Mary McCarthy

I obviously don't remember the conversation because I was eight, but he obviously was like, you should do the fun run.

So I did the fun run with him, which was probably a kilometre, came third and met Jessica Ennis.

And then the next weekend he was like, I think you should do the primary school cross country, proceeded to win by like five minutes or something.

And then I guess I just fell into it from that because he was like, oh, this is clearly something you're good at.

And then I literally never looked back, just ran for the rest of my life.

I think also because how many kids are training like five, six times a week in year three?

Because I was swimming so much.

So I probably had such a cardiovascular base that when I got put onto a cross-country field, I was just like...

Most of the people I know now, especially women that are pretty decent athletes, a lot of them have come from a background of swimming.

Because I think it sets you up for this like mindset and base that like carries you forward for so much.

Like when I was growing up, when I was a little bit older, like year five, year six, year seven, year eight, like I was racing cross country and I was like best in the county kind of level.

I swam all week and raced cross country the weekend.

So I wouldn't run apart from when I raced and I was completely fine.

Yeah, just swim for a month and then race a 10K at the end of the month and see what happens.

Peak marathon week training.

Peak week of marathon training would look like Easy Run Monday, 15K.

No.

Because I look, well, I get, don't I?

Tuesday session, like big marathon session, somewhere between like 15, 20K volume.

Easy Wednesday.