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Maybe it is true that I ran just to get to the start-line in Marathon but over the following days, even weeks, that wasn’t much consolation. I had gone there to realise a dream after years of hard work and I had been unable even to finish — a horror I could not have remotely envisaged.
In the aftermath, the same questions surfaced and resurfaced: why didn’t I realise my stomach was so bad and I was losing so much weight? Why did I let the stress get to me? Where did the injury come from? Could it have been avoided? On the day after the race I needed to get out of the athletes’ village. Gary (my husband) and I went into the centre of Athens, found a Starbucks café and met our friend, Karl Stith. Later Mum, Dad, my brother and his wife came and joined us. It was good to see them all and helped me a lot.
I felt like eating all the time, a reminder of how much I had taken from my body and of the refuelling it needed to do. Emotionally, I was still a wreck, fluctuating between feeling totally numb to not being able to stop crying, and back to questioning where it had all gone wrong.
We talked about whether or not to do a press conference. Gary’s view was that I didn’t need to do it until I was ready, but I felt that people deserved to hear the reaction I could give at that stage to what had happened the previous day. That Monday evening I went to the media centre and answered their questions as well as I could.
Before the marathon I had made the decision to keep quiet about the injury problems to avoid going to the start-line in a weakened position. If it had worked as planned, no one would have needed to know afterwards. So now I had to explain the full story but also did not want it to sound as if I were making excuses.
Another reason I couldn’t fully explain my performance was because the results from blood tests and the other tests weren’t back. I knew that, ultimately, the leg injury had not been what prevented me finishing. So I was still unsure about what exactly had made me feel so bad. Had it just been depletion or was there something else wrong with me? It felt possible that I had broken down much of my body mass for fuel during the race because my legs felt so sore — we were still trying to work everything out.
At the same time, I was dealing with very raw hurt and emotions. I also had to make a decision about whether I ran in the 10,000m but it would take us a few days to know whether I wanted to put myself on the line again, and also to see whether my body would be able to recover enough even to consider it. At this point, I was struggling to walk properly, especially down stairs. In my mind, I felt I wanted to run if I could, simply because I had so much frustration in me, so much desire to get out and run well and I knew that I had been in good enough shape to do so and had worked so hard to get there.
It came down to the fact that my next chance to run well at the Olympics was either in five days or four years. I didn’t want to watch the race and wonder what I could have done; I wanted to be in there and find out, to give myself every chance that I could, and not be always wondering if I had made the right decision. The only way to ensure there would be no regrets was to run — but first I had to be able to. I ran/limped for just 15 minutes that day and the next few days were just easy running and ice-baths.
My right ankle was also slightly strained but seemed to be improving. On the Wednesday night, 48 hours before the race, we went to the track. I needed to see if my legs could at least run at the race pace. I ran just two sets of 4 x 400m at faster than 30min 10km pace. As I discussed with Alex (Stanton, my coach) and Gary, this didn’t tell us much in terms of what I could do over 10,000m because it was too close to the race to do a testing session; but it didn’t tell me it was impossible, so I decided to race.
My stomach was far more settled before the 10,000m than it had been for the marathon. In fact, inside I felt normal, but my body was tired. Warming up, I jogged the opposite way around the track and my ankle was very sore. I changed direction and it was a lot better. “That’s good,” I thought, “you only have to race this way!” We got out into the stadium and the atmosphere was amazing; there was a huge amount of support for me and I was really touched and more fired up. Yet, as I did strides, I had to acknowledge to myself that my legs were really tired. Please, I thought, just get through this one race for me, yet I knew it was a huge ask after the trauma of just five days ago.
During the early part of the race, I didn’t feel too bad. I stayed with the pace but knew the race hadn’t really started yet. When the surges began the little gaps were created and I couldn’t go with them, but to begin with I could maintain my pace and by staying mentally strong I could pull them back each time. By halfway I was feeling very tired but, worse than that, my quad began to tighten up and cramp.
I had promised Gary, Gerard (Hartmann, my physiotherapist), Alex, Bruce (Hamilton, the Team GB doctor) and all the medical people that I would not put anything at risk if I did not feel right. This wasn’t the marathon: this race wasn’t about struggling on until I could literally go no farther.
If I could have staggered to the finish in the marathon I would have done, but this was different. This was about me trying to salvage something from the Olympics and running for me. I was not going to run myself into the ground, risk doing serious damage to my body or health for the sake of finishing in a time and state that did me no justice.
I had already done enough damage to my body. It had taken enough. If the quad hadn’t spasmed, I probably would have soldiered on, but I was going nowhere in the race by that stage anyhow. Mum and Dad said afterwards they were shouting from their seats in the stadium, telling me to stop. Gary wanted me to finish because he was worried the media would crucify me if I didn’t. In a way he was right.
“I don’t care,” I said. “It is my body, my race and my life. It is up to me to make the decisions. I have no regrets, I went out there to get an answer and I got it.”
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