After suffering from panic attacks, Rosie Elliott found running helped her mental health. Now, in her first year racing the 400m, she's the national champion on the cusp of breaking a 42-year-old record, Sarah Cowley Ross writes.
The first time sprinter Rosie Elliott ran for New Zealand, at the Oceania championships, she came home and stopped competing altogether. She thought she’d got to the highest level of competition she could reach.
She was only 16.
Disillusioned, she couldn’t see a pathway for her in the sport.
Now 24, Elliott is set to return to the Oceania area championships in Mackay in June – this time as a national champion with the potential for higher honours in her new event, the 400m. A distance she only started racing this summer.
But it’s been far from an easy road to return to this point for the Canterbury sprinter.
In her first two years at the University of Otago, Elliott went through a period of “bad mental health”.
“I was having panic attacks every day,” she says.
“I was falling asleep like I wasn’t going to wake up – it was really scary.”
She was struggling with the change in lifestyle, moving from the comforts of home to living in a “freezing” Dunedin student flat. And she was dealing with the ongoing effects of concussion from her first season playing club rugby.
In the depths of despair, Elliott returned to the track, reigniting her passion for athletics - a sport she did through her childhood (among many others, she adds).
She discovered running was a great mental health tool. “It just fixed me right back up,” she says.
Her first coach in Christchurch, Jonathan Black, put her in touch with Dunedin sprinting coach Brent Ward and Elliott began a journey to wellness through the track.
She also finished her degree in anatomy, and moved back home to Christchurch, where she’s thriving under innovative coach Andrew Maclennan.
In a breakthrough season, Elliott has changed direction.
When she opened her athletics season last November, she was a 100m and 200m sprinter. But she’s just finished the New Zealand season as No.4 on the all-time ranking lists over 400m.
“It’s all pretty wild,” Elliott laughs.
At the national track and field championships in March, she won the 400m title in a blistering time of 52.59s, and was second in the 100m and 200m. She then went on to collect the 400m bronze medal at the Australian championships in Sydney.
“I had a crap season last year with illness and injury, so to get a good winter block in was huge. It’s been an awesome year,” she says.
In her final race of the season at the Brisbane Track Classic, Elliott won the 400m to claim valuable world ranking points.
'You have to have done a 400m to know how it feels. It’s like running through honey'.
One of the oldest national records in the books, Kim Robertson’s 400m time of 51.60s set in 1980, is within her reach, Elliott reckons.
“If it’s that old, it’s got to go. I definitely think that’s doable in the next year or two,” she says.
The astonishing thing is that Elliott hasn’t yet trained specifically for the 400m - and by her own admission, she doesn’t quite know how to run them tactically.
“It’s so different to the 100m and 200m where you just go gas-out the entire way. In the 400m, I’m still figuring out whether I start hard or not,” she says.
Watching Elliott run a 400m, it’s like she’s cruising the first 100m waiting for the inside runner to come onto her shoulder to be able to pace off them.
“I’m totally running to my competition. It’s like a flying 300m from blocks,” she laughs.
She says she’s reluctantly come to terms with the fact the 400m will be the event where she’s most competitive internationally. Her hesitancy comes with the knowledge of her body swimming in lactic acid in both the training required for the event and the race itself.
“You have to have done a 400m to know how it feels. It’s like running through honey, although that implies there’s something sweet about it,” jokes Elliott.
With Elliott now choosing the 400m over the shorter sprints, there’s potential to have a highly competitive Kiwi 4x400m relay team, joining up with other long sprinters Isabel Neal, Camryn Smart, Portia Bing and young talent Mia Powell (who's the national U20 national 400m champion).
“The 4x400m relay hasn’t been on the radar because of how dominant the short sprints have been,” Elliott says. “But this year we have an opportunity to push for selection.
“It will be great to all run together at Oceanias. When there are people performing and doing well, we all rise.”
Elliott will now prepare for the Mackay competition solely focused on the 400m. Her training group, which includes sprinters Anna Percy and Tiann Whelpton, make the tough training sessions doable, she says.
“I struggle at times with pushing myself in the long rep sessions and pacing myself. Anna has spent so many years training by herself so she’s much better at pacing – I’d be lost without her on and off the track as a friend,” Elliott says.
After a stage of being lost, Elliott says she’s now well.
“I had this expectation for a really long time that that was how I was going to live my life. That was how it was going to be for me,” she says.
“It’s been really nice in the last couple of years to have the realisation that I don’t think I’m ever going to go to the darkness again, which is great.”
Rosie Elliott after winning her final 400m race of the 2021-22 season in Brisbane.
It’s not uncommon for people to struggle with their mental health and for Elliott she thinks the massive shift in lifestyle from high school to university life - from living at home to a student flat - wasn’t the best situation for her.
She also struggled with her concussion from rugby, which she says took a year to recover from.
Social media played its part too, Elliott says. And she warns young people to be aware of its dangers.
“Particularly around food and body image and what you should look like. The constant scrolling can’t be good for your brain,” she says.
She’s proud to worked through a really difficult chapter in her life and is grateful to her support network who’ve been there for her - particularly her parents. She’s grateful, too, for her sport.
“Athletics has been a good way of managing my brain,” Elliott says.
“I can be quite hyperactive and my brain can be quite busy if I don’t train. It’s my way of managing that. So I can’t wait to get back out to compete at Oceanias.”
