by Jo Pavey
I was training, and keen to make my come back, but having Jacob had given me a new perspective. Running worries, like hitting targets at the track, didn’t seem as important any more. Of course, I still tried hard in training, but if it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped I wouldn’t dwell on it. His daily routine and future occupied my thoughts. If I didn’t make it back, there was something, someone, who needed me more than the world of running – a little person who made me far happier than performing well in a race.
Still, I had a goal: a target I kept reminding myself about when running felt tough. I wanted to get back and make the team for London 2012. Sure, there would be important races along the way that I would focus on, but that was my main goal. What an incredible opportunity it would be to run in a home Olympics! Day to day, though, my passion for running drove me on, loving the wonderful feeling it gave me, and being boosted by the gradual gains in fitness. From late 2009 onwards after Jacob was born, I started thinking about qualifying options for London 2012.
I loved the track but I had also dabbled in road running over the previous few years. I competed in the Great North Run over 13.1 miles – a half marathon – for the first time in 2006. As a distance runner rather than a sprinter, I am lucky to have the privilege of running with thousands of other runners in mass participation events. I find road events thrilling. After training each week in my own little bubble, it is just so uplifting to run with so many others in a great atmosphere. Road races are the most social form of racing, everyone running together, going for their own personal goals or running for important charities. My first Great North Run back in 2006 hadn’t gone to plan. At the time I had never run further than 5,000m on the track. With a mile to go, I was up with the leaders when I was overcome by dizziness, and suffered my worst hyperglycaemic incident. Two years later, when I ran the Great North Run again, I hoped there wouldn’t be a repeat. I ate a tuna roll about three and a half hours before, half a PowerBar ninety minutes before the start and the other half an hour before. These subtle dietary changes to add more protein to my pre-race snacks do not completely solve my unusual problem, but they go some way to alleviating it. I always make sure I travel with a tin of tuna – not forgetting the tin opener. My 2008 time of one hour, eight minutes and 53 seconds was a personal best, so I was pleased to be making progress on my road performances.
My improvement in the half marathon meant that after Jacob’s arrival, I wondered about attempting a marathon. As a British distance runner, I knew that someday I wanted to experience the thrill of running the London Marathon. But London 2012 beckoned like a dangling carrot. With the distant prospect of qualifying for a fourth Olympics, and running around a stadium supported by the roar of a home crowd, it was hard not to want to get back to the track too. After all, how many athletes are lucky enough to run in the Olympic Stadium in a home Games? If the 2012 Games had not been awarded to London, perhaps I would have hung up my track spikes and either be focusing solely on road races or retired. It’s hard to know. To date, I’ve never seriously considered retirement. I take it one year at a time. I love running, the joy of working towards goals and the excitement of racing. Those feelings are combined with the memories of the years I lost through injury when I longed to run, but couldn’t. Having the opportunity taken away from me for so long has always sharpened my appreciation of running even more. It’s been part of me for so long that it’s impossible to imagine life without it. And now we’ve found that it can fit with family life, I am encouraged to continue. Of course, I will always keep running for enjoyment – once a runner always a runner, as they say. But back then I’d already competed at three Olympic Games, surely more than my fair share! By 2012, I would be a month off thirty-nine. Gav and I discussed it and then decided to go for it.
It would be a tough slog back to full fitness, but I did at least have time on my side to qualify for 2012. Jacob was born in September 2009 so even by the time the first crazy stretch was over and I started to get back to some kind of shape, the London Olympics were still two years away. There was time to consider participating in other events, mixing things up a bit, before deciding what race I would aim for in 2012.
My first race back was in April 2010 – the Great Ireland Run, a 10k held in Dublin. Funnily enough, due to very unusual circumstances, I didn’t have much time to anticipate my return to racing. I hadn’t entered this race. I had planned to wait until the following month, and run the BUPA Great Manchester Run – another 10k – however the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted during the week leading into the Great Ireland Run. The huge ash cloud caused the closure of most of the European air space, which meant that many overseas athletes signed up to compete couldn’t get to the event. The organisers phoned me on the Friday and asked if I could run on the Sunday so that the race had some non-Irish athletes to make up the international field. Initially I said it would be impossible as I was going to Kelly Holmes’s fortieth birthday fancy-dress party that Friday night and I wasn’t going to miss that. Gav was to be dressed as a knight in shining armour, and I was going as a medieval maiden. Kelly would be Queen Elizabeth I. My mum and dad had come up to stay to babysit – it was going to be our first evening out since Jacob arrived. We then worked out that it would be possible for Gav to drop me off at a hotel in London after the party so I could get up early the next morning to catch a train and then a ferry.
We had a wonderful time at the party with Kelly playing the role of queen superbly. But as if it wasn’t already a crazy plan, after the party, Gav and I set off in the car so he could drop me at the hotel, only to end up at a standstill due to an incident on the M25. I checked into the hotel at 3.30 a.m. and got up again at 5.30 a.m., which made the whole thing even more crazy. I caught up on a bit of sleep on the ferry, but wasn’t too confident in my preparation for the event. Despite this, I finished second – and was very happy with that result. Freya Murray ran well to win, proving strong on the tough hills. After the race, I caught the ferry back with Sonia O’Sullivan. Sonia kindly offered to drive back through the night and we chatted all the way from Holyhead to London, feeling pretty exhausted by the time we got home.
CHAPTER 20
Foiled by Stress Fractures
The signs were promising for the summer of 2010. I was chuffed that on my return from having a baby, I had won the British trials and gained selection for the GB team for the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona. But soon after, disaster struck: I developed a problem that I had not previously been prone to – a stress fracture. Pregnancy can cause the ligaments of joints to loosen. The release of the hormone relaxin is nature’s way of helping the pelvic bones to prepare for birth, but the change in hormones can cause a laxity in other musculoskeletal joints. And for me, it was my feet.
During pregnancy, the arch of my left foot had ‘relaxed’ – kind of collapsed, really – effectively lengthening my foot. I had to wear a bigger shoe on my left foot than on the right, and the resulting changes in the mechanics of my foot had put more pressure on some of the bones. After discussion on the phone with team staff, it was decided that I should go out to the team holding camp in Portugal anyway to see if anything could be done. Gav and Jacob flew out too. But unfortunately a scan would later show that the stress fracture I had developed was so bad the team doctor said it looked more like I’d been involved in a motorcycle accident. A diagonal crack ran right through the phalanx of my big toe.
During my time in Portugal I still did everything I could to try to make competing a possibility. I went for runs and found that I could get into some sort of rhythm by heel striking and holding my big toe in the air. I went for regular physio, again to see if anything at all might help. The team were very accommodating towards Gav and Jacob. As I lay on the physio plinth, Jacob – who was ten months old by then – amused himself by pushing the laundry trolley up and down the corridor. The time came to make a decision, so I went on the team bus down to the training track in Monte Gordo in Portugal to test
it out. Running slowly on trails with my toe in the air was one thing, but running in spikes around a track was quite another. I went to the session armed with various bits of foam and different inserts and a pair of scissors. I tried everything and anything, attempting to somehow come up with a way of reducing impact through my toe bone. I tried wedging bits of foam in a variety of different ways into my shoe. It was ridiculous, and unrealistic, but I was desperately hoping to find a makeshift arrangement that would at least let me run, however painfully. Once I felt I had come up with the best option, I gritted my teeth and went for it, aiming to do a lap of the track at a decent pace. The best I could manage, in considerable pain, running in a style to compensate for my problem, was one solitary lap of the track at a pace slower than I would need to do all twenty-five on race day! I was sadly ruled out of competing in the European Championships.
I felt strangely defeated. Since returning from years of injury when I was young and at the start of my career, I had embraced a new philosophy. I decided that if I was going to have a career, I would have to find a way of running through injuries, taking each day at a time, modifying training as necessary in order to keep going in some manner as long as I could put one foot in front of the other. This was the approach I had taken with this problem – running up to an hour at a time with my toe held off the ground – but I just couldn’t race twenty-five laps in spikes like that. I hasten to add I do have the bonus of my physiotherapy knowledge to help me understand what is going on and I certainly don’t advise others to improvise! But I had decided that it was the way it had to be for me, otherwise I would too often be on the sidelines.
So I had done all the hard work to reach a come-back standard, put in a hell of a lot of commitment, only to have to withdraw. For me, frustration has always worked as a fuel. On a positive note, with Gav’s support, I’d found that it had been possible to ‘come back’ from pregnancy and childbirth, and juggle training with motherhood. I won’t deny it was tough sometimes. Gav and I were living 200 miles from our families in Devon – so we never had any extra hands to help out now and again. I often found myself still at the track at 9 p.m. on my own, doing sessions when the track was available and Jacob was asleep. But I felt fortunate to be a mum and that boosted my motivation.
I had worried that the balance of spending time with Jacob and training could prove difficult. If this had been the case, I know I wouldn’t have felt happy to continue to run at an elite level, but it turned out the act of juggling our days and working to a new flexible routine was working out. I was able to fit in a run when he was napping, or after he had gone to sleep at night, or when Gav had taken him in the buggy to the play park, which he loved. Before Jacob was born, I woke up each morning with more of a timetable in my head. Now we were working around the needs of a baby and reacting to what each day brought. It was a new way of working, and I was enjoying it. I was extremely lucky: I felt I had the best of both worlds: being a mum at home and managing to fit in my running.
The stress fracture in my big toe phalanx took a while to settle down. I stopped doing the high-end quality work for a while, which I felt would prevent it healing, and gritted my teeth and ploughed on. Pain? What pain? I had London 2012 in my mind – although I still wasn’t sure which event I should try to qualify for. Decisions needed to be made. The 5,000m and the 10,000m were still very much ‘my’ distances, but I was intrigued to see whether the marathon might suit me as well. To be ready to attempt my first marathon in the spring of 2011, I would have to get on with it the best I could.
At home, I was enjoying watching Jacob develop – he seemed to be moving faster by the day. He was an extremely active little boy – which is not a complaint! He was so much fun, but I noticed he was unusually energetic. I regularly met up with my antenatal-group friends in Bushy Park. The other mums sat around chatting, their little boys sitting calmly on a rug in front of them. I, on the other hand, didn’t have the chance to chat as I found myself continually chasing after Jacob who would repeatedly run off into the distance. Good extra training, I suppose!
Gav and I decided I should give the London Marathon a go. I was excited. It is such an iconic event, an institution. I had watched the incredible atmosphere on television over the years and longed to experience it myself. As a British distance runner, it was something I simply had to do. I also wanted to know what it was like to run a marathon and learn about the training for a totally different event. I found the idea of a completely new challenge really motivating. Fellow runners at mass-participation races, running events, seminars and meetings often asked me for advice on marathon running. I would give what advice I could, but I never felt comfortable talking about an event I’d never done. When I went into schools, more often than not a child would ask if I had run a marathon. To answer ‘no’ made me feel like the child would think I wasn’t a proper runner. If I was going to give it a go, I intended to fully commit to marathon training as best I could, even though I knew that coming back from a stress fracture would be less than ideal. But I wanted to see if it might be a possibility for the Olympics.
Doing those very long runs in training was a shock to the system. I had never run that far in all my years of training. I also worried about how I would pick my individual drinks bottle off the elite field table. It looked very scary on TV. It seems a bit insane in retrospect, but Gav and I set up a table with drinks bottles at the track in Teddington and I practised running past and grabbing the right one – while Jacob repeatedly threw them off the table. I hope no one was watching the daft scenario.
So in April 2011 I ran the London Marathon for the first time. You can’t beat the atmosphere of these big city races – and I’d say the same about events such as the Great Manchester Run, the Great South Run, the Great North Run and many others. There is an all-in-it-together excitement which I find so inspiring. It’s very uplifting to be involved in a huge collective event with people who have been training hard for their goals, running for inspirational charities, raising huge sums of money to help other people. It’s humbling hearing their stories, and seeing their faces as they cross the finish line. The emotion is so raw – floods of tears, huge grins, massive hugs. The big races have such a festival atmosphere you can’t help but have a smile on your face even when you have raced professionally for years.
I became so excited by the party atmosphere created by the crowds lining the streets of London, I didn’t run sensibly at all. I did exactly what I would tell people not to do on their first marathon – and went off way too fast. People in the know had also warned me not to do that in the build-up to the race. However, it was billed as the ‘strongest’ ever women’s London field and included defending champion Liliya Shobukhova (who has been stripped of her 2010 and 2011 London marathon results due to doping offences), World Champion Bai Xue of China, the 2008 Olympic Champion Constantina Dita of Romania, previous London and World Marathon Champion Irina Mikitenko of Germany, the reigning New York City Champion Edna Kiplagat of Kenya, the reigning Berlin Champion Aberu Kebede of Ethiopia, the world’s best half-marathoner Mary Keitany of Kenya, and so on. Also lining up was practically the entire elite field from the Nagoya marathon in Japan, which had been cancelled due to a terrible earthquake. It was an incredible field and I wanted to be competitive and right in the thick of it. But I was being unrealistic. It was my first experience over that distance and, hampered by the stress fracture as well, I wasn’t at the level to make an impact. Just as I had been warned, the pace did feel extremely easy in the early stages. I didn’t quite believe just how much the pace can catch up with you if you get it wrong!
I went through the halfway point in about 71 minutes and then completely blew up to finish in 2 hours 28 minutes and 24 seconds. A nineteenth place finish. Everyone had told me to pace myself sensibly and not to go off too hard, but as an athlete you often instinctively want to push yourself and not set any limitation. I suppose I thought I’d taken it all in. I’d never experienced a race over that dist
ance and did not anticipate the disaster that can befall you if you don’t pace yourself well. It’s a considerable distance, 26.2 miles. For the last 40 minutes I felt delirious. All I could do was focus on trying to finish. I did run inside the Olympic qualifying time but I was disappointed by the way I ran. I learnt my lesson. That’s why you do these races, of course – to gain experience. Despite finding it tough at the end, running down to the famous finish on The Mall with the noise of the wonderful crowds is a memory that will never fade. And it’s nice now to be able to talk to other runners who have made the same mistake as I did!
Later, in 2011, we targeted the New York Marathon. Thanks to the New York Road Runners, who were fantastic and welcomed us as a family, Gav, Jacob and I all went out there three times that year. In March I ran a half marathon, in June a 10k road race, and in November we all headed out again so I could compete in the New York Marathon.