Lizzie Lee’s doing it for herself... and Ireland’s mothers
Her newest arrival is just 16 months old, but Leevale’s finest is helping convince mothers to remain active
‘I’M HAPPY TO HAVE LITTLE GIRLS VIEW ME AS A GOOD ROLE MODEL’
JUST as the conversation is concluding, Lizzie Lee makes her point. ‘One of the things that does annoy me is the type of comment you see on social media,’ she says, exasperation briefly shading the vibrant good humour of Ireland’s new national women’s marathon champion.
‘Some people ask why I mention my kids in interviews. It’s because my body made a human 16 months ago,’ she laughs, referring to her youngest daughter Alison, a sister to four-year-old Lucy.
‘Why wouldn’t I mention the kids? I’ve received over 100 messages from mothers telling me that I’ve helped to motivate them, so of course I’m going to talk about my family.
‘If I can help mothers to realise that they can continue to be active and maintain that part of their lives after having children, then I will.’
Lee is a remarkable figure in Irish sport, the woman doing her damndest to have it all – if ‘all’ is taken in the sense that describes a life routinely afforded to men but denied to women by history and ignorance.
A week ago, she ran the 26.2 miles of the Dublin marathon course in two hours, 35 minutes and three seconds. This was good enough to finish third overall in the women’s race. Crucially, she also was the first Irish woman home, making her national champion.
The race was won by Ethiopian Mesera Dubiso, with another Ethiopian, Motu Gedefa, second.
Lee’s performance was outstanding, the latest achievement in a career in bloom. She won the women’s mini marathon in June, and two years ago she ran for Ireland in the Olympic marathon. In 2012, she won gold as part of the Irish team that triumphed at the European crosscountry championships, and was part of the team that took bronze three years later.
She is now 38, but if fitness allows her to maintain the form of recent years, she is good enough to run at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
Justifiably proud of her achievement, she is as energised by the effect her success has had on women, young and old. Last Tuesday night, on a short break with her family in the west, she visited an athletics club. Lee understands the power that comes with her profile.
‘I’ve just been down at juvenile training at Westport AC,’ she says. ‘I’m here for two days with my kids and I just popped down because I said I’m here. My brother was doing a session so I said I’d go down. I had a nice informal chat with the girls.
‘If I can motivate a few 15-year-olds or 12-yearolds or nine-year-olds to stay in sport, well isn’t that important? To me, that’s the most important thing.’
Her family were there to watch her blaze through the chilly Dublin air last weekend, and one moment in the celebrations that followed moved her.
‘My favourite photo from Sunday is one of me and Lucy on the podium. She’s four, and she gets it. She knows what Mummy did. She doesn’t get the full extent of it but she knows that everyone was looking at Mummy, and Mummy was doing really well and that Mummy won a medal.
‘That’s so important to me, that my little girl feels “I can”. The hashtag for the Dublin marathon was #icaniwill and that is so important.
‘The boys will do it, they’ll go off and play football and soccer, but with the girls it’s, “Not everyone is doing it and it’s not very cool”.
‘Just stay in sport! Sport is so important for everything.
‘If little girls want to see me as a role model, then I’m perfectly happy with that. ‘And if I have time and when I have time, I’ll go and visit their schools and their training sessions.’ To hear
Lee embracing the prospect of being a role model, a responsibility from which many would shrink, is no surprise when one appreciates the contours of her life.
As well as two daughters and a husband, she works full-time as a project manager with Apple in Cork. In the moments not consumed by those responsibilities, she fills in the time training with Leevale AC.
Once, she would have been the clichéd woman who wanted it all. Now, she is a terrific Irish sportsperson who happens to be a woman.
Some attitudes remain stubbornly outdated, but her success and growing profile are worth viewing against the backdrop of the recent 20x20 initiative. This is a campaign, supported by the Federation of Irish Sport, that aims to increase coverage of, and participation in, women’s sport by 20 percent by the year 2020. Stories like Lee’s should be central to their plans.
The sheer joy she felt after the marathon spoke to the power of sport.
‘I’m on a total, total high,’ she says, laughing.
‘That was a big bucket-list win. I’ve looked at the photos about a million times and the emotion, none of that was fake. That was very real.
‘The whole thing was up there with the Olympics, to be honest. It was, because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I just can’t believe how good the support was. It was unbelievable. I’ve never experienced anything like it in any race, ever.’
She was still feeling the effects on that break in Westport, too. So wrecked is she by her marathon effort that she can still barely put one foot in front of the other.
‘I had to get my sister in law to push the buggy up a hill today because I couldn’t do it. I’m in bits,’ she says.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the pain was always this sweet?
Sport has been a part of her life from the beginning, she says. Her parents, Gary and Mary, were responsible for that.
‘If anyone ever asks me about my childhood, I always say dinner on a Sunday was at six o’clock because there was no one there at one o’clock. They were climbing mountains or playing hockey,’ she recalls. ‘Nobody was in the house because we played sport on a Sunday. That is the way I was reared.
‘It was fundamental to us. I was never brilliant at anything but I played everything and I tried everything.’
Her early adult years saw her prioritise triathlon, and it is only in the past decade that running has been the priority.
Her talent is facilitated by Donie Walsh, her coach at Leevale, but also by a routine that eschews foreign training camps in favour of the roads of Cork and the support of a running community that she adores.
‘It just works for me,’ she says. ‘I can run at lunchtime. I get up early in the morning, I know my routes.
‘I love it. In the run-up to Rio I went to Spain with Paul, my husband, and Lucy, just to avoid going to Brazil too early and to avoid leaving Lucy for too long.
‘I hated the two weeks and the training on my own. I actually drove 40 minutes to meet someone for my last long run. I was so bored.’
It is not a condition Lee would
easily accept. Her life is ceaseless, but working to the benefit of her running career to an extent she can only marvel at.
She will not peer too far into the future, but thinks her success last Sunday has brought her a long way towards qualification for the world championships in Doha next September.
And from that vantage point, it would be only natural to start thinking about Tokyo and life as a two-time Olympian. ‘People ask me about Tokyo, but I just love running at the moment,’ she says.
‘I adored Sunday. It was the best fun ever. I had a brilliant day at the Cobh 10-miler in April. I was buzzing after that.
‘I was buzzing after the women’s mini-marathon. That was another bucket list one.
‘I’ve never won a marathon outright, so that’s another one on the list.’
She isn’t finished. Her work isn’t done. Lizzie Lee’s inspirational running life has miles left in it yet.