‘Nonsense’ to think Eilish McColgan can break London Marathon record on debut

Four-time Olympian Eilish McColgan readily concedes her London Marathon debut will not be completed in record-breaking fashion.

The Scottish reigning Commonwealth Games 10,000 metres champion was anticipating her maiden turn over 26.2 miles would come at the 2023 edition, but feels “rushing” that process contributed to injuries that left her unable to run for nearly six months.

McColgan backs herself to eventually lower Paula Radcliffe’s nearly 22-year-old British marker of 2:15:25, but first the 34-year-old simply needs to get a proper taste of how writing this “different chapter” of her career will actually work in practice.

“I think it’s so unrealistic to think I’m going to go in and break Paula Radcliffe’s record on my first ever attempt,” said McColgan.

“That’s nonsense. It just isn’t going to happen. But do I think I’m capable of getting down to those times in the future? Absolutely. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I was.

“But I’m playing more of a long game, and just taking things month by month and year by year rather than trying to rush things.”

McColgan believes she was in “the best shape of her life” before she was sidelined, having just broken Radcliffe’s 21-year-old British 10k record, then improving upon her own British half-marathon record in Berlin.

The recovery process was exacerbated by confusion and misdiagnosis over what precisely the problem was, but McColgan eventually underwent knee surgery.

She says her focus is “all on the roads now”, though a home 2026 Commonwealth Games at the scaled-down event in Glasgow – where there will be no road events – remains in the back of her mind.

“I learned a lot from 2023. Now I just want to make sure that I build things up gradually, do things properly, and I just want longevity in my career,” she said.

“I still believe that this next Olympic cycle I can be at my best. I can be breaking records over even, still, I think I can get faster over 5k and 10k.

“But really the marathon is a long-term project. I think I am going to just try to learn as much as I can from this process, and then try to implement that over the next few years to see how I bridge the gap towards a 2:09 or whatever crazy time they’ve run by then.”

This year is all about the basics – even just understanding how to optimise fuelling, gels and drinks will be new to McColgan, who also has no idea how long her recovery process might be.

But she could not have a better coach – McColgan’s mother Liz famously won the London Marathon in 1996.

Eilish was only five when it happened and had “no real concept of what running was”, but remembers everyone crowding around a “tiny little TV screen” in a VIP hospitality tent.

There is a picture, buried somewhere in her phone, of her with the trophy on her head.

McColgan said: “For me it was probably much older, watching Paula run it, I remember thinking, ‘I want to do that one day.’ I want to run the London Marathon one day.

“Even at that stage I never believed I’d be a professional athlete. I never thought I’d be good enough to be a runner, so it feels very, very surreal now to actually be lining up on the start line like my mum did, and like Paula did, and all the other elite athletes over the years.

“A lot of people have said why choose such a big race as your debut? There’s other marathons you can choose and sort of hide away in a smaller event, but London is London.

“There really is no other atmosphere like that. Just the buzz of that whole city on the day is hard to put into words unless you’re there.”