Eilish McColgan runs London – runblogrun

Eilish McColgan runs in London

Eilish McColgan is a runner! He has been British champion at 1500m and at half-marathon.  She has won European Championship medals at 3K, 5K and 10K.  And going back eleven years she was a Commonwealth Games steeplechase finalist.  This weekend she is running the London Marathon.

She is the daughter of two athletes, Peter and Liz McColgan, and is constantly asked about comparisons with her mum. The first time I asked her, she deflected the question with a “I do steeplechase, so it is hard to compare”.  Now that she is running the London Marathon, which Liz won in 1996, it is harder to sidestep the comparisons.

I met her a few years back at a presentation lunch and asked if she would do an interview with me, she gave me an email address – a standard device for getting rid of a journalist, give an email address and then don’t reply! Not Eilish, same day reply suggesting a date.  Excellent interview.

She was due to run the London Marathon in 2023 but had to pull out due to a knee injury.  In 2024 she ran two half-marathons as well as the 10K at the European Championships and also at the Paris Olympics.

This week she recalled  an amusing first memory of London “aged about 6 sitting in the hospitality tent eating all the free food and looking at a tiny TV screen, not really understanding that my mum was in the London Marathon”.

She added that growing up she thought that “one day I’d do it with the masses and do it for fun. Now being on the elite Start Line on Sunday is very scary!”  She also recalled taking part in the Mini London Marathon: “I never would have believed, when I was running the Mini London Marathon, that I’d be here today at the proper big London Marathon! Taking that trip from Scotland to the Mini London Marathon was a huge event. We took the bus the whole way down and it was just chaos, so many kids from Scotland on a bus, getting down to London for the weekend.   I’d never been to London without my parents before. We stayed in what I remember as a Hogwarts-looking building [Harry Potter], but I’m pretty sure it was just student accommodation. At the time it was crazy; I loved it. I wasn’t in the top…