UK Athletics

Like, I wanted to go after world record this year.

I spoke to British Athletics.

They said, if you want to run Europeans, you have to run British Champs.

And it was two weeks before.

The difference, of course, is that FIFA is a governing body which ultimately ladders up into, I think ultimately, the, uh, Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.

Here in the UK, we've got the Trail Running Association, which ladders up into UK Sports, UK Athletics, um, but it does feel like private organizations like UTMB, Ironman are kind of dictating the direction of the sport, certainly from a kind of commercial perspective.

Do you see a world where UK Athletics could take a more active role in the direction of trail running? What would that require? What are your thoughts on that?

Uh, yes.

I need to be careful what I say.

Uh, I've had a few chats with UK Athletics.

I think, so I can't quite remember the years, but I get an email every so often, like I'm on a mailing distribution list from the chief exec, and he's giving a financial update, and UK Athletics were loss-making, and then it was like, "We're now forecast to make a loss next year," and then good news, the loss is forecast to be less than originally planned.

So, and I know now they've been doing a lot.

I, I gotta...

I'm gonna sit here, and I'm gonna praise British Athletics, 'cause in his interview, he said he wanted to do the Europeans, but he did not want to do the British Championships.

He did not-

Mm

No, no, I agree though, yeah.

But I did think, yeah, we gotta-

Fair play, British Athletics

... gotta give 'em their, give 'em their dues.

I think I've been pushing for, you know, track to have more fun and new stuff, you know.

Our media gal, Beth [laughs], at British Athletics, she always takes in my new ideas.

So [laughs] to see them sort of incorporate that at a, on a world stage is so exciting, and I'm hoping for more of that.

And yeah, yesterday for me was about showing off my personality, showing off me, and I think I done that.

Yeah.

You're relying on like the public purse through like British Athletics or UK Sport or what not to fund these athletes.

And that's almost their sole form of income.

They could be like, I digress again, but British Athletics, Welsh Athletics, whoever the governing bodies are, could be developing content creation courses and putting their top athletes through these courses as well.

But that's another story for another day.

Obviously, you digressed.

And speaking to them in hindsight, they were like, yeah, we just wanted to try and keep it chill, but we could see the cut and how deep it was.

So then I got an MRI straight away because I was with British Athletics, which was a blessing.

I did it when I did it because they just look after you the whole time.

And literally two days later, they could tell me that, yeah, you've got a tear and you're going to need...

yeah yeah that level yeah it's mental

Getting there is one thing, then doing well at it is a whole different thing, which is why I respect Josh Kerr and people like that so much that they can actually back it up at global stages because it is much harder than people think to actually go and get it done in something like that.

So does the really fast 5K qualifying times now put you off because you'd be worried about committing to the 5K and then British Athletics being like, oh no, you didn't hit the qualifying time, we're not taking you?

no i'd not nothing i've not even thought that far ahead the physical ability to run that fast is what puts me off because i think the training that you have to do is like i mean george mills is a great example right he had to adapt he still ran really good 15s off it but like if you look at how he's gone from being an 815 runner to the work he's had to put in the sacrifices the volume the type of training he's had to do to build such aerobic base to get him to that point I don't know what his specific injury is now, but clearly it's put him somewhat on the limit, right, of like, we

Yeah.

So again, I think within the literature if we were looking for a guide, there's the work of Steve McAleese and the guys at British Athletics around 3Bs.

They actually had two 3B injuries within their, their retrospective study, and they both interestingly came back at 34 days.

However, the other point to consider on this is it was a small cohort in terms of the 3B injuries that they had.