Running sharpens my mind and gives me time to think now

The retired Olympic athlete talks to LAUREN TAYLOR about marathons in her 50s and the importance of clean air

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DISTANCE runner Paula Radcliffe, may have retired 10 years ago, but this year she completed two marathons for the first time since hanging up her professional trainers.

One of Britain’s most successful sportspeople, she was more than happy to be back in the race.

“It was definitely with a view to taking part,” the 51-year-old says, with a laugh, and she has to manage a foot joint niggle doing 26.2 mile races these days.

“And the camaraderie of runners together on marathon day - it’s very special. You have 50,000 or 60,000 people, largely going through the same motions, on the same day and sharing that together.”

Radcliffe, who held the women’s marathon world record from 2003 to 2019 after setting a time of 2:15:25 in London, completed the Tokyo and Boston marathons in the spring and plans to run the Kielder Marathon, Northumberland, in October.

But her relationship to running has evolved in the past decade. Previously, “pushing myself and seeing how good I could be was this huge motivating factor - now it’s just like, OK, I feel a bit better after I've run.”

Plus, the three-time winner of the London Marathon says running gives her time to think.

“That's one of the reasons I try and encourage kids to find the sport that’s good for them. It may not be running, but it was running for me, and when I was going through the stress of exams or trying to work on homework problems, I would find if I went out for a run, part way through that run, sometimes, [I'd realise] ‘Oh that’s how you do it!