by The road to get back to this point has been long and arduous for Eilish McColgan.
It lasted more than a year and included more obstacles, challenges and setbacks than the 33-year-old would wish on even her worst enemy.
But finally, after a long injury absence, McColgan is back to winning races.
Over the past month, the Dundonian has logged more competitive miles than in all of 2023 and won more races than since 2022, but more importantly, she is injury-free and now within reach in its best form.
Looking from the outside, it was easy for outsiders to wonder if McColgan would ever return to his best; After suffering a knee injury at the back of a torn hamstring in early 2023, McColgan’s recovery, exacerbated by his desire to run the London Marathon last year, has been plagued by setbacks after setback.
The injury couldn’t have come at a worse time; the previous 12 months had been the year of McColgan’s life, having won Commonwealth gold and silver in the 10,000m and 5,000m respectively as well as European silver and bronze over the same distances. She also set a series of Scottish, British and European track and road records.
But McColgan, who has already recovered from seemingly unrecoverable injuries, never doubted she would return, although she admitted she had some dark times over the past twelve months.
“No one really knew what was wrong with my knee or how long it would take me to recover, so that was the hardest part because I felt like time was running out of me. It was the unknown that was very difficult,” she says.
“But I always believed I would come back. I knew it would take a little while but I always thought I would come back eventually.
“I had the right people around me, my mom, my dad and Michael (Rimmer, McColgan’s boyfriend and trainer) and they never asked me why I was bothering with all this rehab, they just told me always said I would get there eventually. This meant that even on my days off, I had people to support me.
“Mentally it was hard but I never felt like I was done, not yet anyway.”
(Image: Chris Scott Photography Dundee)The last month has fully justified McColgan’s self-confidence. Even though there were sporadic competitive appearances throughout 2024, McColgan was never close enough to full fitness to show his best form – a form that just before his knee injury , saw her break the British 10,000m record which had been held by Paula Radcliffe for 21 years. as well as setting a new British half marathon record.
But victories at the Big Half and the London Vitality 10k in recent weeks, as well as fifth place at the Great North Run, were a welcome boost for an athlete who has spent countless hours rehabilitating and recovering .
“It’s really nice to feel like things are finally going in the right direction,” she says.
“Even if I’m not quite back to my best when I’m breaking records, at least I can see things coming together.
“Over the last few weeks the main thing for me was to get through these races without any problems and so this has been a really positive step. »
Despite struggling to return to full fitness for much of 2024, the year had not been entirely written off before last month’s strong performance.
McColgan managed, with very little space, to prove that she was fit enough to merit Olympic selection (she had reached the British team’s qualifying standard before her injuries) and thus made her fourth Olympic appearance in Paris 2024, which no other Scotsman had. track athlete has ever done it.
So many Olympic appearances are hugely impressive in everyone’s eyes, but McColgan admits she looks at Paris, where she finished fifteenth in the 10,000m final, with ambivalence, despite being written into the history books of Scottish sport.
“Reaching my fourth Olympics is something I will look back on in a few years’ time and be incredibly proud of because there is a reason why no one in Scottish athletics has done this before and that is because they are not really not easy to maintain this level for so many years,” she says.
“So I’m proud to have arrived in Paris, but there’s also a part of me that’s frustrated that I didn’t have the chance to achieve the performance at the Olympics that I would have liked to do – that would have been good. to have been more competitive.
“My mother (Scottish long-distance running legend Liz McColgan) asked me why I was bothering to go when I wasn’t in the same shape as the year before, but, for me , it was an accomplishment to achieve it at the Olympics despite the injuries. It’s frustrating not to have been in top form, but it’s elite sport – not everyone can. bring your A game every day.
Eilish McColgan is injury-free again (Image: Adam Davy)
McColgan has long been one of the most recognized and popular athletes in Scottish athletics.
Her prominent profile initially came from being the daughter of one of the greatest athletes Scotland has ever produced, but McColgan’s success and openness about her life further raised her profile and attracted nearly ‘a quarter of a million followers on social networks, with her publications regularly receiving more than a million views.
However, as is all too common for female athletes, being in the spotlight leads to tons of unwanted comments, with most of McColgan’s detractors focusing on her injury status, claiming she is perpetually injured and what her body, telling her that she is “too skinny” and that she is “clearly anorexic”.
Unsurprisingly, these comments don’t sit well with McColgan, and while she regularly engages with her detractors and is able to brush off criticism more effectively than many, she admits that the ongoing comments about her life aren’t always easy to deal with.
“A lot of people on the internet mistakenly think I’m made of glass and that’s just not the case,” she says of accusations that she’s constantly hurt.
“I’m able to separate myself from it because I know it’s just not my reality. I had been in every British team from 2015 until I missed 2023, so I don’t understand where people get this idea that I’m always injured.
“Then there are the comments about my body – it seems bad but I have become numb to them. I had to do this because I receive them day after day.
“People will say things like ‘look how skinny she is, she must be anorexic’ and ‘her hormones must be affected and she’ll never be able to have children’ and it baffles me how people can conclude these things looking at a photo of me.
“The people making these comments online clearly don’t realize what a devastating illness anorexia is because they just throw around this accusation that I’m anorexic.
“I sometimes feel very embarrassed because people have sent me messages saying they have anorexia and they know how I feel. It’s hard because I know how much these people must struggle, but I don’t struggle.
“I don’t call out trolls all the time, but I do from time to time because it’s important for young women to see that, number one, I stand up for myself and number two, I’m healthy – I have my period and I have good bone density and all these things that wouldn’t be the case if I was anorexic.
“There’s nothing else I can do to prove that this is my natural form.” It is therefore a question of explaining reality to the youngest who follow me so that they do not get lost.
“That’s why I continue to publicly call out people who call me anorexic because it’s absurd and I don’t like that people continue to fuel that narrative.”
(Image: Adam Davy)
McColgan, fit again, is now able to plan for 2025 without the injury worries that have plagued her over the past year.
After completing her current training block at Font Romeu, McColgan will decide whether she will make one final competition appearance of the year or call it quits and go on a well-deserved vacation.
2025 will be all about making her long-awaited marathon debut, something she’s had her sights set on since 2022.
The London Marathon would, she admits, be the dream venue for her first competitive marathon, but the last year has taught her the dangers of pinning all your hopes on one specific race.
“I would love my first marathon to be in London, because being a British runner, there is no marathon bigger and better than the London Marathon,” she says.
“But in 2023 I put all my eggs in one basket when it came to London and that didn’t happen, so this time I’m more fluid with my plans.
“I’m heading into 2025 with plan A of running London, but I won’t fall into the same trap as 2023 and make it the end of it.
“I will definitely do a marathon next year, so I just have to decide which one I will be on the start line.”
Given the journey McColgan took, 26.2 miles will likely feel like a walk in the park.
