For most arthritis is tomorrow’s problem. An ailment that afflicts one in every two of us at some point in our lives, it’s one that presents itself generally speaking after the age of 50.
An age, perhaps, where the realities of life will have, for a while, reminded us that our sporting peak may well be behind us.
For Calum Johnson, arthritis came at 31. A stubborn toe and all the compensations that go with it. Long painful nights and the knowledge that this wasn’t a niggle that would wind its way out.
For a while he’d been gamely clinging on.
An interrupted winter where he’d pulled out of Liverpool and been frustrated by a 41st as a discretionary pick at Euro Cross, the National Cross Country on home turf at Sedgefield seemed to provide one last hope.
After an incessantly wet few months, the neutral expected the Gateshead Harrier to have his best chance of repeating his 2020 Nottingham triumph, that day in the bogs of Wollaton Park.
Looking ahead, whilst looking behind
Despite the weather, Hardwick Hall was a road. Fast from the off, Johnson was never in touch. Hugo Milner won at a canter.
Johnson would be forgiven for a touch of the green eyed monster. Six years ago, he too, was a member of British Triathlon’s World Class Programme, though his role as a domestique to the programme’s leading lights eventually failed to make financial ends meet. Johnson now fits his own pursuits around a professional coaching business, following two years struggling to compete around full-time work as a tax advisor for EY.
Johnson knows better than envy. The brutal truth is he hadn’t done the training to give himself the chance. To do so he needed to listen to the doctors and sort his foot out.
Arthiritis diagnosis
Two months earlier Johnson had headed down to Walthamstow for a formal diagnosis.
The news was worse than he expected. The cartilage in his toe was near non-existent. Little separated bone meeting bone. It was the reason why quite often that winter he’d wake up in the night through pain. And why session after session had to be pushed back.
It led Johnson reflecting:
“Where do I go from here? Do I need to find another life? I’d just left EY, left a pretty good job where I was doing well, climbing the corporate ladder to give myself the flexibility with running.”
There’s no surgery that can provide a fix to arthritis, the only option as Calum emphasises is complete rest. The body can naturally generate some cartilage but before that comes the eternal swelling as the body does all it can to try and find other ways of providing some support.
Johnson, alongside coach Alan Storey, have had to work out what training can look like post diagnosis.
“I started with a 100 piece jigsaw in April. Maybe I’m halfway through in terms of putting that jigsaw together.”
Johnson discovered longer runs seemed to aggravate it further, so he has stopped doing them. Interval sessions, counter-intuitively can often be manageable. Volume, not intensity seems to cause the problem. It is why Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday still seems to be a combination his body can handle.
Prior to his diagnosis, Johnson had eyes on building on his 2:13 marathon debut. Sub-2:10 and GB vests on the road seemed the next logical progression.
Tell me a runner that’s run 2:09 when their longest run in the build is 10 miles.
The doctor put it differently.
“if you want joint fusion and not to be able to run again for the rest of your life, be my guest”
The marathon door is shut for now.
Dealing the cards your dealt
The Gateshead Harrier has had his fair share of misfortune. His departure from British Triathlon’s World Class Programme, was in spite of years in the service of the Brownlee brothers, picking up a European Cup win, and multiple World Cup top-10s on the circuit. He’s been the sixth man at Liverpool and left at home for a discretionary pick.
I even bumped into him at Canary Wharf in 2023, when to great expense, his 63:16 half marathon best, was deemed worthy of an elite start for the Big Half but short of a place in the athlete’s hotel. He finished the weekend a few hundred pounds down.
“it’s never been easy from 18 years old. From when I left for university at Leeds, trying to be the best triathlete I could. I can’t think of a year I haven’t had some sort of adversity.
Has it changed me into the runner I am now? Absolutely yes. Would I want someone else to experience the same path? Definitely not.”
It’s hard for some of those experiences not to wear. For some resentment to slowly callous. But it can also harden in a different way, something positive can find it’s way out. Somewhere along the way an athlete can find freedom.
For the whole of the summer, Johnson has had no fixed schedule. From day to day he’s assessed what he can do and at times where he’s feeling more positive he’s been able to drop into local races late on.
It has seen him run and win a track mile, the Stan Long Mile, for the first time in his life. And he’s discovered something new, a fearlessness that’s taken racing from a pressure to an almighty privilege.
Today I can
Stepping on each start line, he knows for that day he’s able. That both coach and athlete are aligned that in that moment he can give it his all. There are plenty of other days where his body simply says it can’t.
Aside from the usual cross-country championship races, two races hold a particular hold on Johnson. One is the Great North Run, a race at the edge of what his body will at present allow. The other is the Blaydon Race.
For the past five years, each June Johnson has made his way to the startline. Beginning under the Tyne Bridge, on a match day you’d be able to faintly hear the song sharing the races’ name, sung before kick off each time at St James Park.
A song that ripples across Tyneside but generally stops a few miles past. A distinctly Geordie call. The horse races that take it’s name may be over 100 years dead, but the running edition remains true to it’s 1981 roots.
Ah me lads, ye shudda seen wi gannin’,
We pass’d the foaks alang the road just as they wor stannin’;
Thor wis lots o’ lads an’ lassies there, aal wi’ smiling faces,
Gannin’ alang the Scotswood Road, to see the Blaydon Races.
The Blaydon Race
A 5.9 mile dash to Blaydon. Sometimes 5.4, occasionally 5.7 but the exact distance is unimportant. Down the Scotswood Road to the site of the old racecourse, A to B as fast as the lumps on the road and legs allow.
The song is about bragging rights, and the running race has become a rare highlight that has pierced Newcastle’s football bubble.
Run 27 mins at Valencia 10k? Great.
Be the first to Shibdon Playing Fields? Now that’s something fast.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Johnson has gravitated to a race so far removed from the time-trials that seems to dominate UK elite running. Circumstances and experiences have driven him this way.
Simple toe-to-toe racing. The change of rhythm as the race crests another rise, the sprint down the other side. A cross-country race taking place on the roads. Johnson excels at it.
Since 2022, no matter the wider goal, Johnson has run down the Scotswood Road. He’s won it in 26 minutes, he’s won it in 29. He has hammered it up the rise of Shibdon Road, he has solo’d from further out. Five on the bounce. Football parlance for a football race.
It may not be the country’s most competitive, others may think efforts would be better spent building up to some traditional distance, but one day those same athletes may look back and think, what was it I was chasing?
Johnson has been forced to spend a summer in the moment. Where else should he be?