Laura Muir’s status among her peers has been confirmed by one of her leading Scottish and British team-mates and potential 5000 metres rivals after she completed her record breaking week with another winning run.
Team captain Muir ran the glory leg as she crossed the line first in the Stewart Cup 4 x 1km mixed relay for the second successive year at the Simply Health Great Edinburgh XCountry on Saturday, in doing so denying her Scottish colleagues a successful defence of the title she won with them last year.
Just days after her record smashing effort in stepping up to 5000 metres and beating the Scottish best mark set by Liz McColgan a quarter of a century ago by 14 seconds, Muir was dominant as she led Britain to a rare race victory on another thrilling day for Scottish athletics which saw Callum Hawkins become the first of Mo Farah’s compatriots to beat the world’s best endurance runner for seven years.
She has now done pretty much everything but win a medal at a major championships, but with the European Indoor Championships in Belgrade looming and the World Championships in London to follow later this year, fellow Scot Steph Twell, who claimed bronze at last summer's European Championships reckons it is now just a matter of time.
“That's the next natural progression for her,” she said, in keeping with the generosity shown when she used Twitter to applaud Muir’s record-breaking run in midweek.
“Anyone that’s running those times with some more experience then absolutely. Everyone’s got to dream like that.”
Twell’s own competitive year began in less spectacular fashion as she finished 16th in the Women’s 6K race, but that performance reflected where she is in her current training cycle, whereas she expressed excitement at seeing the way that Muir has set off in 2017, even if she is now potentially encroaching on her territory.
“It’s inspiration to think that a British female, a Scottish female as well, is doing that in such a great, strong team,” said Twell.
“You can tell a lot from what she’s chosen to race and what she’s choosing to do and how she’s done that and I think there’s a lot to take from that.
“You should always think ‘why over-complicate things’ and Laura does make it look very simple. You kind of think how do you strip back and make it even simpler.
“Maybe it is just a case of putting one leg in front of the other, but I think it is consistency and Laura’s demonstrated huge consistency and continually performing at the highest level I think it gives you that confidence and that experience and that’s special to put in that performance. It’s amazing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here