The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Jones earns first call-up to British team on roads
Dundee Hawkhill Harrier in World Half Marathon Championships
Dundee Hawkhill Harrier Kris Jones has been handed a first call-up into a British team on the roads at next month’s World Half Marathon Championships in Gdynia.
He joins Callum Hawkins in a 10-strong squad for the event on October 17 with the marathon star set to begin his Olympic countdown in Poland with his place at the Tokyo Games already guaranteed.
Fellow Scot Steph Davis retains her place for the rearranged event but Canada-based Sarah Inglis has been forced to pull out due to a travel blockade.
Team leader Robert Hawkins said: “The team has been revised following athlete withdrawals from the original team named for March’s championship, but I feel we have been able to add a good blend of international experience to those that are making their first appearances on the roads for Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
Meanwhile, normally an end of season jaunt to the sunshine of Qatar would represent a chance for Eilish McColgan to stretch her legs, unwind and relish an infrequent opportunity to spend extended time in the company of her mother Liz who has long made the desert kingdom her home.
Yet the 29-year-old has arrived in
Doha for today’s concluding Diamond League meeting knowing that a familial reunion is likely to be brief – and under the strict protocols implemented to keep coronavirus out of the event bubble.
“I’d like to stay out,” the Dundonian admits.
“I was only planning to see mum for five days. But it was dependent on the restrictions.
“I might have to get straight after the race.”
The Olympic finalist will hope to make the most of her detour to wind up a campaign that has not gone, in the slightest, to plan.
Minus a third Olympic appearance, bereft of a European Championship, 2020 has been the year when athletics – like most sports – was forced to rip up its blueprint and fully redraft at the shortest of notice.
McColgan will race the 3,000m in Doha, facing Kenya’s reigning world 5,000m champion Hellen Obiri plus in-form British contemporaries Laura Weightman and Melissa Courtney.
On her original calendar, she would have sped through trips to Tokyo and onward to a planned half-marathon debut at this month’s Great North Run.
Performances from Plan B – mainly over 1,500m, a distance over which she has barely trained – have felt the flight home unsatisfactory, she declares. Better, however, to have run on than retrench.
“The other option was sitting at home. All the training I put in during lockdown when I was in America in the spring was the best block I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.
“It’s just a shame I didn’t get the racing opportunities in May and June that I’d planned.
“That’s so frustrating. I’ve been injuryfree all year despite not having any physio for almost six months.
“But there’s still a benefit from racing. It will be in the log for moving up to 10,000m and half-marathon next year.
“The worst thing would have been to back off completely.”
Ten kilometres, McColgan says, will be the distance of choice for the next 12 months. Another stride in the footsteps of Liz, whose world title on the track came at the distance 29 years ago.
“10,000 always was the priority,” she affirms.
“I thought about it for the worlds in Doha last year but shied away from it because I thought I was in a great 5,000m shape. But definitely, for Tokyo, the main thing is 10,000m.
“If I can do 5,000 as well, I will. But the goal is to break 31 minutes and them move up to half-marathon, and eventually the marathon.”