Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography (26 page)

My main training partner would be Galen Rupp, who I already knew from competing against him in cross country and track events. Galen was three years younger than me, and the star of the Oregon Project – the guy they called the ‘project’s project’. He’d been training with Alberto since the age of fourteen and became a project member straight out of Central Catholic High School in Portland. Like me, Galen had preferred playing football as a kid. Like me, he was also very fast: in his high school freshman year he was running 200 metres in under 30 seconds. And also like me, Galen had almost no interest in running before his coaches persuaded him to start running on the track. We had a lot of things in common off the track as well. We both enjoyed playing FIFA; we both loved pancakes; we had the same taste in music, even down to the fact that we both had the same track playing for the first dance at our weddings (‘Differences’ by Ginuwine). We looked at each other and were both like, ‘What are the chances of that?!?’

Alberto also introduced me to the rest of the project members: Alan Webb, a middle-distance runner who’d been an American high-school prodigy; Kara Goucher and her husband Adam; and Dathan Ritzenhein, who took bronze at the Birmingham half-marathon in 2009 when I had first met Alberto, although he wasn’t in Portland at the time. It was a small, tight group. I went out for runs with Galen to get a feel for the intensity of training I’d be doing. In the evenings the entire group went out for a meal downtown. Being around Alberto, Galen and the other guys, everything just seemed to click. It felt right. I could see that Alberto was creating something special here. I thought, ‘This is the place to be.’

On the third day Alberto told me that he’d be flying down to Albuquerque in New Mexico to see how things were going with Dathan. I’d join him later, but for the next few days I would stay on in Portland and get to know the other project members a little better. Alan Webb had a spare room, so I crashed there. I spent some more time hanging out with Galen. On the fourth day I caught a flight to New Mexico and met Dathan, and was there for a day or two. The more time I spent around Alberto and his group, the more I wanted to be a part of things.

I flew back to London, pumped with excitement. Talking to the guys in the group, seeing the facilities, spending time with Alberto, everything had confirmed to me what I’d already known: moving to Portland was the right thing to do. When I got back home, I sat Tania down and told her all about the trip. She could see that I wanted to make the move. Even though it meant moving away from our friends and her family, Tania was happy for me; she was willing to do whatever I felt was right for my running career. The move was more difficult for Rhianna. She’d just started school and was beginning to make friends. Uprooting her and changing her life was the biggest obstacle we had to overcome. But while I was in Portland, I’d done my research about where we’d live, the schools in the area that might be suitable for Rhianna. I had it all planned out. We also had to consider the fact that even though we’d be moving to the US as a family, there’d inevitably be long stretches of time when Tania and Rhianna would be pretty much on their own while I was off at training camp.

Ultimately, both Tania and I felt the move was the right one for me. It really wasn’t that hard a decision to reach. Sure, we’d have some adjustments to make to live in another country. But Tania had seen me finish sixth or seventh in the field behind the Kenyans so many times, she knew as well as I did that something had to change. She had just one question.

‘Do you genuinely believe this guy will help your career?’

I nodded. ‘A hundred per cent.’

‘Then, okay.’

That sealed it, really. We took Rhianna out of school and in February 2011 moved into a rented three-bedroom apartment in Portland. I say ‘apartment’ but it was more like a decent-sized house. The Londoner in me was stunned by how big people’s homes were in the US. Portland was pleasingly chilled, a very relaxed city. Everyone was so nice to us when we moved in. People had time for us. It’s the opposite of somewhere like New York, where everyone is busy all of the time. It turned out to be a good age for Rhianna to move too. When you’re five years old, you can adapt easily and you don’t really think too much about things. She treated the move like one big holiday. And Rhianna was already well travelled by that age; flying on a plane for her is like jumping on a bus.

Having said that, relocating was a stressful period for me and my family. When we headed out to the US, I was under the impression that our visas would be issued shortly after we settled in. In reality, merely beginning the process of obtaining a US residential visa takes a while. We had a top, top lawyer appointed by Nike and working on our behalf to handle the visa process during our initial months in the US. We kept waiting to hear. We kept hearing nothing. While we waited for our visas to be issued, we were stuck in a sort of limbo. I couldn’t officially become a member of the Oregon Project because I wasn’t with Nike and I wasn’t a US citizen. Alberto appreciated the unique situation, so I was still allowed to train at the Nike campus – but because I wasn’t formally a Nike athlete, I would turn up for training twice a day dressed head to toe in adidas kit. (My contract with adidas had expired but my new one with Nike hadn’t started yet.) This was the Nike world headquarters, a massive campus with thousands of employees, and under normal circumstances, it’s forbidden to walk around with so much as another sponsor’s logo on your socks, let alone with a logo splashed all over your hat, your top, your leggings and trainers. I stood out like a sore thumb and if it had been anyone else, I would have been ejected. Thankfully Alberto put in a word with the top guys at Nike, including Phil Knight himself, the CEO and founder of the company. He told them that I was with Alberto, that I would eventually be signed up to Nike once my visa situation had been sorted out. Although that didn’t stop people coming up to me during my first weeks on the campus and saying, ‘What are you wearing?’

The wait for our visas dragged on. Rhianna couldn’t enrol at school. I was getting frustrated with the delay. Weeks turned into months. Tania started to worry about how much school Rhianna was missing. In early May the lawyer advised us that in order to get our US visas we would need to leave the country and present ourselves at the US Consulate General Office in Toronto, where we had an appointment (the closest US embassy to Portland was actually in Vancouver, but they had no appointments for the next two months, which is why we made the longer trip to Toronto). All we had to do was turn up at the consulate, hand over our passports and have an interview. Then they’d stamp our passports and we’d be allowed to return to the US. The lawyer informed us that the process should take no longer than four days. That was the timescale we were given. We packed our suitcases with enough clothes for four or five days, booked a room at a nearby hotel – and off we went.

We arrived at the Consulate General on University Avenue for our scheduled appointment with all our paperwork in order and one of the best lawyers in the US handling our case. But instead of being invited in for an interview, the staff immediately handed our passports back to us, along with a piece of paper which more or less said that the consulate could not process our visa application because we were being investigated by the FBI. This was a shock. We hadn’t been expecting this. Tania scanned this piece of paper and sent it across to the lawyer. He was stunned. It turned out that the reason why we were under investigation was because my passport stated that I was born in Mogadishu, which was a hotspot for terrorism at the time. The authorities had taken one look at my passport, noted my place of birth and decided that I needed to be investigated, ignoring the fact that I had been vouched for by Nike and had competed in the Olympic Games. We were then told that our applications couldn’t be processed until the FBI had done a full background check on me. They would also need to investigate Tania and Rhianna because they were also on my application. The lawyer said the process could take up to ninety days. In the meantime we wouldn’t be allowed back in the US.

By this point we were panicking hard. It wasn’t as if we could simply go back to London. Our home was Portland now. All our clothes and possessions were there. And this was a World Championship year. I had some big meets coming up and I needed to train. I was losing fitness fast, so Alberto put me in touch with a local athletics coach. I rented a car and drove out to meet him. He showed me around the city parks, pointing out the good running routes. I did a few training runs here and there, but it wasn’t the same. I needed to train at high altitude. Eventually we decided, as a family, that there was no point sitting it out in Toronto for ninety days. It was in my best interests to jump on a plane and head to Font-Romeu so I could train at the high-altitude camp. That was literally the only option we had: train there, wait out the ninety days until the FBI investigation was complete. Then fly back.

We were within hours of booking that flight and finalizing our plans to leave Canada, when out of the blue I got a call from Alberto. As luck would have it, Alberto knew a guy in the FBI. This guy happened to be a huge running fan and he’d heard of me. Alberto had said to the guy, ‘Look, I understand what you’re doing and why you have to do it, but this guy is different. He’s an exceptional case. He’s my athlete. He’s come here to train with me, and he’s going to be one of the best runners in the world. Please take that into consideration.’ Fortunately for us, Alberto’s contact in the FBI was sympathetic to our case. As a running fan he recognized that I wasn’t just some random Somali guy looking to set up shop in the US. Alberto personally vouching for me did the trick. We got a call from him to say that everything had been sorted. Shortly after that the Consulate General rang us up and said, ‘Come down to our offices and bring your passports with you.’ Within five days, we had our passports stamped. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief. As a family we’d gone through every emotion in the world during those two weeks, holed up in a hotel room in Toronto, not knowing where I could train or when Rhianna could start school. At last, we were ready to go back to the US and begin our lives there for real.

By the time we returned to Portland, Rhianna had missed about four months of school. That’s a significant amount of time for a child of her age. This was frustrating for me and Tania as parents: Rhianna wasn’t getting any education and she was missing out on making friends and socializing with other kids the same age. So when her first day at school finally arrived, it was a big, big event in the Farah household. It felt like all three of us were going to school that day. As soon as we woke up that morning I started taking loads and loads of pictures: Rhianna having breakfast, Rhianna packing her bag. The school was right around the corner from our house and we filmed her every step of the way, walking from our front door to the school entrance. It was a special day for us. We were all on cloud nine. For me and Tania, it was one big celebration – our daughter having her first day at school and making new friends. As parents we were so happy for her.

To begin with, training under Alberto was tough. He had me doing fast and short reps on the track instead of the longer, slower reps that I’d been used to in the UK. I’d never done anything that short and fast before. For the first couple of weeks I’d drive home feeling utterly knackered – so tired, in fact, I could muster just about enough energy to drag myself out of the car, stagger up the drive and put the key in the front door. As soon as the door cracked open I’d literally collapse on the ground and crawl through the front door on my hands and knees. Alberto was pushing me to breaking point, to the extent that my body simply couldn’t handle it – in a good way, of course.

Besides the track and the sessions on the underwater treadmill (a regular treadmill submerged in a big hot tub, which we used for the second run of the day to take the pressure off our legs) and the use of anti-gravity treadmills (where the treadmill is sealed inside a chamber to allow you to do overspeed training, running faster and with less resistance), Alberto’s attention to detail is painstaking. He’s obsessed with making sure that every little thing is just so.

I’ll give you one example. In 2010 I was a good runner – good enough to win the Europeans – but my core wasn’t stable enough. If you look at my races from that year, I’m rocking and rolling slightly. Alberto’s thinking is that running side-to-side is a waste of energy and loses you valuable seconds over the course of a 5000 or 10,000 metre race, so he spent a lot of time teaching me to run fully straight rather than leaning to one side. He taught me how to improve my running stride. Before Alberto, my arms used to come up too high, which made me less aerodynamic. He showed me how to run more efficiently by having my arms only come up to the point where my fingertips were level with my chin before I’d bring them back down. He worked more on my lean at the end of a race. Little things like this, when you add them all up, make a big difference to your time.

A lot of my training was done alongside Galen. He showed me the ropes in those early days at the campus and we soon struck up a good friendship – and a healthy rivalry. Galen always used to beat me in training. In fact, he still does. There’s no conflict between friendship and rivalry as far as I’m concerned. You can be good friends with someone off the track, but as soon as that gun goes, it’s every man for himself. When the race starts, I’m not taking any prisoners. Galen is the same. We might be competing in the same event, but if he was having a hard day I’d help him out and vice versa. When we weren’t training, we’d play FIFA or chat about music and stuff.

For three months I worked hard in training. In fact, I did some of the best work I’d ever done, and started seeing the results almost immediately. In March, I’d already shown a glimpse of what was possible by winning the New York half-marathon. It was the first half-marathon I’d ever competed in and it’s fair to say that nobody expected great things from me going into that race. I was quietly confident about my chances of winning, but I was only the third favourite for the race. Everyone expected Gebre Gebremariam to win. Gebremariam was a World Cross Country champion, having won the title in Jordan two years earlier. In 2010 he’d won the New York Marathon in a time of 2:08.14. He was in great shape at the time of the half-marathon and my chances of beating him were generally considered to be slim.