ordon Pirie (born Douglas Alistair Gordon Pirie) is a relatively littleknown name to the majority of people and even some runners may not have heard of him, despite his incredible racing achievements. Son of a Scottish international cross country runner, Pirie was born on 10th February 1931 in Leeds but grew up in the South of England in Surrey. His father inspired him to run and he spent time as a youngster laying out race markers for his father who was a member of South London Harriers, the club of which Gordon later became Life Vice-President. His early racing years were with Purley School and in his late teens, inspired by the great achievements of the legendary Emil Zatopek, he resolved to take running seriously and compete at a high level. Pirie favoured the type of interval training advocated by Zatopek but was also renowned for his high mileage – sometimes covering more than 200 miles in a week. He coached himself, putting in many tough sessions, to qualify for the Olympic Games in 1952 in Helsinki, aged just 21. In his book, Running Fast and Injury Free, Pirie provides three examples of his early, tough training days:
100 x 100m in 15 seconds, jog 20 seconds 80 x 200m in 29 seconds, jog 30 seconds 54 x 400m 64 seconds, jog 45 seconds
Each one of these sessions would be preceded by an hour’s warm up with a 20 minute easy run afterwards, meaning that some sessions accumulated over 3 and ½ hours of running! At the Games in Helsinki, Pirie competed in both the 10,000m and 5,000m races, coming 7th and 4th respectively. Afterwards, he met Woldemar Gerschler who subsequently became his coach. Gerschler was based in Germany so much of the coaching wasn’t ‘hands on’ but Pirie’s racing performances nevertheless improved under Gerschler’s guidance. Pirie maintained his hard training regime and at the end of the racing season in 1953 changed his job,
Barefoot Running Magazine
Autumn/W inter 2015
Page 13