'I should have been dead. Without running, I could've been six foot under. It kept me on this planet'

When Tommy Hughes decided his running days were done, that obsession, that addiction, was never going to go gently into the night.

For retired athletes, such compulsive energy can be a dangerous, destructive force.

Olympians, more than most, lead binary lives, seesawing between long blocks of bare asceticism and short windows of unbridled blowouts.

Those who centre their lives on running themselves into the ground for two and a bit hours have many strengths but the great weakness of many endurance athletes is an inability to moderate.

Read at Independent