by Things you wouldn’t expect in an interview with Eilish McColgan: Discussing the merits of the “Helicopter Burger” – bacon, chips, Lorne sausage, beef patty and a fried egg packed into a giant flour bread roll – sold for 24 hours . a bakery called Clark’s which was once voted the best place to get “drunken food” in Scotland. 2. Hearing “Corfu” and “Istanbul” in the context of fast food restaurants rather than hot weather training bases.
Britain’s best female long-distance runner since Paula Radcliffe, however, is reliving her student days in Dundee, when alcohol, nightclubs and fast food were as much a part of the routine as an ice bath. .
“I had a normal university experience, going to student nights and fresher’s weeks… drinking, eating kebabs and partying all the time,” she says. “I’m not a professional athlete, running was just a hobby. I had no ambitions to go to the Olympics. I didn’t think I was good enough. I didn’t feel that anything was in danger. We used to go to this place called Corfu Kebabs. Another one was called Istanbul Grill. We get all sorts.”
There was a caveat, however. However late McColgan might stay out, she would not miss the three-week training sessions that her mother, Liz, the 1991 world 10,000 meters champion, organized at Dundee’s Hawkhill Harriers athletics club.
It was a routine they had established since Liz joined the training group when Eilish was 13 and it is encouraging to hear how the Scottish athletics legend has approached her coaching role.
“My mum let me decide if I wanted to do it,” says McColgan, 33. “The sessions were tough – tough – but at the same time we had a lot of fun. One thing she did really well was hold us back. I remember coming back from the races, being upset because I’d come in, say, sixth place and I was only allowed to train one or two days a week. My mum would be like, ‘Tough – you’re not going to train as an adult until your body is ready’. A lot of coaches and athletes get that wrong.”
McColgan competed in the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games shortly before moving away from home to start a degree in mathematics and accountancy. She was 17 years old, an age that could easily be considered make or break for an aspiring athlete. How did her mother react when she decided to embrace the whole student experience?
“She would see me walking away from sport, not having a healthy lifestyle, but she never told me: ‘Stop doing that.’ She said: ‘It’s your decision, if you come back to sport, that’s great and I’ll be there to help you but, if you choose a different path, don’t worry.’”
It would confuse some of her athletic friends if McColgan could even maintain a training base. “They were thinking, ‘Why are you training when you’ve just been up until 3am dancing the night away!?’ I wasn’t sleeping and recovering as I should have – lots of sore throats, sore heads and colds. But I think deep down somewhere I believed that maybe I could compete for Great Britain. I had a voice saying, ‘Keep going’ even though it wasn’t a 100 per cent commitment.”
This mindset would last for more than two years until a switch was thrown in 2011 when her degree ended and the London 2012 Olympics loomed. McColgan began to investigate the possibility of a place in the steeplechase 3,000m and decided overnight to call it quits. After regularly seeing her in nightclubs and takeaways, her friends at Dundee University were now in for a surprise when they turned up for the 2012 Olympics.
“They didn’t even know I wanted to be an athlete – they were very confused when they saw me at the Olympics,” she says, laughing. “They were just asking where I was.”
With mostly remote coaching help from Liz, as well as loyal help from partner Michael Rimmer, McColgan has been improving incrementally over the past decade.
There was a European silver medal of 5,000m in 2018 but, as the distances increased, so did her relative performances and the summer of 2022 culminated in a memorable 10,000m gold at the Commonwealth Games. Her mother had won the same title in 1986 and 1990 so as McColgan took Liz to the side of the track a great family story turned full circle.
‘I still talk to my mum every day’
She recently spent seven weeks with her mother in Qatar, a trip that would end in tragedy last month when Liz’s husband and Eilish’s stepfather John Nuttall died suddenly of a heart attack. So devastated was their unexpected loss that Eilish admits she doesn’t think it’s all sunk in yet. Nuttall’s children from his first marriage – Hannah and Luke – are aiming to reach Paris in the Olympic and Paralympic Games respectively. “We would always talk about his children’s athletics and I really enjoyed it – he was so passionate about sport,” says Eilish.
The McColgans’ mother/daughter/coach/athlete relationship is the focus of an excellent new BBC documentary, E.ilish McColgan: Runs in the Familyand they have long planned a path to the Olympic Games next summer in Paris and tilt at a major marathon.
“I still talk to my mother probably every day,” she says. “We’ve never had a proper argument. I don’t feel like I’ve had to sacrifice anything in my life to get to this level… but a lot of other people don’t feel the same way. Yes, I don’t have any world medals, like Olympic or world, but that’s not my value.
“I read an interview with Holly Bradshaw, the pole vaulter, and she asked if it was worth winning the bronze medal at the Olympics. I felt so sad reading it because Holly is such an incredible person. She is a good friend of mine, her worth is far above the bronze medal, and yet she put everything forward to that one thought. It really made me think.”
Injury cut his 2023 after early-season times over 10,000m and the half-marathon were respectively first and second on Britain’s all-time list and in the world’s top 10 for the year. “That gave me hope that I know it’s not that far away – I’m getting even faster,” she says.
She would, of course, love to win an Olympic medal next summer, over 10,000m or the marathon, but there is a sense that she has something more valuable – the ability to still enjoy the journey. “I don’t think about it too much,” she says. “If I win, I’m brilliant, but if I can run a PB, or at least know that I’ve done everything, it’s not worth it for me to finish. Whether my effort is good enough for first, fifth or 10th place, I will be very happy. He’s trying to make small improvements every year and getting closer to the top in the world.”
‘Eilish McColgan: Running in the Family’ is on BBC iPlayer
