‘Programmes like jogscotland are brilliant to get folk running ‘ – Liz McColgan

Sunday 29th December 2024

By Peter Jardine, Head of Communications

Keep Moving Forward: jogscotland launch new Strategy

Liz McColgan running through the Tayside countryside – or indeed the mean streets of Dundee – in her early teens predates the launch of jogscotland by roughly a quarter of a century.

Yet surely few observers would dispute she perfectly fits the description as a path-finder or pioneer for the programme.

Guest of Honour at our 4J Awards Dinner in October, the running legend was very keen to highlight the benefits of jogscotland.

In those very early years, she was sometimes chased through the streets of Dundee by gangs of youths or stopped and accosted for behaviour that was regarded as very much out of the ordinary. If not downright ‘weird’.

But here we are almost 50 years later with both groups out running or women jogging thankfully now acceptable and commonplace in Scotland’s towns and cities.

‘I started running quite simply by getting a wee pair of shoes and getting out the door,’ Liz told us in a special interview.

‘I didn’t have a great background in Dundee – my mum and dad were not working, not that much food on the table, electricity shortages. We didn’t have the funds for me to go and do other more expensive sports.

‘Athletics for me at that time was get out the door and run in the countryside. That got me into running and it helped me escape problems at home. From there, that running in the fields became so much more.’

‘We’re on right track – if we #SALtogether’ – Liz McColgan

That’s an understatement from the legend that is Liz who in the years that followed amassed medals, records and bit city marathon victories in a stellar career. But that is not our story here.

‘Running helped me mentally at that time,’ she recalled.

‘You can gain that feeling immediately after exercise. Sometimes motivation can be difficult. It is winter nights and you hesitate to get out. But, if you can, it helps.

‘So a programme like jogscotland is really really good to encourage that in folk. You can meet with like-mined people and get out and run together. Not necessarily the fittest or the fastest.

‘It then becomes like a social thing an d you are all going through it. You don’t have to do it in a group – you can do it on your own.

‘We’re fortunate now in Scotland to have great parks in our towns and…