WARRIOR

There’s no better way to inspire a runner for the year ahead than to interview Eilish McColgan in the January issue. She tells us all about the successes and challenges of 2022, her tight-knit training team, and her dreams and ambitions for the future

Words: Rachel Ifans

Eilish McColgan needs no introduction really… Any self-respecting woman runner knows exactly who she is from watching her compete. If not that, you’ve probably heard us shout about her from these very pages because she’s a solid gold hero of ours. Or maybe you’ve been following the stellar summer she’s just had, or perhaps you recognise her surname from her parent’s athletic pedigree? All of these reasons and more – like her work in inspiring junior runners to succeed, her down-to-earth and modest entourage, which includes her partner and her mum, and her hard-working ethic – mean that we’re absolutely delighted to have her as our Warrior this issue. We don’t usually gush this much but suffice to say, we’re having a bit of a fangirl moment.

Eilish is happy to chat challenges and successes of 2022 and, as ever, there’s more underneath than appears on the surface. It’s all too easy – and wrong – to look at the headlines and assume that all the ducks lined up perfectly for her when the season kicked off in February, especially after great winter training and setting a new British 5K road race record in Dubai. Later that same month, she also beat Paula Radcliffe’s 21-year-old British half marathon record by 21 seconds, in a time of 1:6:26.

But sometimes things are not what they seem and little did we know that before the 5K in Dubai, Eilish had caught the dreaded Covid and been out of action for eight whole weeks. At one point during her recovery, she rang her race agent and suggested she might have to cancel all forthcoming competitions. However, as she explains, Covid did jog on in the end. “All of a sudden, I woke up and felt like I’d gone back to normal; one day, after eight weeks, my heart rate on my Polar Vantage dropped down to normal and I suddenly felt fine. Training took over and I felt like a different person.”