LAURA Muir isn’t the only Scottish middle-distance runner who sat out the Gold Coast and sat her final exams instead. Like the double world indoor medallist, her one-time training partner Mhairi Hendry - another Scot who competed against the world’s best in Birmingham in early March - is ticking the final boxes on her university course at the same time as throwing her energies into a burgeoning athletics career.
While Muir skipped the Commonwealth Games to complete her finals at the University of Glasgow vet school, Hendry’s emergence came so so suddenly that selectors were unable to present her with a similarly awkward discussion with the University of Strathclyde. Having used the time on a warm weather training camp in Tenerife, last week it was into her first outdoor race of the season, and a second-place finish to University of Birmingham’s Mari Smith, whose PB of 2.03.71 was close to the championship best.
“It was my opening race, I wasn’t sure where I was in the season and I was a bit disappointed with coming second considering I had been in very good shape indoors,” said Hendry, who turned 22 in March. “But reflecting on it, I was still two seconds faster than I was this time last year.
“I just didn’t have it at the end,” she added. “I could hear the crowd were starting to get rowdy and thought ‘oh no, someone is getting close to coming past me’. And that is what happened.”
The chance to go on warm weather training was a rarity for Hendry, who has found it hard to make such trips due to her university commitments. Between training sessions, she had to work on her dissertation topic, an oral examination on which is the final box to be ticked on her BSc in prosthetics and orthotics. She is dubious about the idea of whether the idea of becoming a full-time athlete will suit her, and would far prefer to keep her eye in, and her mind off things, with some part time work. “I don’t think I would be very good at being a full-time athlete,” says Hendry. “I just know from when I was at school and went on break for the summer, I would just sit around the house all day because I don’t know what to do. I think if I was a full-time athlete that could happen again and I don’t want that to happen. I want to go out and get engaged in other things, rather than getting bogged down and overthinking things in my athletics. Just with the timings I didn’t get to see a lot of the Commonwealth Games. I was sleeping when most of it happened but when we were eating breakfast before we went to the track we would have it on so I did see some of it.”
All going well, Hendry and Muir’s paths may cross again soon. Having run 2.01.3 indoors this season – shaving a whopping two seconds off her 800m time in the space of a year – the 22-year-old now needs to lose another three tenths to meet the qualifying standard for the European Championships in Berlin in August. Should she get the time, and Muir -unable to double up in the 1500m and 5000m as both finals are on the same day - decide to go for both the 1500m and 800m, there could be an almighty Scottish showdown between Muir, Lynsey Sharp and Hendry for qualification
“I am aiming for the time, which is a good goalpost for me to reach but there are also a lot of other athletes who are already at that level. I would be happy to get a qualifying standard, then see what comes next in terms of the championships. What is my next chance? I will hopefully be running Loughborough and then out in Belgium, quite a few of my training group are heading out there to hopefully get some fast races.”
Given her university background, and specialist interest in matters such as orthotics and prosthetics, it seemed worth asking Hendry for her views upon new IAAF rules insisting that that hyper-androgynous athletes such as Caster Semenya must lower their natural testosterone levels, something that was estimated this week, could make her run seven seconds slower. It is the kind of ruling which could drastically alter the parameters of Hendry’s career, but her first instinct is simply sadness on a personal level for the blameless Semenya.
“I wouldn’t say I have followed the subject intensively but obviously you are aware of it, because it is basically everywhere in the news. I don’t think there is a right answer. She [Semenya] is getting targeted a lot, which is obviously a real shame for here, because there is nothing she can do. But I also get what a lot of people are saying about the subject. The hard facts of it is that she is an amazing athlete running very fast times that people can’t compete with, but that is just her genetics.”
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