It’s almost certain that the reason behind Megan Keith’s ridiculously fast rise up the athletics ranks is her refusal to ever be entirely satisfied with her own performance.
Her assessment of her own performance, more often than not and regardless of quite how many plaudits outsiders are showering upon her, almost always includes the line “could have been better”.
It’s hard to criticise Keith for such an unforgiving view of her own performance given it’s been behind the 22-year-old’s rise from cross-country runner to an Olympian on the track.
Keith will race the 10,000m at Paris 2024 and it will only be the Inverness woman’s fourth competitive outing at the distance in her life.
Such a statistic is almost unbelievable.
But Keith, it’s rapidly becoming apparent, is a generational talent.
Having started out as a cross-country specialist – her XC career highlights include European U20 XC gold in 2021, European U23 silver in 2022 before upgrading that to gold last year – Keith was reluctant to move onto the track, saying she found track racing “quite boring”.
However, her occasional forays onto the track gave glimpses of the talent she was harbouring – she won European U23 gold in the 5000m last summer – and it became clear that Keith, if she was willing to embrace the challenge, had a bright future ahead of her as a track runner.
She made her senior GB track debut last summer in the 5000m at the World Championships but it’s been this year in which Keith has really made an impression, with the Highlander ticking off milestones with laughable regularity.
In her first-ever competitive 10,000m, Keith ran the Olympic qualifying standard.
On her second outing, she secured Olympic selection by becoming British 10,000m champion and on her third, last month, she won her first-ever senior medal on the track in the shape of European bronze.
That European Championships medal was, to onlookers, a hugely successful achievement but Keith admits she still can’t resist critiquing her performance, despite the positive outcome.
“I knew that based on times I was capable of a medal at the Europeans but so much can happen in championship racing so I didn’t want to base entirely being happy with my performance in Rome on whether or not I got a medal,” she says.
“Getting a medal was a good outcome but I wasn’t particularly satisfied with how I raced. I felt I didn’t commit fully to what I’m strongest at which is going to the front and pushing hard. I was thinking too much about the people around me and not enough about what I can do well.
"It’s the race I’ve learnt the most from so it’s left me just really looking forward to going out again and hopefully doing a bit better the next time.”
That Keith’s fourth-ever 10,000m will be the Olympic final is faintly ridiculous.
Having been the first GB track athlete to secure her place at Paris 2024 back in May, Keith has had plenty of time to wrap her head around the prospect of becoming an Olympian and while plenty of observers have commented on the speed of her progress, the Inverness athlete admits she’s taken her ascent in her stride and in fact, it’s only the reaction of other people which reminds her that what she’s done over the past six months is unique.
“I don’t see it as crazy fast progress – I more see it a logical progression,” she says.
“It’s more people’s reactions to me that makes me stop and think yeah, this is pretty cool.
“There is more media interest in me now but really, I just like to just keep myself to myself and get on with my training.”
Keith is in the privileged, and somewhat unusual position, of being at the Olympics with almost no pressure upon her shoulders.
Alongside her in a GB vest in the Olympic 10,000m will be her fellow Scot, Eilish McColgan, with Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay and Sifan Hassan from the Netherlands the gold medal favourites.
And while Keith is, quite fairly, refusing to target any particular placing in Paris, one thing she’s certain of is she’s likely to come back home with a list as long as her arm of things she can improve on her next outing.
“People always talk about what they think you can achieve but I don’t want to approach it like that,” she says.
“I’m my own harshest critic so I just want to come away from Paris having had a positive experience in what will be my first taste of the Olympics.
“I know the race is probably going to be very fast and the conditions very hot so I’m not kidding myself – I know it’ll probably be one of the hardest runs I’ll ever do and I probably won’t come away 100 percent satisfied but I’m just so excited to be a part of the Olympics.”
