I packed in kebabs and booze.. but I’d given them a good run for their money
Athlete on how she prepared for Olympics
Eilish McColgan has revealed her university friends were stunned when she ditched her party lifestyle to follow in her mum’s footsteps as an athlete.
The middle-distance runner told how she was a “drunken mess” surviving on a diet of kebabs and alcohol just a year before she competed for Team GB at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Eilish, the daughter of athletics great Liz McColgan, said she had lived like a typical student while studying accountancy and maths at Dundee University until 2011. The 29-year-old admitted that when she f inished her studies, she wasn’t good enough to forge a career as a professional athlete until she “knuckled down” and six months later met the qualifying time for the world championships.
But she said her decision to compete in the Olympics meant she didn’t see her friends for nearly two years.
She said: “I’d come out of university and had no real plans of becoming a professional athlete because I wasn’t at that level. I just wasn’t good enough to even think of that as a career.
“In 2011, I made a massive breakthrough where I ran the qual ifying time for the world championships. I couldn’t believe it – I’d really only been focusing on it for just six months. “I ’ d changed my lifestyle from university to stop being a typical student and staying up to 4am in the morning eating kebabs and living off alcohol to then thinking, ‘I really need to knuckle down here and give myself a chance.’
“London 2012 was such a big opportunity. It was a home Olympics Games and something I’d watched on TV as a kid and thought, ‘I’d love to do that.’
“All my friends at university were just confused, in all honesty. I think they were wondering how I’d gone from being this drunken mess of a student to then qualify for the Olympics the following year.
“They didn’t see me from halfway through 2011 to the whole way through 2012. I didn’t see any of them at all.
“I knew what I needed to do. I knuckled down. I started making sure I was sleeping properly. I cut out all of my takeaways. I cut out alcohol entirely.
“I think it was a little strange when my friends then saw me on TV. I think they were very confused.”
Eilish, a European Championship silver medallist, has competed in the 3000m steeplechase and 5000m. She represented her country in 2012 as well as at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and she is now aiming for her third Olympics next year.
Speaking on Jenni Falconer’s RunPod podcast, she said: “Changing all those aspects of my lifestyle just allowed me to become a healthier human. Not only the performance side of things improved but my health and mood improved as well.”