LAURA Muir and Mo Farah will be the headline acts in today’s Muller Anniversary Games in London with a repertoire that spans the distances.
The quadruple Olympic champ-ion has corralled every UK metric record from 1500 to 10,000 metres. Ten years his junior, the Scot’s penchant for domestic bests appears equally addictive. The British mile mark, held for 32 years and counting by Zola Budd, will be in her sights this afternoon. Such has been her acceleration over 2017 that its capture has been considered a formality ever since the bid was announced.
Or, at the very least, until five weeks ago when Muir was whisked into the consulting room upon her return from the US and a surprise diagnosis was given. A broken bone in her foot had passed undetected for two months; it was the first time since she engaged seriously with the sport in her teens that her body had let her down.
“It was lucky,” she says. “We caught it in time and it was only partially through the bone. My body was already trying to heal it and we just gave it a helping hand by stopping running for a few weeks and running in the pool. That seems to have done the job so far.”
Well enough that Mission Twin Gold is now back on the slate, even though UK Athletics performance director Neil Black, just a fortnight ago, was giving Muir only a “one per cent” chance of achieving enough fitness to attempt a 1500-5000 metres double at next month’s World Championships.
And well enough that in Muir’s re-introduction to the fray on Thursday, she obliterated her previous best over 800 metres in Lausanne, pushing through the two-minute barrier for the first time with a time that only Lynsey Sharp, one of her conquests in Switzerland, has bettered in the Scottish sphere.
It brought joy and relief after the injury trauma.
“You have the sense that you are invincible,” Muir admits. “You never think about injuries. I’d never had an injury like this before and Andy [Young] had never coached anyone with an injury like this. So it was new to us in all aspects.
“We had to accept this image showing the fracture line. It’s done now and we had to try to repair it as best as possible and do rehab. There were a couple of months at the time but we were fortunate the timing was OK and we could get back to normal quickly. We managed to nip it in the bud and get back running pretty quickly.”
Barring a recurrence, she can now focus on her global bid with a spring in her step. As can the current slew of 11 Scots with guaranteed invites to the worlds in London, a group that could grow to 12 if Guy Learmonth can land the 800m qualifying mark amid elite company this afternoon.
Farah, competing in the 3000m here amid his farewell tour, will likely steal the headlines even if Muir hits her mark. But others, like his now-contemporary Andy Butchart, have designs on poaching some of the records he will soon leave behind.
“I was watching the trials last weekend and the Scots were doing brilliantly,” Muir says. “Almost every race seemed to have someone in the top two. We’ve all come through together at the same time and are pushing each other on. We’re all really supportive of each other. We’re all from similar backgrounds and it’s great to have so many Scots in the team.”
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