"When I woke up this morning, it made me remember how muddy it can get," recalled the Great Britain athlete yesterday as he savoured the calm before the storm. "It is going to kill a lot of people. I'm looking forward to it though. There's a good dow
nhill from it. So it should be fun."
The pursuit of gratuitous enjoyment may be secondary to glory for those lining up in tomorrow's World Cross Country Championships but on home soil in particular, the St. Andrew's-raised steeplechaser intends to reap maximum benefit from his first excursion among the greats of global athletics since he finished dead last in his heat at the track equivalent, in Osaka, last year.
By his own admission, the closest the 25-year-old might come to the imperious Kenesisa Bekele and Zersenay Tadesse is at the very outset of the 12km course which will wind its way onward and upward through Holyrood Park.
"Top Briton would be good, and to be up there with the top European," he declared. "I'd love to finish in the top 30".
Acquiring knowledge by association, however, is a parallel aim. "I've been watching the last six World Crosses on DVD and it's just incredible, when you've seen conditions which are really boggy but Bekele is just floating over the ground without breaking a stride. So a guy like that, who's won multiple world championships and records, is the pinnacle.
"With Tadesse, though, I never realised just how good he'd been (before winning last year). I always thought he'd sprung out of nowhere but watching the videos, he was always there around the leading pack, and then last year, he managed to break through and win it. These guys look almost super-human when you see them running. It's pretty incredible."
However, Scottish Athletics endurance coach Mike Johnson is not keen on talk like that, preferring to view the standard of African runners as something eminently attainable by Scottish athletes. "We've gone through a period where we've been told as coaches and athletes that we can't compete with the Africans. That's nonsense. We can compete. Do we train as hard as them? Well our athletes train very, very hard. It's just a small sea change which will make a difference between our male athletes making that leap. They've already done it on the female side. And if we get a couple of decent European role models, we can change things around."
Removing that fear factor is key to Lemoncello's progress, likewise for his newly-assimilated Scottish colleague, the UK Cross Country Champion Laura Kenney, who will feature in an under-strength GB women's team. The Fifer has definite Olympic ambitions, with personal bests which should pitch his ambitions in China above his disappointing cameo in Japan.
To improve upon them, he asserts, ideas from all sources are welcome, not just from his home-based coach Ron Morrison, or his mentor in Flagstaff, Greg McMillan.
"Out of every race you can learn something, especially racing against someone, How fast do they go from the start? How fast do they go after that? Every time you watch or compete against these kinds of guys, you do pick up ideas on how to structure your day to get ready for a race, when you sleep and how to train. Friends of mine have gone out to Addis Ababa to train with the Ethiopians and they've said it's just incredible, the regime they have. You have to learn from that."
The full article contains 623 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
