World Championships 2013: Mo Farah says winning medals takes priority over breaking world records "As an athlete, records are there to be broken, so in my heart I don't really think about records," said Farah. Yes, it would be something to have as an athlete, but medals mean a lot more to me than being able to break a record. It's very difficult to break records as well as win championships because it is a completely different race. With the record, you have a rabbit to pace you. In championships, you do them by yourself. It is racing rather than record-chasing that excites Farah the most, and an anecdote he relates about a training session in Utah, in early June following a rare 5,000m defeat at the hands of Kenya's Edwin Soi, illustrates just how fiercely competitive he is. The defeat, at the Eugene Diamond League meeting, was mitigated by the fact that he was recovering from a virus and racing against the advice of his coach, Alberto Salazar, but his reaction to losing was to punish himself with the most brutal training session of his life. It involved six one-mile repetitions with a 600-metre jog in between, and he started off at 4min 12sec pace. The last two miles were completed at an astonishing 4min 3sec pace. "I killed myself," said Farah. I was so angry, disappointed. I think that has changed me. I don't want to get beat. I remember I was on the floor, literally on my back. I trained as hard as I could. I was there to prove a point. It was the same competitive instinct that carried him to victory on Friday in what Farah rates as the toughest of his five global triumphs. "It might look all easy but I had to dig in deep," he said. I wanted it more than anyone else and I just managed to hold it. I wasn't going to let Isiah Koech get past. Once I let him in I would have been boxed in and wouldn't have been able to come through, so my aim was to hold him off, hold him off. With 100 metres to go, I could see him in the corner of my eye and I just had to dig in, dig in. Farah admits that, after two seasons at the summit, staying there is getting harder and harder. "Everyone knows what you're capable of," he said. You can't hide. Sometimes when you're at the top, it's easy to get knocked down because everyone can see you. It's like being at the top of the mountain. It is precisely why he is looking forward so much to returning to the foothills as a raw beginner in next year's London Marathon, competing against battle-hardened warriors of the roads. "I've got to start all over again," he said. It's definitely a good challenge. As an athlete you need challenges. You need something to inspire you. The enthusiasm for winning, he says, is just as intense as it ever was, and he has no plans to back off in his pursuit of more titles to add to his double Olympic and double world crowns. "I'm not going to take my foot off the gas," he said. I enjoy what I do. Doing the double-double, it's something that not many athletes have achieved but I don't think, "I've achieved this so now I can relax." I don't think like that.