British 10,000m record-holder opens up about her comeback from injuries and what she hopes to get out of the Paris Olympics
Eilish McColgan is definitely not a stranger to the Olympics.
After securing a spot in the 10,000m for Paris 2024, she became the first Scottish athlete to qualify for four consecutive Games.
At London 2012, a then 21-year-old McColgan competed in the 3000m steeplechase but didn’t make it out of the heats.
McColgan was 13th in the 5000m at Rio 2016 and then decided to double up in both that distance and the 10,000m at Tokyo 2020.
The Brit failed to get out of the heats in the 5000m and then finished an impressive ninth in the 10,000m final.
This time McColgan is focusing on the 10,000m and, for her, making the start line has been an achievement in itself.
Last September, McColgan had surgery on a knee injury and spent the following three weeks in crutches. The 33-year-old then underwent rehabilitation and returned to the track for the first time in over a year at the European Championships in June.
Sadly for McColgan, she failed to finish the race and reveals that she “didn’t feel well”, adding that she was “sick the next day after the race”.
Eilish McColgan in Rome (Getty)
Just a few weeks after her European expedition, McColgan competed in the Huis & Hypotheek Stadsloop Appingedam event in the Netherlands, clocking 31:52 over 10km on the roads.
“It was really just finding a race where I could get around without having any problems at all,” she adds. “It put me in a position where I then had something like five-and-a-half to six weeks until Paris and I knew then I would just go straight into training.
“I’ve had this huge block of training from then right up until now and that’s served me really well. I think even mentally I just needed to finish a race to know, ‘yep, body’s good!’”
Her journey from the operating theatre to the Stade de France is remarkable and one that potentially looked unlikely just under a year ago. The Brit states that one doctor told her that she’d “be lucky to ever run again”.
“I’ve had doctors say to me there’s no chance,” McColgan says. “In the back of my mind, I always thought, ‘that just doesn’t make sense to me’. I’m not someone who’s done high mileage for like 30 years of her life and I look after myself and my body’s always been relatively healthy.
“I’m in my 30s, I’m not in my 60s. I still believe I can compete at this level. There’s perhaps probably other people have thought ‘no, it’s not…
CLICK HERE to Read the Full Original Article at AW…