SLEEPLESS, but with adrenaline and coffee topping her energy levels up to the brim, Eilish McColgan reflected yesterday morning on an unforgettable evening before. The one when she finally became a gold medallist as ambitions were realised. The Commonwealth champion over 10,000 metres wanted this buzz to run and run.
Her family name, with its easy association with high achievement, brought her a certain celebrity within the world of athletics at a young age. Easy to forget, as a consequence, that the 31-year-old is no overnight success.
A slew of British records have fallen her way in a year that was designed to be her last on track before shifting her horizons towards the road. Only now, however, has she paired a silver and bronze from the European Championships with a performance that irrefutably stands apart.
“It’s certainly taken me a lot longer to get to this part of my career,” she acknowledged. “But I wouldn’t change it. I suppose as a youngster, I never had any ambitions of being a professional athlete. I just enjoyed running and it was a hobby. I never believed I would ever be good enough to make it a job certainly.
“Even when I made the London Olympics, that in itself was like, ‘wow, I can’t believe I’ve done this.’ Every year, I make small improvements but it’s still going in the right direction. And that just gave me a lot of hope.”
An illustration too that there is no singular path. McColgan learnt that the hard way when the injuries began to stack up during the early part of this dalliance when, as a steeplechaser, the mind was willing but the body kept testifying it was weak.
There were breakages and tears. A lost year in 2015 when her foot was pinned back together but stress tore her apart. Moments when she surely wondered how to deploy the accountancy degree gained at Dundee University lest her number as a runner was up.
Some, like her room-mate here Jenny Selman, shone early but then faded. The Fifer has proven a re-illumination can be achieved. It is a message McColgan has drilled into the youngsters she supports with funding at Dundee Hawkhill Harriers or who reach out for Insta advice.
“You don’t have to be super-talented or winning loads of medals and breaking those records when you’re a kid,” she underlined. “There’s so many years in the sport that if you do start to knuckle down and take it seriously, you don’t know where that will take you.”
McColgan may not be done yet in Brum but it will require some rest and repose. The 5000m final comes up this weekend with an opportunity of a double and a chance to cash in on her form. Will she still run? Ask me tomorrow, she begged. “I have no idea because I’m just operating on pure fumes.”
Others, she trusts, will now rev their engines and leave rivals for dust. Muir heads into this morning’s women’s 1500m heats with a real opportunity to claim a gold at that distance and another over 800m. While yesterday, the ballyhooed boys – Jake Wightman, Josh Kerr and Neil Gourley – all motored into tomorrow’s men’s 1500m final.
Wheelchair marathoner Sean Frame kicked off the Scottish athletics medal chase with silver last weekend but McColgan picked up the baton and then handed off momentum.
“I actually bumped into Jake this morning and he was just coming back from his morning shuffle,” she revealed. “Watching him the other week become world champion was just mad. And it created like a buzz obviously throughout the GB team, but even more between the Scotland team because we’ve been there and we’ve grown up together through numerous cross countries across Scotland.
“To see those three boys competing at the level that they’re competing in in our wee nation, that’s inspiring itself. And so I feel proud to be part of that – this medal tally for Scotland – because I know there’s plenty more coming.”
