had two kids and was bringing them up and I was out playing snooker and running. She didn’t like me going out racing, then she didn’t like the mess I’d bring in – dirty running gear, dirty legs. Often I’d put my clothes on top of my clobber, run upstairs, get in the shower and wash all the mud off before she’d had time to complain about it. Running was probably one of the things that brought our relationship to an end.

2

WHEN LIFE KICKS
YOU UP THE ARSE

‘Monday, five miles, 47 minutes. Did not enjoy my run, calves felt tight, lost my love for it at the moment, it feels like an effort.’

Life has a knack of kicking you up the arse when things are going well just to remind you who’s boss. It was 2008: I’d just won the UK and World Championships, I’d made three 147s that season, my running was going brilliantly, I had a beautiful baby and a two-year-old toddler. I was on top of the world. In theory. Unfortunately, my relationship with Jo was collapsing.

The role of dad has always been important to me – I knew what it was to have a good dad who would do everything for you, and I knew what it was like to lose one for the best part of 20 years. I’d always thought I would be a dad, but didn’t really know what to expect.

I was only 20 when I became a father, but unfortunately I’ve never really been part of Taylor’s life, so I had never properly experienced what it meant to be a dad. And then, when Lily was born, it suddenly hit me. Boom! It’s hard to put into words what it’s like. When friends of mine are having their first baby, I tell them this is going to be the best feeling you’ll ever have.
That’s what it was for me. It just gave a bit more meaning to life. Everything seemed to have more point.

I was there for the birth. Jo had an emergency Caesarean because the cord wrapped round Lily’s neck, and they said, we’re going to have to do a quick Caesarean and get her out. It wasn’t planned, but it worked out well because it was short and sweet. I got a phone call, rushed down there, didn’t know what to expect. It was 2–3 a.m. You get to the hospital and it’s all quick, quick, quick. You’re panicking, but for the nurses it’s just an everyday thing. Then, within 10 to 15 minutes, it was done. The baby came out, it’s a girl. Wow! Pure elation.

I was 28 and life suddenly made more sense. Until then I had just been playing tournament to tournament and one year rolled into the next; then Lily arrives and a sense of responsibility comes with it. It was a bit of pressure, I suppose, because I had to provide for this little baby. I’d provided for Taylor for eight years, but because I didn’t have an active role in her growing up it didn’t feel like it. You stop thinking so much about yourself as a self-contained unit and more about yourself as a father – making sure the baby eats and sleeps and has a good home.

When you’re just looking after yourself you kind of know you can get through to the other end, and in the end it will be alright. The feeling I had now was almost primitive – I was the hunter-gatherer, the provider. Family has always been important to me, and we have always been a close unit, even when both Mum and Dad were banged up in jail. Mum, Dad, me and my younger sister, Danielle – the O’Sullivans. We’d always supported each other throughout, and this is what I hoped for with my new family. We were close in every way. Last year I bought a house in Loughton, a couple of miles away from the rest of the family in Chigwell, and I couldn’t cope. I thought,
what have I done? It was like another world to me, and I seemed to spend all the time driving from Loughton to Chigwell so I knew it wasn’t right for me. Mum, my snooker table at Mum’s, Dad, Danielle, my running routes, my local haunts, like the bagel bar, are all around Chigwell. Sometimes you don’t realise how rooted you are in your community; it took me moving a few miles down the road to realise it!

So when Lily was born it was important to be around Chig-well. For the first few months Jo and I were getting on fine. We’d started going out in 2001 and had been together for around five years. Jo and I met at Narcotics Anonymous, where we were both being treated for addiction. We had a bond from the start, and in the early days we got on great. We’d always had our little tiffs, like everyone does, but soon after Lily was born things started to become difficult. Before, I’d always had my own routine. Ask any sportsman or sportswoman and they’ll tell you the same. Without routine you’re lost; you’re not going to achieve anything. I would go for my runs, work out in the gym, play my snooker. But when Jo was pregnant there was more pressure on my time. She wanted me to go to all the meetings about childbirth and getting ready to have a baby, but I wasn’t into all that. Perhaps I could have been more supportive, but I saw that as her role. I was there for her to tell me about it when I came home, but I couldn’t break up my day for hospital appointments and meetings about birthing pools or how to pack your bag for the maternity ward.

I didn’t feel it was something I had to contribute to until the baby came along, and I always felt we’d know what to do when it happened. I’ve never been one for preparing for things; I’ve always been much more, let it happen and see how it goes. I think men are just constructed differently from women biologically. There is something in women that makes them want
to prepare for babies, and they feel it much earlier than men do – ’course they do, they’re carrying the baby. Whereas for fellas, we’re not really involved and don’t understand what our contribution is supposed to be till the baby arrives.

I’m not saying I’m right, but this is the life of most successful sportsmen. We need our routine; we need to be focused; we are selfish; we do have to put ourselves first. Jo wanted more of my time, but I didn’t know how to change and wasn’t sure if I could change.

Sportsmen also tend to be superstitious, and I thought any slight change to what I was doing would detract from where I wanted to go. Also, practice is bloody important. As Matthew Syed says in his great book
Bounce
, it’s not natural-born genius that tends to distinguish high-achievers from less successful sports people, it’s practice – he reckons that you’re never going to get anywhere in a sport unless you’ve put in 10,000 hours’ practice, and he’s got a point. Then, when you’ve put in your 10,000 hours you can’t just stop. You’ve got to keep practising, reinforcing your good habits. So the idea that you could give all your practice a miss, then just turn up for tournaments, was always going to be a nonsense to me.

It might seem old-fashioned, but the way my life is it was always going to be my partner’s main role to bring up the kids. I don’t mean that in a sexist way. I’d be happy to do it if I wasn’t playing. And I am happy to do it when I’m away from the game. But the reality of life for any sportsman is that you’re on the road loads of the time, travelling from hotel to hotel, earning your crust. Obviously, I’d be there once I finished my practice and come home and bath them and feed them, do whatever, but it never quite worked out that way.

I spoke to other snooker players who had become dads to see how they felt, and how they worked out their fatherhood
responsibilities. So I chatted to Stephen Hendry and Jo Perry – I chose them because Stephen’s the best the game has known, and Jo hadn’t achieved as much but had still dedicated his life to sport. In terms of application, there was probably no difference between the two, but one was seven-time world champion and the other was a good player who hadn’t won the same kind of silverware. I wanted two different perspectives. Jo Perry told me: ‘I get up in the morning, go to do my snooker, go to the gym, and when I come back from the gym my missus says, do you want to help feed, put the baby down, and it’s all great.’ Stephen Hendry said: ‘My life didn’t change at all, my missus knew what I was like, I was down the snooker club five hours a day, I’d be in the gym in the morning for an hour, my missus was happy for me to do anything I had to. If anything she was, get the fuck out of the house because you’re getting in my way.’

For any sportsman a successful relationship is always tricky to negotiate, particularly where kids are involved. Talk to any golfer or tennis player, anyone who spends most of the year on the road. Yes, they might well want to be home most of the time, and share all the domestic responsibilities, but that’s not ever going to be the reality while they take their sport seriously. It’s impossible. The simple truth is that for those years you’re playing sport at the highest level, you can’t maintain a true balance between family and job, and something has to give. In the relationships that work, wives and girlfriends accept that they are going to be left to shoulder the burden of bringing up kids unless they hand over to childminders. It ain’t ideal, but life’s not ideal. Of course, lots of women don’t want that deal – they want their own career, their fella at home most evenings, shared responsibilities. My advice to them? Don’t get involved with a sportsman – and certainly don’t have their kids. (One of the few exceptions is football where it is much easier to be around a lot
of the time because you’re only playing once or twice a week for 90 minutes, and after training you have so much spare time – but even then you’re going to have loads of time when you’re simply not around for your partner.)

Again, I want to stress I was never going to be the easiest person to live with. But that was obvious from day one. I’ve always been obsessive about practising. There’s nothing unusual about that – Steve Davis once said he overpractised when he was at his peak, but if he didn’t he felt guilty. If you didn’t practise you felt guilty, and if you felt guilty you didn’t play well. Daft, I know, but that’s how it works. It’s difficult enough to make any relationship work, but so much more so when you are on the road for so much of your life. I couldn’t blame Jo for getting frustrated, but nor could I change my lifestyle unless I gave up snooker.

At the time, running was a huge help. It would clear my head. I was running well then, and keeping records of my progress. I was flying back then. And the running was holding me together. I learnt how to manage family, conflict and snooker as best as I could. I decided the best thing to do was move out of home three days before a tournament started, so by the time I got to the tournament I was clear-headed for the first round.

I was running away. I knew that was the only way to manage my career, and that I had to keep playing snooker. I wanted to be there as much as I could with the children and as a family man, but in my mind the most important thing was that I went to work and did as well as I could just to support my family.

My relationship with Jo broke down and I began to feel useless as a dad. There came a time when even running couldn’t sort out my mind. I felt defeated. I wanted to be at home with my family, I wanted to be able to go to work; I was in a fortunate
position and I should have been enjoying all those things, but it just wasn’t happening.

Ever since I was a kid it had been instilled in me that you have to give your everything to your job, and my job was snooker. So the idea that I could only enjoy the family side of life if I gave up on the professional side was always going to be something I struggled with.

I was putting off the inevitable, which was that we would split up. I just thought if I stuck around, saw through the bad times, things would turn around. With Taylor I felt I’d done the wrong thing. I wished I’d been part of her life, and there was guilt there. I didn’t want to break a family up. I always remember when I was younger and Mum and Dad would have an argument and he’d go away for four or five days and then he’d pick me up on Saturday to go to football. I’d always be crying, knowing that I wasn’t going to see him for a week or so. I didn’t want to put my family through that, too. In my heart I just wanted to be there and not separate the family.

Anytime I wasn’t playing snooker I wanted to do something with Lily. Sometimes I’d take her over to the cross-country races. I’d wrap her up, keep her nice and warm, put her in the pram and off we’d go. I expected that would be how it panned out – when I was playing Jo would look after the kids; when I wasn’t I assumed I’d come in and take over. Even though in lots of ways the life of a sportsman is uncompromising and inflexible, in other ways there are huge pluses. If you’re working a regular nine to five you’re not going to be able to call for the kids from school, but in my job there was plenty of opportunity for stuff like that.

The first two months after Lily was born were great. We were both ecstatic about having a baby, but it wasn’t long before it went sour again and we were living separate lives. Then Jo
told me she was pregnant again, and I was delighted. I thought another kid would help us and I’d always wanted two anyway.

Eighteen months after Lily was born little Ronnie came along. His was a natural birth, and it seemed to go on for ever and ever. He was born at Harlow hospital. When I was there for Lily’s birth, the feeling was unbelievable; ecstatic, shared, beautiful. I’d not been there for the birth of Taylor, so this was the first time I’d seen it. By the time little Ronnie was born, I was more prepared for it; I’d been through the emotions, so it didn’t have quite the same impact. But it was great to have two kids. I’d always felt that when Lily was born we have to have another – it was only fair for her to have a brother or sister. I didn’t want her to be an only child.

When Lily was born she was so aware; she looked as if she knew everything that was going on. Little Ronnie was quieter, a bit more away with the fairies. They were very different children, and still are. Ronnie is much more laid back, Lily is more talkative and outgoing. Yet Lily is shyer than Ronnie when she first meets people. He just stays the same whoever he’s with. Little Ronnie is probably more like me.

It was such a buzz taking the babies to see Dad for the first time. He was at Long Lartin when Lily was born. Dad was excited for me – and for himself. Then, when Jo was pregnant for the second time, I told Dad she was expecting a boy.

‘You’ve got to call him Ronnie,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I said.

The name was pretty much decided. Three generations of Ronnie: Ronnie Senior, Ronnie Junior and little Ronnie. Mum has a brilliant way of distinguishing the three Ronnies. You can always tell who she’s talking to. ‘Ro-
nnnnnie
’, gentle and loving and going up at the end – that would be for little Ronnie. ‘Ronnnnie’, still fairly gentle and loving but more grown up
– that would be for me. And then the bark: ‘Ron!’ That’s for my dad.