Why London still feels different<\/p>\n
McColgan spoke warmly about the London Marathon, but in precise terms rather than broad praise. What stayed with her from last year was how close the crowd felt throughout the course.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really just blew all my expectations of any race I\u2019ve ever done before out of the water,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom start to finish, there\u2019s people cheering you every second of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so much more intimate. People are cheering at you specifically. When you\u2019re on the track, there\u2019s a big noise and there\u2019s a crowd, but in London, you hear people specifically calling out your name. It\u2019s those small interactions from start to finish, that\u2019s what makes London Marathon the London Marathon.\u201d<\/p>\n
That experience also shaped the way she approached this training block. McColgan explained that the build-up hasn\u2019t solely been about handling marathon volume, but also regaining the speed she felt had faded during the injury-hit period around her knee surgeries.<\/p>\n
In a round-table session, she said she needed to move back towards \u201c30 minutes or so\u201d for 10km and close to 67 minutes for the half marathon if she wanted to keep progressing over the full distance. The signs are already there. This season, she has run 30:08 for 10km and 1:07:08 for the half-marathon.<\/p>\n
So how does she define success in London this time?<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, success for me\u2026 of course I\u2019d like to try and break into maybe the top five of those elites,\u201d she said. \u201cBut ultimately running a PB, like I can\u2019t ask for anything more than running a PB. If you run the best you\u2019ve ever run before, that\u2019s a huge positive and a step forward for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also acknowledged that 2:20 remains a meaningful long-term benchmark. At the same time, she made clear that one race doesn\u2019t have to answer every question. She\u2019d still like to test herself in a fast autumn marathon, ideally in a mixed field, because, as she put it, \u201cit\u2019s not easy running a marathon solo\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why London still feels different McColgan spoke warmly about the London Marathon, but in precise terms rather than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-411687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}