How they train: Kirsty Longley

We speak to a Liverpool athlete who left smoking and binge drinking behind to become a masters record-breaker

Kirsty Longley has two young daughters and works full-time as a teacher. Yet she still finds the time and energy to run 60-70 miles per week and such training has led to her topping the UK rankings in the W45 age group last year in the 3000m, one mile, five miles, 10km and half-marathon, plus the parkrun.

Amazingly she did not start running seriously until she was 30, either, but has knocked chunks off her PBs and is still improving aged 46. “I wasn’t that talented,” she says. “I was a little bit overweight. I was binge-drinking and used to smoke in my twenties, so I had to start at rock bottom.”

Apart from a little ballet and dance at school, Longley didn’t do much exercise as a teenager but began working in a gym in her early twenties. It wasn’t until nearly ten years later, however, that running came calling.

A local athletics coach saw her jogging on the gym treadmill and encouraged her to train at Liverpool Pembroke & Sefton AC.

“It was January and freezing and I was running sideways as the wind was taking my breath away,” she remembers. “I thought: ‘This is not for me as it’s cold and horrible’.

“In my first races – a Northern League at Wakefield – I did the 3000m in 12:49 and 1500m in 6:51 and I actually wore headphones and came last in both races. My mum just said: ‘Next time, just beat someone’.

“So the next time I beat just one person in the 1500m. But then someone told me: ‘I’m really sorry but that person you beat was a shot putter’.”

But Longley stuck with it. “It took me 10 years to break 10 minutes for 3km,” she says. “For me it’s been consistency, not getting injured or ill and just grinding it out.”

Having worked as a sales account manager, Longley says she had developed a super-competitive mindset. “I wanted to be No.1 so I’d highlight people who beat me and then I’d go after them,” she explains.

Her first daughter arrived when she was 34 but she returned to running and has never suffered a serious running injury. “I’m 46 but feel like a 20-year-old,” she says. “Running has changed my life.”

So what are her secrets? “Relaxing during sessions and listening to your body is important,” she says. “At the moment I’m in a really good training group where everyone is there to help each other instead of racing each…