Athletics: Distance runner targets qualifying time for Delhi 2010

Published on Saturday 18 July 2009 11:46

TWO trips to a high altitude training centre in Colorado in the last year appear to have reaped rich dividends for Edinburgh distance star Freya Murray, who is on the cusp of achieving her most immediate ambition of making the qualifying standard for the 5,000 metres for next year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

The 25-year-old former pupil of Temple Primary School and Beeslack High School, who won the UK 5,000m title at Birmingham last weekend, will run the same distance in the Aviva Grand Prix meeting at Crystal Palace in London on Friday.

Delighted as she was to win her first senior UK track title (and she was the only home Scot to do so at what was also the UK trials for the World Championships in Berlin next month), Murray admitted she would have liked stiffer opposition in last Sunday's race when she was also thwarted in her quest for a fast time by the blustery conditions. Her winning time of 15:45.07 was just a fraction outside her best, set only a few days previously.

Although she does not yet know the strength of the opposition at the Palace, Murray is under no illusions that it will include some of the fastest runners in the world and that some of them may be capable of running at least a minute faster for the distance.

"I'm fairly sure I can get the Commonwealth time of 15:35.

The B standard for the World Championships in Berlin of 15:25 may be stretching it a bit," admitted Murray who has already hacked 20 seconds off her best time this season.

Much of this improvement Murray puts down to her two trips to Boulder, Colorado where there is based quite a community of the world's best distance runners, all keen to gain the benefits of training in the rarified atmosphere at 8,000ft before returning to sea level for competition.

But also there is the former London Marathon winner Steve Jones, whose coaching Murray says is: "quite inspirational."

Had it not been for an Achilles' tendon injury she suffered just after she re-captured the Scottish long course cross country title at Falkirk in February, Murray might well have notched up her first Commonwealth qualifying standard by now.

But if it does not happen at Crystal Palace, this 5ft 2in eight-stone running machine will not extend her 2009 track season in a vain quest for a time which, according to the targets laid down by the Games selectors, she will need to repeat at least once before next June in any case. She does have one other major race however, a 3000 metres in the Gateshead Grand Prix at the end of next month.

Denied Lottery funding since 2005, when she was cut from the programme due to injury and loss of form, Murray's athletics career is self-funded, apart from a shoe deal from Adidas. Murray gives much of the credit for her progress while at Beeslack High to David Hand, the veteran Lasswade AC coach. She moved to Newcastle in 2005 after completing a structural engineering degree at Heriot-Watt University and was helped by Edinburgh coach Carol Sharp, the British international 800m runner, and North East coaches Ian Whyte and Lindsay Dunn have both helped her in recent years when she has trained either at Durham or Gateshead.

The Edinburgh AC member's trips to Colorado have been funded by the Scottish Women's Road Running and Cross Country Commission through a project set up after the World Cross Championships were staged in Edinburgh in 2008.

Much to her regret, Murray did not make the team for the biggest event ever to be held in her home city, though she has a formidable record over the country – three times the Scottish senior (long course) champion in 2006, 2007 and 2009, she has also won the national short course event (4k) five times, in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009.

She has three World Cross senior GB vests for 2003, 2004 and 2006, one junior and two European junior vests. By comparison her track career, until now, has been lagging behind and she has still to win her first Scottish senior title, though she would have undoubtedly won the national 5,000m title before now had she entered that rather than the more competitive 1,500m.

Murray savours the atmosphere of the big international events and can't wait to be back in a Great Britain team: "I've loved every time I've competed for GB, particularly my first World Cross, even though I wasn't over the moon about my performance."