Norwegian runner recalls her world 10,000m record of 30:13.74 at the Bislett Games in Oslo on July 5 in 1986

Ingrid Kristiansen remains the only athlete to simultaneously hold the world records at 5000m, 10,000m and the marathon. In 1985, she became the first woman to break the 31-minute barrier for 10,000m on the track and, one year later, returned to her homeland for a successful attempt at taking down her own world record.

Here she remembers that 10,000m record run

Bislett was a really nice crowd, especially for us as Norwegians, but athletes from all over the world also felt that the audience helped them to produces good races. You still have that, even if the stadium has changed since 1986. Now theres a warm-up area under the stadium but we used to have to go up a hill to run up in a park, so its a big difference.

Me and my coach, Johan Kaggestad, were telling people that I was planning to run much faster than I had done the year before. In 1985, I was the first one who ran 10,000m under 31 minutes but, at that time, I wasnt training for the 10,000m my plan that year was to focus on the marathon. It was the most important thing that year for me.

Johan had said to me: You can run faster than last year but I dont know how fast you can run.

I thought maybe around 30 minutes, so I went for that. Johan was a little bit more afraid of that pace in case I didnt make it. But I said to him that its much better to try, rather than come in at 30:59 again. It was not as if there was a gold medal on offer. You didnt earn too much money at that time so there was nothing to make you run fast. I thought lets just see what I could do on that evening.

I was the kind of runner who was never afraid of having bad races. In 1986, I really believed I could have a great race and I tried and I made it. Thats the problem [just now] that some runners are afraid of bad races. I see it currently in the Norwegian women. When you are afraid of having a bad race, you never produce a good race. 

Thats the difference with the male runners in Norway, like Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Karsten Warholm they are not afraid of having bad races and you see whats happened with them. 

In the 1980s, you had so few women running like this so you had to be strong mentally.

In Norway, I never had somebody in my events who could run as fast as me. Even if I planned to run the 10,000m, they couldnt pace me for more than 800m. That meant I was used to doing my own race, going for it from the start and try to run even over 25 laps. That night was something new for me: I had Lesley Welch, running in front of me for a while. It helped me to relax a little bit.

I knew that laps of 72 seconds gave me a time of 30 minutes but there was so much noise on the track that I didnt hear anything my coach tried to tell me. After I pulled away from Lesley after 3000m, he started to hold out a piece of paper with the laps written down. When I saw 72, I was happy. 71 was even better.

 The noise helped me a lot as well. I didnt feel tired and I went through 5000m in 15:15. The problem that night was that I had to get around all the runners who were slower. I passed one of the Norwegians three times. On the outside. Just running past so many runners could maybe have accounted for 13 seconds off my final time.

 I never had any speed. The last lap was 64 or 65 or something which wasnt fast compared to the runners today. I ran by myself out in front and everybody else was possibly one, two or three laps away.

At that time, they didnt have any rabbits, they didnt have lights, so if I had run today, in my shape of that time, Id have been under 30 minutes.

When I finished, I didnt feel very tired. I knew that if Id had somebody to run with as a competitor and had to really fight for first place, I could have run faster but it was still five seconds better than before and I was happy. Then I started to think about next year and how I would run even faster.

I won the European Championships after that. Johan said I ran an even better race because my legs were tired before the finish. Stuttgart was a really, really good crowd. Before we started, everybody was looking at the 10,000m and saying that would be a boring race 20 women running 25 laps but they started with a wave for the first time at a track meeting and it was even more engaged an audience than Bislett. 

READ MORE: AWs my greatest race series

I know I was maybe a little bit too early on the long distances to get more of the chances that they have in this era. The first World Championships for track and field wasnt until 1983 and we had to wait four years until next one. Now its every second year.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the sport was like that. If Id had an opportunity to run more 10,000m races and more half-marathons, I could have had a much better time. 

As told to Mark Woods