Next time you think you have a busy week ahead,
spare a thought for Paavo Nurmi
at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.
The record books show Nurmi won five gold medals that summer.
What they don't make clear is that he did it inside six days.
It's worth adding that Nurmi was a distance runner.
He won his medals
in the most demanding races on the schedule,
bunched up because nobody would be brave enough to try it all.
No athlete has ever taken on what Nurmi took on.
No athlete even came close.
Distance running in the 1920s
was dominated by one country - Finland.
But even among the all-conquering Finns,
Nurmi rose to the status of Olympic titan.
He was a single-minded pioneer
of distance running who achieved
things people thought impossible.
At 22, while in the army, Nurmi ran 20km carrying a rifle,
a cartridge belt and an 11lb sack of sand.
It was supposed to be a march, but he ran the whole course.
Going from the army ranks to the race track,
Nurmi's achievements are unlike anything seen
either before or since.
He broke 11 world records,
and became known for carrying
a stopwatch during his races,
glancing at it
to keep himself on pace.
The focus on split times and race strategies was unique.
He was years ahead of his time.
By Paris 1924, Nurmi was in a world of his own,
and he needed to be.
Finnish officials stopped him entering the 10,000 metres,
but he entered the 1,500 metres, the 5,000 metres,
the 3,000 metres team race and the cross-country.
Angry not to be allowed in the 10,000 metres,
Nurmi is said to have run the race anyway,
by himself, on the practice track.
He comfortably beat the pace set inside the stadium.
He ran heats on Tuesday and Wednesday,
but Thursday was Nurmi's biggest day.
He was due to run the 1,500 metres and the 5,000 metres,
despite a break of only two hours between them.
There was no time to lose.
Nurmi was so quick in the 1,500 metres final that he slowed up
at the end, breaking only the Olympic record
rather than the world record.
He walked straight off the track at the end,
picked up his belongings and prepared for the next race.
Others passed out from exhaustion,
but Nurmi had another race to run.
Today, athletes get a day
to recover between races, but not Nurmi.
In the sweltering hot summer of 1924,
the Finn took to the track again.
Nurmi had prepared meticulously.
He arranged a dress rehearsal for himself three weeks before
in Helsinki. Two races in one day, just one hour apart.
He set world records in both.
As impossible as it seemed,
Nurmi held off his team-mate Ville Ritola
to win the 5,000 metres in Paris.
He had his two gold medals in one day.
That was Thursday.
On Friday, he had the semifinals of the team race.
On Saturday, it was the cross-country,
in conditions that were even more extreme.
The 10km course took the runners
through thistles and weeds
and beside a power station belching noxious fumes.
The Red Cross had to be deployed
to search for exhausted runners
collapsing along the course and on the track.
But the only place to look for Nurmi
was at the finishing line.
He crossed a minute and a half ahead of the field,
barely drawing breath.
No-one ever ran the cross-country again.
Deemed too dangerous, it was scrapped from the games.
By comparison, the team race on Sunday was a breeze.
The Finns were 5th, 2nd and, of course, Nurmi first,
more than eight seconds clear.
The French magazine Miroir des Sports wrote,
"Paavo Nurmi goes beyond the limits of humanity."
Nurmi won ten gold medals in his career,
five of them over those seven days in Paris.
It is a track record that would never be matched.