Muir faces tough Beijing exam as she bids to go the extra mile
Commonwealth Games lesson has helped student of the track rise to No.5 in world rankings
ROM the heartbreak of the 1500 metres final at last year’s Commonwealth Games, Laura Muir has recovered with remarkable resilience to claim fifth in the world rankings. Not since Liz McColgan and Yvonne Murray, in their prime more than two decades ago, has a Scot ranked this highly in any Olympic athletics event. And none have ever done so at the metric mile.
Yet the Glasgow University student dare not tempt fate and consider herself a medal contender for Beijing where the World Championships open six weeks today. She was third-fastest in the field going into last year’s Commonwealth final but it all fell apart on the final bend at Hampden.
On the shoulder of England’s Laura Weightman as they challenged for third, there was contact. Muir stumbled – as the English athlete took silver, Muir finished 11th.
But her 1500m victory at the World trials last weekend, ahead of Weightman, guaranteed Muir’s place in the GB team for China. Her final 800m, inside 2min 03sec, would have ranked Muir inside the Scottish all-time top 20 over two laps.
She says she would not have had the strength to do that last year, but impressive though it was, this was nothing compared to her Diamond League victory last month in Oslo. When the pacemaker stepped off at Bislett, Muir ran solo for the final 700m, winning in 4:00.39. Those behind her included the Glasgow 2014 gold and silver medallists, Sweden’s Abeba Aragawi (World 1500m champion indoors and out), and Ethiopian Dawit Seyaum, third-fastest in the world this year.
This summer Muir has run the fastest 800m of her life, and her quickest 3000m. Tonight she races the two-lap event in Madrid, where the field includes rival Scot, Lynsey Sharp. Next Friday it’s the 1500m in the Monaco Diamond League. The goals are to break 2:00 and 4:00 respectively.
Four years ago this month, Muir was a 4:42 club runner. Then on moving from Dundee to Glasgow University, she teamed up with coach Andy Young, a former World Schools 800m champion whose day job is Active Schools Co-ordinator in Glasgow.
He has nurtured her through the devastating low of last year which Muir describes as: “pretty bad – a massive disappointment”. When reflecting on her elimination in the European Championship heats two weeks later, she added: My confidence took a huge knock. I was pretty demoralised”. But the Diamond League in Oslo and Rome [4:00.61 last month] laid the ghosts – definitely.”
She consulted a psychologist by phone later in the year: “I fully respect that some athletes find it beneficial, but my coach and I had talked, and I knew how to get round it. It was horrible to go through, but the sport can be very cut-throat. It could have been anybody else in my position.”
Young says, however, that it took until the end of the indoor season this year, even though she had run 4:04 in Stockholm at the end of last summer and won the Great North road mile against a world-class field.
UK Athletics have dispatched a special ice vest to Madrid keep down her core body temperature in tonight’s warm-up. “The forecast is for 37 degrees,” Muir says. “It will be good practice for hot competition in future.”
The average August high in Beijing is rarely below 30 with an average humidity of 77 per cent.
The field there will be strong in depth. “I was ranked eighth last year from just one race, whereas now I am consistent at just over four minutes . . . but championships are far, far different from chasing a rabbit in a Diamond League. A medal? I’ve got to be realistic. A couple of girls just behind me are probably capable of running a faster time than I have done, but I am not ruling anything out . . . or in.”
Just 22, she is still ahead of doubleOlympic champion Kelly Holmes at the same age. She has done so on just 45-miles per week, and her regular weekly 12-miler at six-minute-mile pace suggests huge potential at longer distances. “If something is working, don’t change it,” she says. “I know lots of girls do double my mileage. I don’t do much conditioning or weights. We could improve and build up many parts of my training in future.”
She will head from Monaco to altitude training in Font Romeu, and then to the GB altitude camp in Japan ahead of Beijing. She tried the Pyrenees for the first time this spring. “I was running personal-best sessions when I came back, but because of exams it was five weeks before I raced [a PB over 3000m in Hengelo].”
Muir recently completed a two-week placement at Glasgow Vet School, working with multiple Scottish champion and Olympian Hayley Haining. “It was really good working alongside her in the pathology lab, and it was really nice to have someone with the same interest and athletics background. She gave me a lot of tips and is going to help me with advice on future placements and post university.”
Muir is almost six seconds inside the UK Olympic qualifying standard, with a time that would have won gold in the last three World Championships and a medal in the last five. Young, who has orchestrated this, works full time, despite lottery millions supposed to be developing talent. “I have to turn away other international athletes while Laura’s rivals have access to full-time coaches, some of them on six-figure salaries,” he says.
This week another of his proteges, Muir’s training partner Mhairi Hendry, was named in the GB team for the 800m at the European Under-20 championships.