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Sonia Samuels’ fourth place on home turf at the Great North Run not only ticked an important box but was also the latest step on an impressive running resurgence
It was time to complete the circle. Having been born and raised in Wallsend, Newcastle, Sonia Samuels has had a lifelong relationship with the Great North Run. She vividly remembers being taken down to the start line by her father as a young girl to have her Liz McColgan poster signed by the former 10,000m world champion herself.
There followed two victories for the then aspiring teenager in the Junior Great North Run during the mid-1990s, providing the strongest of hints at the lengthy international sporting career which would unfold and take in appearances at the Commonwealth Games, European Championships, World Championships and, ultimately, the Olympics.
Despite Samuels having raced in all corners of the globe, however, one significant box had remained unticked – until this autumn.
“A few years back, I thought: ‘Maybe I’ve missed my chance to do the Great North Run and it was probably one of my regrets that I hadn’t done it,” says the now 44-year-old. “When the opportunity came up, I was like: ‘Yeah, I’m definitely just going to go out, enjoy it, have a go and see what I can do’.”
The answer was fourth place. Not bad for someone who, not so long ago, thought she was more or less finished with competitive running.
“I wasn’t seeing myself running past 35, to be honest with you,” she says. “But it just seems to be getting better.”
Sonia Samuels in the Junior Great North Run
In 2019, the woman who found her home in the marathon felt she had hit the wall in more ways than one. Competing at the Rio Olympics three years previously had been the realisation of a long-held dream and it seemed there would only be one way to go from there.
“Post-Olympics, I really struggled because I think it’s such a pinnacle of your career that it’s quite hard then to refocus and find something that really floats your boat after something like that,” she says. “I went on to do the Commonwealth Games [coming fifth in the Gold Coast marathon in 2018] and I really enjoyed that, but I never quite felt that spark again.
“In 2019 [after running London], I said: ‘I really am done, I’m not going to do another marathon’.”
One of the main reasons for wanting to step away was the desire for Samuels to start a family with her husband, the former elite middle-distance runner Nick Samuels, whom she met when both were at Loughborough University. The arrival of their daughter Faith in 2020 changed life forever. The arrival of COVID changed the new mother’s relationship with running.
Sonia Samuels in 2023 (Mark Shearman)
“I had said: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever race again. I don’t feel like I need to prove anything to anyone or even to myself’,” recalls Samuels. “I think COVID actually helped me because there was no pressure whatsoever for me to come back running. It wasn’t until I hooked up with [coach] Andy Hobdell a few months after having Faith and he said: ‘How do you fancy having a little bit of fun and seeing what we can do?’ It just went from there.”
The first forays back into racing offered some genuine encouragement. “It was then that Andy planted the seed about doing another marathon.”
The universe seemed to be operating against Samuels, though. Her attempts to race Valencia at the end of 2021 were thwarted by repeated illnesses brought home due to Faith having started nursery.
An attempt to qualify for a third Commonwealth Games last year fell narrowly short, too, when the Manchester Marathon brought a time of 2:32:32 even when Samuels had been “feeling awful”. Any disappointment felt was tempered the following day by the news that she had COVID.
Hobdell remained convinced, however, that another big performance over 26.2 miles was within her capabilities. He was right.
“We decided to do Berlin last year and that’s when I surprised myself with the 2:28,” says Samuels of her run of 2:28:15, just nine seconds slower than the PB she had set on the same course in the German capital seven years previously. It remains the second-fastest women’s UK V40 marathon performance in history.
In removing the pressurised shackles of the life of a professional athlete, yet still choosing to keep running as a key part of her daily life, Samuels has hit on a training recipe which truly works for her.
She balances her own running with coaching 12 amateur athletes via New Levels Coaching, but it’s Faith who takes priority and has brought a change of outlook.
“I don’t feel the pressure like I used to,” say Samuels, who gave up teaching back in 2011 to go all in on her Olympic dream. “When you’re a full-time athlete, it’s your job and you’re trying to make ends meet and you’re trying to justify why you’re not going out to work full-time.
“I don’t feel it at all now because first in my mind I’m a mother. Going out for a run is just an outlet, it’s just a bit of fun, and Andy definitely helps with that. It’s just for me.”
Sonia Samuels at Rio 2016 (Mark Shearman)
She adds: “I found my love for running again. I think I’d lost that and that’s what I don’t want to lose. I’ll get into trouble for saying this but I don’t see myself as an elite athlete any more. I see myself as a mother who runs.
“I used to run twice a day, five days a week. I used to run every day, covering 100 plus miles a week. Now I get out six days a week, once a day, and I won’t ever run twice a day again. I don’t want to do that again, I’ve found that balance.
“I don’t think I could go back to your living and eating and breathing running. I’ve done that and I like where I am right now.”
When Samuels steps on a start line now, it’s because she has chosen to be there rather because she has to be. Rather than the intensity of the elite side of things, where she can recall competitors being far more aloof and sizing each other up, she is far happier to step out of that mindset and chat to those around her.
“The elite side is more intense and you don’t always get on with everybody,” she says. “One thing I’ve learned is that I probably took things a bit too seriously, but I think that’s the way it makes you when you’re really striving to achieve something like making the Olympic team.
“It’s the be all and end all and sometimes you forget to enjoy the other stuff around it because you’re so focused on the outcome. I think if I’d worked with Andy 10-15 years ago, it might have been different as well. I wish, back then, I’d been a little bit more like I am now. It would have made a difference.
“I also think it comes from experience and age. You’re just a little bit more at peace with yourself and less bothered by what everybody else thinks. I think that’s part of the problem – you’re always worried about other people and what they think. It’s the Instagram thing. ‘We’re not going to give you kit because you’re not an influencer’. And I’m like: ‘I’m not spending my life on Instagram so I can get free trainers’.”
Samuels takes great satisfaction from being able to impart some wisdom to the athletes she mentors and coaching is a side of the sport she would eventually like to develop, particularly with those who are pursuing more personal landmarks rather than international success.
“They are really good people to work with,” she says. “I don’t know if I could work with elite athletes because I think, without sounding horrible, a lot of them see themselves as being a bit entitled.”
It might be that, one day, three-year-old Faith will need some guidance. An energetic, sporty little girl, Samuels admits: “She’s actually really good at drills. She’s nailing the high knees.
“And this is her quote, not mine. She says that she’s the fastest Faith and that she’s faster than Faith Kipyegon, so she knows who Faith Kipyegon is.”
Sonia Samuels in 2018 (Mark Shearman)
For now, though, Faith’s favourite role is to take her seat on the back of her dad’s bike to be her mum’s bottle carrier on long runs and during races.
She was to be found cheering during various points on the Great North Run course, while Nick and Faith being at the finish line in Berlin last year was, Samuels says, “the best ever”.
It turns out her marathon journey might not be run quite yet, either. Valencia is in the calendar for December and, though she would never rule out competing for her country again, there is simply great contentment at continuing to go through the training process.
“I say to my own athletes: ‘Whether you run a PB or you don’t, what I want you to remember is the three months of hard work – the good times and maybe bad times that you’ve had getting there,” says Samuels.
“That’s what you should be proud of – not the outcome, because that doesn’t always reflect the journey that you’ve had to get there.
“That’s what running is. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be adding something good to your life, not getting you down because you don’t always get the results you want.”
» This article first appeared in the October issue of AW magazine, which you can subscribe to here
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