Mo Farah: “There’s nothing I would have changed”

British distance running legend looks back on his career as he prepares to tackle his final marathon in London

“This is it,” said Mo Farah as he faces up to the final marathon of his career. Unlike times past, when gold medal followed gold medal and the distance running world followed his lead, he knows his body just can’t stand up to what his mind is still willing it to do.

The TCS London Marathon on Sunday (April 23) will represent the end of a journey which began with victory as a teenager in the Mini London Marathon and has seen the now 40-year-old accrue four Olympic and six world titles on the track in between.

This outing won’t be Farah’s last race – he has plans to toe at least a couple of other start lines before the year is out, though he has no aspirations to qualify for the World Championships – but it will be his sixth and final outing over 26.2 miles.

At the pre-event press conference, he admitted he will be emotional at ending his marathon career in the city which hosted his greatest triumph on that unforgettable Olympic Super Saturday of 2012 and in front a public audience which will roar his every step. “When you know it’s the end of the road, you always get emotional,” he said. “I think it will get to me. Maybe after the race there will be tears.”

The last couple of injury-interrupted years highlighted how fast the clock has been ticking on his career and it was a reflective Farah who spoke with the media just a couple of hundred metres away from Sunday’s finish line.

“You take it for granted over the years,” he said about being at the top of his game. “Each year, you just continue to do it. You are almost like a robot – you just do this year then you do the same thing again and your body allows you. I took that for granted.

“I realised over the past couple of years that I have to be grateful for the career I’ve had. I think the bit that now I appreciate more than anything is the last two months’ training in Ethiopia, just knowing I could do two sessions a week or three sessions a week [without breaking down].”

That would suggest Farah is not about to threaten his British record of 2:05:11 which brought him victory at the 2018 Chicago Marathon. However, he did claim that recent training sessions have seen him finishing “neck and neck” with Bashir Abdi, who clocked a world-leading time of 2:03:47 in winning Rotterdam last weekend.

The marathon has been a…