“If I get on the podium at an Olympics, that would be amazing. But I just want to enjoy it and be the best athlete I can”
● Middle distance star looks back fondly on nine years with coach Andy Young and hopes for something special in year ten
LAURA MUIR has had to rejig things with Tokyo no longer on the horizon but the middledistance star is keeping things in perspective.
Nine fulfilling years under the tutelage of trusty coach Andy Young have propelled Laura Muir from Scottish Schools cross country also-ran to realistic Olympic medal hope.
But, as the training sessions together move from hundreds into the thousands, the lessons can be encapsulated in a mantra which runs to just four words: No pain, no gain.
Middle-distance star Muir credits Young with teaching her to push herself like never before after they first met in the autumn of 2011. He was coach of the Glasgow University athletics squad, she was an 18-year-old “Fresher” whose veterinary degree was a far bigger goal than her track ambitions.
Young now claims it took at least a couple of years for Muir to get used to his methods. She insists it was quicker than that but doesn’t dispute there had to be a sea-change in mindset.
“He has shown me how to push myself,’ she said, when asked simply for the basis of the coach-athlete relationship.
“There was a lot of intensity to the sessions Andy set. When I look back now, in my previous training prior to 2011, I don’t remember being in a huge amount of pain! Or being very tired. I know I was but I didn’t push myself as I do now.
“Andy always laughs about it and says: ‘When you first came to the group at uni you didn’t push yourself at all. It took ages for that to happen’.
“It definitely took a while – a transition, a learning curve.
“You can’t just throw a switch from one approach to the other. He kept telling me: ‘You can go faster’. And he set targets even within sessions – times you had to aim for and make.
“There were shorter recoveries, there were double runs [two runs in one day] – I’d not done that before. My Sunday long run started to get longer. There were circuits. I’d never done any strength and conditioning work prior to being 18 years of age.
“He brought all that in and overhauled everything.’
In an interview with scottishathletics about her career and the influence of coaches, Muir pointed out that, less than three months after the partnership began, she won her first GB and NI vest as she finished 31st in the U20 Women’s race at Velenje.
She said: “Slovenia in December 2011 was amazing – my first GB vest. [Fellow Scot] Derek
Hawkins was on the team and he looked after me on the trip – Andy Baddeley, too. I was away abroad with experienced GB athletes. We won team gold in the Women’s under-20 race and that felt great.
“Andy had said to me a few weeks earlier: ‘I think you should run the cross country at Liverpool’.
“I said: ‘Why would I do that in late November?’ He told me I might make the GB team for the Euro Cross Country Champs. I didn’t know that such an event existed!
“So to get on the podium with the team and come home with a team gold medal was a bit surreal.
“After all, I’d hardly ever made teams with the Scottish Schools only a few years earlier! I did make the London Mini Marathon but that was about it.
“I went to the Schools crosscountry at Irvine and for a couple of years I was outside the top eight that made the team. I never got that legendary Scottish Schools backpack.”
Fun and friendships were still more the focus back then for Muir after starting out at the Dunfermline and West Fife club and then Dundee Hawkhill Harriers with Alan Mackintosh her coach. At one stage, because Dundee was too far to travel from her Milnathort home, a small group trained in Perth.
“There were only really four or five of us and Alan at the track in Perth, and we met our Dundee Hawkhill team-mates at events,” recalled Muir.
“Sometimes it was just my wee brother Rory and me training but Alan still made it enjoyable. I wasn’t very competitive at that time to be honest – except with Rory!’
In Glasgow in that autumn of 2011, her approach began to change under the watchful eye of Young.
“I joined a few clubs in Freshers Week, as you do, and the athletics one was a big group,’ she said.
“After a few weeks that dwindled a bit but I enjoyed the programme Andy was setting us. He had a great mix in terms of his coaching – encouragement, motivation, inclusion, humour.
“Warm-ups were fun and he’d include everyone and get them involved. We enjoyed it but he encouraged us but the hard work itself was exactly that – hard work.
“I’ve known him now for almost ten years and I know what he’s going to say and he knows what I’m going to say – we’re on the same wavelength and it works.
“He knew how to take me up through the phases.”
Five European titles, two World Indoors medals and a string of British and Scottish records have followed, a double gold in Belgrade at the 2017 European Indoors something of a breakthrough.
The coach, it seems, will rarely get too high or too low.
“Andy is quite reserved and he doesn’t show his emotions all that much. If I get a hug after a race or a medal then I know I have done well!
“As soon as I finish a race, I know how he is thinking even before I speak to him. We know what we’re looking for from races,” added Muir.
“Hewilltellmelikeitis.he will say ‘that was good’ or ‘that wasn’t too good’. If it goes well, then you know he is in a good mood.”
Missing out on the Commonwealth Games in 2018 due to her studies probably cost Muir a medal – or maybe two if she had doubled up – but with her final exams on the agenda, something had to give.
“I made the decision about Gold Coast about two or three years earlier,’ she said. “We’d sat down and were planning a route towards the Rio Olympics and the World Champs in
COACHING RELATIONSHIP
“Andy is quite reserved and he doesn’t show his emotions all that much. if i get a hug after a race or a medal then I know I have done well!”
LAURA MUIR
2017 and beyond. And we were asking the question ‘What year can I sit my finals at uni and what championship will have to take the hit?’
“With the Commonwealths being in Australia and in April, that made it even harder to fit everything in.
“Andy knew that I came to Glasgow Uni to qualify as vet and it was important to me,” added Muir.
“It was disappointing to miss Gold Coast and I would love to have been there for Gold Coast 2018. But it just didn’t work with my finals that year.
“Andy had always helped me to dovetail training and competition with my studies. We had meetings multiple times with the Uni about splitting two years into one and taking a gap year and so on. I started in 2011 and finished in 2018!”
Lockdown training is a little less than usual – there is no physio support available, for example – but the “pushing” will continue with Japan now a further 12 months distant. Muir added: “I do push myself now, yes, but it is still important to have Andy there pushing me on, too.
“He will say: ‘I want you a second quicker’ and you have to drive yourself on to try to do it. That helps if you are maybe feeling a little tired or not motivated that day.”
With the Olympics now in 2021, Muir and Young could yet have something significant to celebrate to mark their ten-year coach-athlete milestone…