This Mum Runs

by Jo Pavey

  We were more than merely physically remote. There were no mobile phones then. We sometimes bought phone cards, so we could try to find a phone box to occasionally call home and let our parents know we were having a great time. We spent our first Christmas away from our families – in sunscreen, swimming costumes, shorts and flip-flops in Australia. We had Christmas dinner on the beach, eating our packed Christmas lunch off the back of a surfboard, and spent the afternoon kayaking and paddling out to a sandbar covered in pelicans. That was such a novelty. We saw in the New Year – 1997 – at Surfers Paradise, having a great time listening to tribute bands of Nirvana and Pearl Jam as we were sprayed with foam from a giant foam machine. Little did I know that three years later, I would be back on the very same beach, for an Olympic holding camp.

  In Sydney we made a point of seeking out the area in the suburb of Homebush where construction was under way on the Olympic Stadium for the Sydney Games in 2000. Some facilities had already been built, such as the warm-up track and the Olympic pool, but the main stadium was still a building site. We walked up to the outer fence of the construction site to have a good look at the excavations, and try to work out what was going where. We weren’t drawn there purely out of curiosity. I was looking through the wiring wondering if there was any chance, any possibility, that I might be able to make it to Sydney in a GB vest. Gav and I discussed it, but, standing there with a backpack, it seemed so unlikely. And yet I had been running all over the world so far without a hitch; I seemed to be injury-free at last. I peered through the fence, taking my time to visualise competing there, soaking up the ‘work in progress’ as motivation. As an athlete, I was a work in progress too, hoping to be ready in time.

  I was outside that fence looking in, but with such a positive frame of mind. I knew I was getting fitter and stronger, even though I had no way of measuring how much fitness I had attained out on the road, up hills and mountains and volcanoes. We rarely found any measurable distance we could time a run over consistently. Our intent was to factor in running every day, but our plans had been interrupted by trips at sea, storms, long flights and great nights out. I wasn’t living the clean life of a professional athlete. I didn’t let up on late nights and having fun. I had been held back for a day here, or a few days there. This, in itself, was good as it allowed my body time to condition and adapt before pushing on again. A relaxed, gradual fitness programme over six months was exactly what an over-enthusiastic runner like me needed.

  We arrived back home in the spring, cunningly missing the worst of the winter weather. Nevertheless, Britain looked dismal and grey when we left the airport terminal. Anyone who has been away for a long stretch of time will know that slightly disorientating feeling. You’re glad to be home, to see all the people you missed, hug your family, get back into the normal routines, but part of you pines for golden sunlight and warmth and a landscape that changes every day from one glorious view to the next. On our first night home we knocked back the Fiji Rum – 58 per cent proof – pleased to see our family again, saying how great it was to be back. Waking up with a pounding head and looking out at the rain could not have been more of a contrast from the sun and surf of our last stop, Hawaii. What felt like an eternity when I was away suddenly felt like a few weeks. Instead of golden beaches and crystal-clear waters and lush forests, we had England in April: rain, more rain, and just for a change, plenty of drizzle.

  To add to that feeling of dislocation, I didn’t have a ‘normal routine’ to slot back into. Gav and I had made the decision that I would keep training full time when we returned – something he supported 100 per cent. The secret underlying motive of our trip had been to see if I could keep pushing my fitness, and that had gone well, but was it realistic to transfer that on to the track? Gav wrote hundreds of letters and found a job pretty much straightaway, working as a quantity surveyor, so I had to get down to work, too, and hit the track. I had made myself a window of opportunity and wanted to give myself the best chance of making it. If I went through the stress of applying for jobs, and if I then got a new job and gave it my all, I may have wasted that opportunity. It was an awkward time. People would ask if I’d found work yet, and I found it difficult to answer. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my dream.

  Our backpacking trip was the catalyst I needed to reboot my running career, but it seems crazy to me to think that six months after setting off full of tentative hope about my fitness, I came back in athlete mode. What next? I was well aware that I would need to get a qualifying time in order to have a shot at the 1997 World Championships in Athens in the summer. If it was a huge jump in mindset, it would also require a parallel jump in my personal best: the qualifying time was 11 seconds quicker than I’d ever run. Was Gav right in thinking I could whittle down that pre-travelling milestone time of 4:21 to the required 4:10? When I was a junior, I used to think the times run by the senior athletes were superhuman. So while Gav and I talked about having a shot at it, I didn’t feel over-confident. I was optimistic but equally wondering whether it was a realistic possibility. And then I’d summon up the memory of looking through that fence in Sydney, daring to dream . . .

  CHAPTER 8

  An Elite Athlete

  I hadn’t so much as seen a track in months, let alone run on one. However fit I’d become, however many miles I’d clocked up and however many hill repeats up volcanoes or in parks and in woods I could count, I was not going to be sharp enough to run a good 1,500m on a track without more focused, specialist speed training. Fitness is one thing; race fitness is something else altogether. Knowing I needed to concentrate on that, I rejoined Mike Down’s training group with the specific mission of gaining a place and a qualifying time for the 1997 World Championships. From the outside, my form didn’t look too bad because I was in pretty good shape but I desperately needed to make a massive mental adjustment from backpacker to bona-fide athlete. I worked hard in the sessions that Mike set me. He has since said complimentary things about how quickly I seemed to progress from what must have seemed like an enthusiastic amateur to a pro in a few months. But it didn’t feel that way. I felt a bit strange training like a full-time athlete when I was so far from recognised as one, but I remained focused. Gav jollied me through this period of self-doubt. ‘Oh come on,’ he’d say, ‘let’s just give it two or three months to see what happens.’

  Of course he was right and I am so grateful to him. He always believed in me. I sharpened up that track fitness with endless reps and training sessions. To improve as a distance runner, you need to build shorter, faster intervals of running into your schedule as well as doing the long runs to get miles under your belt. You also need to do strength and conditioning work, and core work. It felt like an eternity but my work began to translate into decent times. I put my fitness to the test at a couple of races in the UK, and then one low-key track meeting in Germany where I was pleased to run a personal best. My times came down: 4:18, 4:15, 4:15, 4:11 . . . My target was 4:10. I did my first two races back in British Milers Club meetings. The BMC, founded by the legendary Frank Horwill in 1963, is an institution in British distance running. They hold fantastic meetings with a system of graded races. In this way, many athletes get a chance to run personal bests and qualifying times, and perhaps achieve a time that gets them accepted into an international meeting for the first time. Their races were to prove helpful at many points during my career. I was feeling my way back into high-level competition and the really big test and opportunity would be a meeting at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield on 29 June.

  That 1,500m was a fascinating race to be part of. Unlike my teenage self, who always wanted to get to the front and push and push myself to cross the line first, I was aware I had come with a job to do: to chase a qualifying time for the World Championships. And now, as a senior, I was sure to be shocked by the standard of competition. No matter what went on around me, I was running my own race, strictly keeping to my lap times. Kelly Holmes was there, having won bronze and silver in the 800
m and 1,500m respectively at the previous World Championships in Gothenburg. She was the golden girl of middle-distance running and when the gun went, lots of the field went off with her. The race was tough. It was my first ever grand prix; the standard was high. I had to dig deep. On the home straight I felt like I was swimming, pushing so hard my legs were blowing up with lactic acid build-up. The girls who had gone off with Kelly folded and I came from way back to clinch third in a time of 4:07.28 – a time that transformed me from ‘young girl with promise blighted by injuries’ to an elite runner with a qualifying time for the World Championships. I could scarcely believe it!

  There was a real buzz surrounding the race result because Kelly set a new British record, but that was a perfect backdrop for my own jubilant celebration. I was exhilarated, exhausted, ecstatic – and completely under the radar. I wasn’t mentioned by the commentators because of the excitement of Kelly breaking the record, which is always a cause for universal celebration, so it was a double celebration for me. I had qualified for my first senior championships at the age of twenty-four! After six long years of battling, of refusing to let go of my passion for running, that last all-out effort felt just awesome. Rejoicing afterwards with Gav and Mike, I felt I had rediscovered the real me again: enduring pain, absorbing exhaustion, gasping for air, and loving every second of it. I came from God knows how many metres back to cross the line in third place, but I had come from so much further back psychologically to even run that race in Sheffield. This is what I wanted so much. This is why I had refused to stop.

  June 29: I will always remember that date. It was so significant. That was the day I showed myself that a career in athletics was possible. I was no longer a junior who had shown talent or a club runner with secret aspirations. I could run at the standard required to be an international athlete. I spent the following week floating on cloud nine. I’d do something ordinary, like drive to the shops, and be overcome with a surreal realisation of what I had achieved. I still hadn’t been selected but I had put in a performance of the standard required, and Kelly and I were the only runners to have run that time that year. A couple of weeks later I won my first ever national championship and I was in the team.

  And so, eight years after the one and only time I had worn a GB vest, as a fifteen-year-old selected for the U20 team in 1989, I would coincidentally head back to the same city – Athens – to make my senior GB debut. Apart from that one race at a very young age, I had missed the entire U20 scene. I had missed being on a steady trajectory, gradually watching my PBs come down from the 4:27 I ran to break the GB U15 record. For me there had been no incremental yearly progression. But somehow I had achieved something I feared for a long time might be a crazy pipe dream. My first senior GB selection was actually as reserve for the European Cup in Munich in June. The squad included a reserve for the 1,500m, 3,000m and 5,000m and that was my role: I would warm up on track for every event in case any GB athlete had the misfortune to tear a muscle and pull up in pain during their warm up. It would be a dry run for the World Championships, a valuable familiarising process as I didn’t know the ropes at all; I couldn’t have planned it better.

  Getting on the plane, for once travelling on my own, I looked around and saw people I recognised, the faces of my athletics heroes – Sally Gunnell, Colin Jackson, Roger Black. While I recognised virtually everyone, I didn’t actually know a soul so it was really daunting. I was aware that my life had been very different from these professionals who knew each other well. It was terrifying, especially when I was told I’d been allocated to share a room with Kelly Holmes. I’d watched her on the TV, run behind her as she broke the British record in Sheffield, but I’d never actually met her properly. It was quite a daunting prospect to be rooming with her. She was on a later flight out to Munich, and I sat on my hotel bed, fidgeting, twiddling my thumbs nervously, not knowing what to do. I was almost hiding in my room because I had no one to hang around with. Every time I walked out of the room I’d see famous athletes chatting to each other. Everyone was friendly but I was self-conscious, feeling a bit of a fraud again, a little voice in my head saying, ‘What are you doing here?’

  After what seemed like hours, I heard the key in the door. My heart was pounding. There was Kelly! And of course, I’d had no reason to be nervous. She was lovely, incredibly friendly and supportive from the very second she walked in – and indeed always has been. Kelly had a reputation for being a great team player. Even when she was out winning races and setting amazing times, she’d think of her teammates with nice gestures like putting good-luck messages under their doors. She went out of her way to make sure I was okay on that trip and that I felt welcome. Seven years later when she had won the first of her two gold medals at the 2004 Olympics, we would celebrate together with a mug of cocoa. (The champagne had to wait until after her second.) The competition went well and the men’s team won the cup, partly thanks to the heroic effort of my friend Rob Hough, who was the surprise winner of the steeplechase.

  Later that summer, I could hardly absorb the fact I was a member of the GB team going to the World Championships. My family flew to Athens to support me. I was incredibly nervous, and it was a great comfort to see them watch me go through my strides and running drills through the wire fence that surrounded the warm-up area, though I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of the occasion that I could hardly function on a social level and actually talk to them. As I was led out for my heat, I saw the awful sight of Kelly pull up – clearly in pain – with an injury. She was running in the heat before mine, and it was a devastating scene. It was such a big deal for her and for the team because she was favourite to win. I was shocked but had no time to absorb the drama because I was lining up for the next heat. And it was tough. I did get through to the semi-final, but I remember having to be more tactically savvy than ever before. I was trying to get it right, to bravely put in a drive with 800m to go in order to cope with the fast finishers. I’d never raced in such a crowded field. I was boxed in. There seemed to be so many girls around me. Everything unfolded so fast. I didn’t get to the final, but I learnt so much in those two races about how to position myself better at the right time.

  One of the things I loved about my first World Championships experience was being part of the squad – the banter, the team talks, the camaraderie with new friends. I wanted to take it all in, to learn as much as I could. The only downer was getting severe food poisoning at the after party, as did some other team members.

  When I returned from Athens and Mike Down and I sat down and analysed my performance, we felt like I’d taken a giant stride forward. The experience justified the decision Gav and I had made that I should immerse myself in full-time training and see what happened. And what had happened was that I’d worn a GB vest again with pride after nearly a decade quite literally in the wilderness. I was putting on my running shoes each day with a new perspective. The person who’d suffered stop/start injury setbacks, studied at university, tried not to despair about being unable to run, earnt a degree, worked as a physio, gone travelling and dreamt of reclaiming the teenage promise of Joanne Davis had become Jo Pavey, GB athlete, racing in front of huge crowds against the world’s best. I had resolutely refused to let go of my love and passion to run through those lost years, and now I had it back, it felt amazing.

  I wanted more of that.

  CHAPTER 9

  Defying the Doctor

  That period from 1996 to 1997 was a seismic shift. Everything had happened so fast, too fast. One minute I was in the pub on Friday nights with my physio mates, getting in a few too many drinks, the next I was smashing my personal bests and qualifying for major championships. I didn’t realise at the time – although in hindsight I can see that it was because I’d had a long gap between success as a junior and then this in-at-the-deep-end immersion as an equally naive senior – but I didn’t have much of a clue about what to do next. How should I train between seasons? Recover? Achieve balance yet push myself in readiness f
or 1998? I had never had the luxury of planning a schedule. As a result, being naturally over-enthusiastic, I pushed myself too hard in the winter of 1997 trying to reach the next level.

  It was simple inexperience: I’d never had a chance to put together a decent period of solid training. As far as winter training went, I had no point of comparison, but full of enthusiasm I went away to a training camp in Melbourne. Gav and I shared an apartment with friends we’d made in Athens, Andy Hart and his wife Analie, and Mark Sesay, both 800m specialists. We trained hard but had lots of laughs too, and after Mark sadly passed away in 2013 we treasure these memories.

  I was excited for the 1998 track season. Things were looking up. It was early summer and the season was about to kick off. With the Athens World Championships experience still fresh in my memory, I was relishing the prospect of a full race schedule. Then disaster struck.

  In the middle of a session, I felt an intense pain shoot through my knee and I pulled up. That was it. Game over. Another season to sit out.

  It was a bad injury, severe enough, in fact, to need an operation. In September 1998 I underwent surgery, but, disastrously, it caused a lot of damage to my knee and I’m still left with the after-effects now. If I fully straighten my knee, my kneecap locks on the scar tissue and I have to release it by hand. At the time, back on crutches and unable to walk without pain, I had no idea of the scale of the damage. In the early stages, the prognosis was never clear. Doctors and specialists offered conflicting opinions. Three months. Six months. Another three? I went to see another specialist in Leeds a year after the operation as I was still getting so much pain when walking. He told me the only way I’d have any chance of running again was to undergo more surgery, to remove the lump of scar tissue that had been created. He said that if I didn’t have more surgery, then I’d never run again. And he meant it.