A happy athlete is a fast athlete – Laura Muir reflects on 2023

This is Stuart Weir’s first piece on Laura Muir. Stuart wrote 110 columns for RunBlogRun last year (111,000 words). He watched Laura Muir in most of her races in 2023. Here is Stuart Weir’s column on Laura Muir and her year of changes in 2023. 

A happy athlete is a fast athlete – Laura Muir reflects on 2023

It is hard to sum up Laura Muir’s 2023. It started with a gold medal in the European Indoors, then she had the change of coach from Andy Young (her first and only coach) to Steve Vernon and a relocation to spend blocks of time in Loughborough, rather than Glasgow, where she had been based previously. This is a well-researched article, as your correspondent watched Laura run 12 times in 2023.

While there was a national mile record in Monaco, her main aim at the start of the season was a medal in the World Champions, but she finished sixth.  Then, she finished her season with three magnificent Diamond League performances in Zurich, Brussels, and Eugene. I wrote “season,” not “year,” as Laura had one more race to come, a 3000m in Cardiff in December, to secure her World Indoor qualification mark. I write from the privileged position of having seen her run 13 times last year.

When we spoke just before Christmas, Laura gave me her own summary of the year: “I would say that I am proud of myself, given that it was probably the most difficult year of my life.  I think I ran incredibly well, given the circumstances. It was a life-changing year but in a very positive way and an exciting one going forward”.

Let’s start with the European Indoors – an event in which Laura always seems to do well.  This was her fifth gold medal at the event, whether 1500m or 3000m.

When we spoke of the World Championship final, where she came sixth, her attitude was very much disappointment but no regrets: “I think I gave all that I could in that race and ran the best that I could on that day”. There was a conviction that had the race been run differently, she could have finished higher. She explained further: “I think I was a little bit unfortunate with the semi-final being so fast as well. But it’s so competitive now in the 1500, and you can have a good run and finish anywhere from second to eighth. It depends on how you are on the day and, how other people run on the day, and how the…