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The AW female masters athlete of the year enjoyed record-breaking marathon results in 2023
Sue McDonald thought she’d peaked. The 56-year-old had begun to accept that she was slowing down. Her year might have already included winning world masters 10km and half marathon gold but, heading into the Berlin Marathon in September, her hopes weren’t high.
“I had a conversation with my coach and I said: ‘I think this is this is probably my last serious high performance attempt and then maybe next year I’ll just concentrate on having a bit more fun’,” she says. “I was going to do my best, but I wasn’t really sure what the result was going to be.”
What unfolded on the streets of Berlin, then, took the AW British Female Masters Athlete of the Year somewhat by surprise. Having made sure to start her race relaxed, she equalled her half-marathon PB as she hit the midway point in 1:22:44.
“I was thinking: ‘This is great, but with the marathon it can all blow up so quickly. You’re going to get a nice safe, sub three hours so just enjoy the second half’.
“I didn’t really accept that I had done so well until I got to the finish gantry. I saw 2:48 on the clock and even then I was thinking: ‘Maybe that’s for the wheelchair athletes,’ but then I looked at my watch and I saw 2:47. It still makes me emotional.”
World W55 half-marathon winner Sue McDonald
McDonald’s time of 2:47:19 not only took over seven minutes off her British W55 record but was also faster than the recently set W50 mark.
“I knew that I could do better, but it blew me away,” she says.
It is a run which has changed McDonald’s approach entirely.
“I don’t think you can run the second-fastest marathon in your age group in the world and then walk away,” she admits. “I think you have to give it another go. There’s always somewhere else to go and I’ve tried to find a new area to improve or a new way of challenging myself each year.”
For McDonald, who ran at school before it “fizzled out” when she started working and only came back to it at the age of 35, making herself part of the sport again has been transformational. It was a run of 2:57:43 at the 2011 London Marathon which began to make her wonder what might be possible.
Sue McDonald
“That was a mental breakthrough for me really, because I didn’t believe that I could run under three hours,” says the leading British woman of any age at the recent New York Marathon with 2:54:37. “There was a point in that race where I almost dropped out, so there was a lot of mental strength going on behind the scenes. Knowing that even when you’re not confident you can do something as long as you’re willing to put yourself out there and willing to fail … that was a big turning point in my running.
“In 2016, some friends took me to my first Masters International competition and I was terrified about going. I thought I was going to be really out of my depth. But that was just a fantastic introduction into masters competition. It started to pull me in from there. There’s so much inspiration [in the masters community]. It has enhanced the quality of my life so much. I want to keep going until I drop.”
» This article first appeared in the December issue of AW magazine, which you can read here
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