Post by Max on Oct 1, 2020 17:35:13 GMT
Throughout Paula’s spectacular career I was always extremely impressed by her. An obviously brilliant talent from youth and junior days and eventually a truly world class long distance athlete over cross-country, on track as well as on the roads.
She is an intriguing character because away from racing she is a quiet, humble, unassuming person. Compare that to when she ran, she became a brutal, front-running warrior, an utterly ruthless pace-setter who tried to finish her competitors off with a relentless killer pace from the gun. It was a tactic that worked very well for her in most of her races, after all she enjoyed winning gold medals for England and Team GB at UK, European, Commonwealth and World level championship level and competed at four different Olympics.
This skinny white kid was asthmatic from a young age but she took on and shook the world and for a few years she generally dominated her events. This was mainly due to her pioneering attitude and renegade way of re-writing how women train for long distance running. Her weekly mileage was immense, her understanding of the importance of training at altitude, her willingness to take herself off to Iten and train with the Kenyans and Ethiopians were all new ideas that European athletes hardly understood. Paula was an innovator.
The ruthlessness she demonstrated in races towards her opponents was mirrored in how she dealt with herself. Her pain threshold is legendary so she pushed herself in training to the point of collapse, she allowed the physio to massage her muscles harder than anyone and she explored every other aspect of her regime. Nutrition, stretching, training session intensity were all done in her own determined way that set a new level which most could not live with. She won cross-country in mud and 8 inches of snow, she raced marathons from the very first step at record breaking pace that even the Africans dared not commit to so early in races. Her career was no doubt shortened by the injuries caused by the intensity she trained at as she got a little older.
That warrior attitude was the same when she stood waving at the Chinese athletes the ‘EPO cheats out’ banner she’d made. She had that same determination to tackle the drugs cheats in her sport throughout her running career. The real demonstration of her natural speed was her ‘farewell’ marathon in 2015 running 2.36, all whilst waving, shouting and cheering on her fellow runners throughout the race! That time would have got her a place in the GB team for Rio at aged 42 having not run competitively for 6 years.
Ironically it is only after 17 years that the World record she smashed in London by 3 minutes has only just been beaten. It shows just how far she pushed herself back in the day and just what progress was needed by women to finally match and beat her achievements.
She is an intriguing character because away from racing she is a quiet, humble, unassuming person. Compare that to when she ran, she became a brutal, front-running warrior, an utterly ruthless pace-setter who tried to finish her competitors off with a relentless killer pace from the gun. It was a tactic that worked very well for her in most of her races, after all she enjoyed winning gold medals for England and Team GB at UK, European, Commonwealth and World level championship level and competed at four different Olympics.
This skinny white kid was asthmatic from a young age but she took on and shook the world and for a few years she generally dominated her events. This was mainly due to her pioneering attitude and renegade way of re-writing how women train for long distance running. Her weekly mileage was immense, her understanding of the importance of training at altitude, her willingness to take herself off to Iten and train with the Kenyans and Ethiopians were all new ideas that European athletes hardly understood. Paula was an innovator.
The ruthlessness she demonstrated in races towards her opponents was mirrored in how she dealt with herself. Her pain threshold is legendary so she pushed herself in training to the point of collapse, she allowed the physio to massage her muscles harder than anyone and she explored every other aspect of her regime. Nutrition, stretching, training session intensity were all done in her own determined way that set a new level which most could not live with. She won cross-country in mud and 8 inches of snow, she raced marathons from the very first step at record breaking pace that even the Africans dared not commit to so early in races. Her career was no doubt shortened by the injuries caused by the intensity she trained at as she got a little older.
That warrior attitude was the same when she stood waving at the Chinese athletes the ‘EPO cheats out’ banner she’d made. She had that same determination to tackle the drugs cheats in her sport throughout her running career. The real demonstration of her natural speed was her ‘farewell’ marathon in 2015 running 2.36, all whilst waving, shouting and cheering on her fellow runners throughout the race! That time would have got her a place in the GB team for Rio at aged 42 having not run competitively for 6 years.
Ironically it is only after 17 years that the World record she smashed in London by 3 minutes has only just been beaten. It shows just how far she pushed herself back in the day and just what progress was needed by women to finally match and beat her achievements.