Jon Brown kicked my ass and I liked it

Meeting Jon Brown back in the late 90's was probably the one and only time that I've been star-struck. I'm a huge Track and Field geek and Jon was, and still is to some extent, one of the greatest distance runners in the World.

At the invitation of Leah Pells (4th in the 1500m, 96 Olympics), Jon joined our group for a tempo run. He had just moved to Canada with his family, though still intended on representing Great Britain internationally.

The workout was as follows: 30 minute tempo run for Jon, while the three fastest guys in the group at that workout (Mark Bomba, Geoff Greaves, and myself) were to each run one ten minute section of Jon's workout in an attempt to "pace" him.

At that time, I was in about 15 min shape for 5km. As the slowest of the three guys, I was picked to pace Jon first. Now, I fully expected to be running hard but, holy crap, I was in a near sprint to stay ahead of him. I lasted all of 6 minutes (just over 2km) before I cracked and watched Jon float by me effortlessly. As thrilling as it was to run with / behind one of the best in the world, even if it was for only 6 minutes, it was still very humbling. When I found out later that afternoon, after a little research, that Jon had just run 27:18 for 10km a few months back, I didn't feel quite as bad.

After the workout, I joined Jon for a cool-down run which, incidentally, was run at a slower pace than I normally ran my cool-down runs. I asked Jon if he had run any races recently and he starting telling me about this crazy race in Italy called the Cinque Mulini and how he had finally beaten once of his cross-country arch rivals, Paul. Over the course of our cool-down, he's excitedly telling me about their battle. It took me a few minutes, but then it finally dawned on me who he was talking about - Paul Tergat. The very same Paul Tergat who is one of the greatest distance runners of all time. Former World Record holder in the marathon. Numerous medals at the Olympics, World Champs, etc.

So, this is the long way of getting around to saying that Jon Brown is a running stud and that I'm extremely pumped that he has just switched his allegiance from Great Britain to Canada. Nothing like having the guy who came fourth in the marathon at the last two Olympic games donning a Canadian jersey and leading the medal charge in Beijing.