Jacob Allen repays the role model favour

It’s not a coach or a clubmate holding Jacob Allen to account. It’s 25 12-year-old boys.

The England international spends his days as a PE teacher in a North London comprehensive, his mornings and nights seeking the next step on athletics’ endless ladder.

Discipline, persistence, humility. Three traits he repeats to his students time and time again.

“why the homework? Why school? ” they ask.

Good habits, process, the mindset you pick up along the way. He constantly drills into them.

You get the sense Allen is a teacher yes. But he is a better one because of his experiences as a runner.

The character

The Highgate Harrier describes his younger self as a character, something he can’t help but raise a smile to.

A capable junior, Allen’s early experiences were like many.

On, off.

184th in his debut English Schools, Allen’s mum saw athletics as a good outlet and the youngster headed down to Rugby and Northampton AC.

Here he met Steve McGowan, a mentor the 13:43 5k man still works with over ten years later.

By Allen’s own admission the pair’s relationship was less about athletics, more about working on a young man finding his way in an often confusing world:

“anytime I was in trouble as a kid my mum would ring him and he’d be there outside the house waiting in his Audi. I’d have to go sit in the car for half an hour and sometimes it wasn’t even to go to training. It was just to go and have a bit of a bollocking.”

The dynamic of their relationship may have changed but a core remains. Allen sees in him a man he can respect and in turn McGowan still sees the same boy with potential:

Allen – “He’s always acted as that kind of guiding force in my life, whether it’s making decisions about my running, what I’m going to do for work, even a period where I took time away. Somebody I can lean on for almost anything in life.

I would say that the best thing about him, he very much is a yes man and 100% backs anything I say that I feel that I can do.

I would go as far as saying that I could say to him, “Steve, I’m going to try and run 2:06.”

Obviously I’m not aiming for that. Certainly it’s not in my sights anytime soon. But I really truly believe he would turn around and say, okay, how are we going to do that then?”

In talking to Allen you get the sense that faith can be invigorating. Each time Allen has made a step up, McGowan has been the one to believe there’s more to come.

The pair have maintained constant dialogue throughout Allen’s rise. First a breakthrough Euro Cross team whilst at St Mary’s University in 2015 and even further afield during the athlete’s time in the USA.

Allen competed for the University of San Francisco alongside Jack Rowe and Scott Halsted in 2017 and 2018.

Others may have handled more of the day to day plans, but Allen is grateful for the faith McGowan will continue to show till the day he eventually retires.

Kenya at 17

Allen clearly believes in the power of these influences and indeed experiences to shape the journey of a youngster. To set them on a path to a trajectory even the young boy or girl doesn’t themselves dream of.

One such moment for Allen was a trip to Kenya aged 17, an experience he describes as a ‘bedrock’ for the athlete he is today.

The summer of the 2012 Olympics, Allen spent a month at the High Altitude Training Centre in Iten. High on the escarpment overlooking the Rift Valley, he got an in person view of a version of discipline that can only really be experienced to be understood.

Run, sleep, eat clean. Day after day after day. With one exception.

The training base in Iten by western standards is modest – a small pool, a gym with pretty rudimentary equipment and simple rooms throughout.

But it does have one luxury – a ping pong table that many of the elite athletes who stay there use as a harmless diversion.

In 2012 the finest marathoner on the planet was pretty unanimously held to be Wilson Kipsang. Fresh off his first London Marathon title, a year later he would edge the marathon world record 15 seconds lower at Berlin.

The two-time World Champion, Abel Kirui wasn’t too far behind and the pair regularly visited the centre for massages.

On one occasion they decided to take on the teenager, one sport where Allen can claim the upper hand.

“They were useless” he laughs.

You can see from his smile that that interaction stayed with Allen. Not just as a cherished memory of a meeting with one of the sport’s greatest stars. But as an example of why not taking yourself too seriously also has its value.

Little value in comfort

Watching him on the startline of the recent National Road Relays, you saw a man who knew that on his day, on that front row he was the best man standing.

A glance to his left, one to his right and a click of his neck. Some would say a swagger.

There’s definitely an assured confidence there even if Allen himself is loathe to admit it.

But he’ll happily acknowledge there are races he’ll go to where he’ll experience the opposite. In one of Allen’s recent times representing England he travelled to Elgoibar for the Cross International Juan Muguerza. The 2022 field included World and Olympic finalist Adel Mechaal, and Diamond League winners Getnet Wale and Nicolas Kimeli.

An intimidating field a nervous Allen finished 23rd that day but looks back knowing the importance of relative failure.

“I just keep telling myself all the time at the minute in terms of every time you go and do another race where you’ve maybe improved your training ever so slightly, you go and test the water with it. Perhaps you make another leap forward.

You then can go into subsequent races competing with athletes that perhaps prior to that race just gone, you wouldn’t have necessarily believed you could compete with.

I now appreciate that experience is invaluable.”

The remainder of 2022 and 2023 saw Allen take almost a minute off his 10k personal best, running 28:45 in Valencia.

There’s a benefit to uncomfortable environments.

Great South breakthrough

At the time of writing Allen is currently undergoing one of his biggest purple patches, all as he knocks on the door of 30. A dominant winner of the opening leg at the National Road Relays he then took over a minute off the Highgate 10 Mile record in finishing second at the Great South Run (47:13).

The previous mark was held by Sydney Olympian Keith Cullen.

Whilst he’s adamant the best is still to come, I ask him whether his younger self would be proud of what he has achieved to date.

A pause for breath and an emphatic response.

“Insanely so, insanely so.”

It’s clear this pride in many ways drives Allen both at school and round the fields and roads where he carries out his pursuit. It creates a passion that can only be infectious for his students.

He’s armed with the knowledge that with application, discipline and backers, real change can be affected in your life. In running or anything else.

His students just have to believe it.

“there are sometimes where they’ll come to you six months down the line and they almost give you that face as if to say,

Sir, I’m doing it, you know. I’m really doing it, I’m living it.”

It might not be a sub-29 10k or an international vest but it’s the pursuit of better, the desire to take those steps to make a difference.

Homework for some, the daily ritual of putting on a pair of trainers for others. The power of the process and the meaningful outcomes it can achieve.

For a while longer those 12-year old boys will hold Allen to account.

I’m not sure he’d want it any other way.

Featured image of Jacob Allen by Harrison Read