IT’S A BIG YEAR FOR LAURA MUIR
NIGHTS SPENT AT ALTITUDE ALL PART OF PLAN TO HIT NEW HEIGHTS AT OLYMPICS
RUNNING is hard. Long distances make it doubly tricky. Trying to throw in the odd blazing burst of speed midway through an endurance event, while still keeping enough in reserve for a sprint finish? Now, that’s just showing off.
In a crowded field of Scottish athletes looking to make 2020 the greatest year of their lives, Laura Muir stands out. For the same reason that she often leaves so many rivals trailing.
Tipped to win Olympic gold by just about everyone who is anyone in athletics, including middle-distance legend Seb Coe himself, the Scot is already hard at work plotting a path to Tokyo.
There’s a lot to be done. Which is why she will spend most of January training at altitude in South Africa. And sleeping in an altitude tent. At altitude. As you do.
Five months short of her 27th birthday, Muir obviously wants to capitalise on the fact that she is now approaching her physical peak.
Lest anyone doubt that the qualified vet is reaching new heights as an athlete, well, the man who keeps hold of the stopwatch can point to black-and-white proof of improvement.
Comparing where his star athlete is now as opposed to 2016, when she was run out of the medals to finish seventh in the Olympic 1500metres, Andy Young tells Sportsmail that it’s no contest.
‘I still think that the spring of 2017 is the best shape I’ve ever seen Laura in, before she picked up a stress fracture,’ said Young, by way of caveat.
‘But, if you compare where she was ahead of Rio, there are definitely a couple of things Laura has added to her armoury.
‘The first is finishing speed. You can see that in her split times, even when she was running on a torn calf last year. She’s doing remarkable times for a distance runner.
‘In her field, she is maybe the best finisher in the world at the moment. That wasn’t there in Rio. We’ve moved that on.
‘And that’s been combined with her ability to endure. If you remember back in Rio, she tried to go with Faith Kipyegon and Genzebe Dibaba when they threw in a crazy 400m — but she went too far into the red zone.
‘We’ve moved that on, as well. If someone tries that again, she’s better placed to tolerate the lactic build-up. Her legs won’t give way.
‘So that’s really two of the key areas where she has physically moved on.
‘We already knew she could go from a long, long way out and leave everyone behind.
‘Now, if someone drops in a fast lap, she can go with them — and still have enough left in the tank for a ridiculous finish.’
Even the ‘mistake’ Muir made in Rio, trying to go with Kipyegon and Dibaba, came from a good place. A desire to go and compete for the gold medal.
Sure, she could have let the pair run off and settled for outsprinting the pack to claim a bronze. But that just wouldn’t have been her style.
And now? Well, Muir has been dominating so many rivals for such a long time that it occasionally looks as if she’s just trying out different ways to run ’em all, so to speak.
At the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow back in March, she did the doubledouble — retaining her 1500m and 3,000m titles — with what appeared to be a degree of comfort.
A fifth-placed finish at the World Championships in Doha, having struggled with a calf problem during the build-up, still felt like progress given the time she posted in testing conditions.
Twice a medallist at the World Indoor Championships, which she will be skipping this year, the Scot clearly has all the ability to compete against the very best on the planet.
As for whether she can possibly enter both the 1500m and the 5,000m, well, nobody in the Muir camp is going to start revealing all this far out from the Games.
‘Yeah, the schedule has been out for a while,’ said Young.
‘I’ve got a plan in mind. But not a public plan. The double? You just have a look and see what you think…
‘Everyone has a plan, of course. But then things happen. So I’m not quite ready to go public with our racing plan for Tokyo just yet.’
In case you want to figure it out for yourself, the first round of the women’s 5k takes place on the morning of July 31.
Three days later, the opening round off the 1500m — a canter for someone of Muir’s calibre — takes place at around 9am Japanese time, roughly 12 hours before the final of the 5,000m.
That’s the only potential clash. Would it be greedy to want our leading track-and-field star to go for glory in not one but two events?
So much can go right and wrong in the months to come that Young is probably right to ca’canny.
If it comes to it, don’t be surprised if Muir does enter both events — selection is a given — and makes a final call after that opening race.
These are all concerns for much, much later in the year. For now, there is gruelling work to be done. In elite athletics, there is simply no substitute for putting miles in the legs.
‘We’re heading back to South Africa, to Potchefstroom, which is actually not as high up as previous places we’ve trained at before,’ revealed Young. ‘I think it’s only about 1,350m above sea level.
‘But we’ll have Laura sleep in an altitude tent as well, just to get the benefit.
‘It’s a great place, a brilliant sports campus and a university town, so it’s perfect for three or four weeks of really good training.
‘We’ve been there a couple of times in the past and Laura really likes it, which is important when you’re working that hard.
‘For now, everything is about Tokyo. Everything leads to the Olympics. That’s what all of this work is heading towards.
‘Once we get back from South Africa, Laura will have three or four races indoors.
‘There will be a low-level one, then she’s going to New York for the Millrose Games, which she has wanted to do for a while.
‘And there will be the big one at the Emirates, the Muller Indoor Grand Prix in Glasgow.
‘As for the World Indoor Championships in March, they are completely off the table. She won’t be travelling to China for that. So we’re talking Glasgow and then maybe one more race.
‘Then you’re into the outdoor season, of course, which is another block of training, more racing in May and June — and probably more altitude training in July before we head to Tokyo. ‘As a coach, it feels like the Olympics are happening tomorrow. ‘You break everything down into sessions, which is work that simply needs to be done. ‘Laura had a wee injury that curtailed her track work for a month there. It was nothing major, but it means I start juggling, thinking about everything that needs to be done. ‘For athletes, it can be a bit of a slow burn. When the calendar goes to January 1, though, you can see them thinking: “Wait a minute, this is an Olympic year…”
‘So then you start to see a bit extra going on in sessions.’
When you consider what Muir has already achieved while battling against injury or balancing her career with a tough study schedule, she can seem almost superhuman.
Arguably one of her greatest strengths, however, is that she is still the same Laura — never flashy, arrogant or dismissive of ‘lesser’ team-mates — who has been maturing and developing into this spectacular talent.
The only major difference? When she walks on to the track now, everyone knows about it.
She has a presence, an aura. A target on her back, as she occasionally puts it. Everyone wants to cover her every move through the pack. All are eager to drag her back to their level.
Well, competing for the biggest prizes in such a prestigious sport isn’t supposed to be easy, now, is it?