It may perhaps have gone unnoticed to many, given the fanfares for Kelvin Kiptum's world record and Sifan Hassan's astonishing victory in the second fastest all-time, but British runner Rose Harvey finished Chicago Marathon in a huge PB of 2:23:21 - moving her to fifth on the all-time British marathon lists.
It's a fantastic performance for a runner who is relatively new to the elite scene and clearly has a lot of improvement still to give - and one which surely gives her a very strong case for Olympic selection.
But Rose Harvey's path to elite running has not been the conventional one. Though she was certainly an excellent club runner with a 2:55 marathon back in 2016, it was not until Covid lockdown that she started taking training more seriously. Made redundant from her job as a corporate lawyer, she started building up the miles and taking huge chunks from her PBs - and is now sponsored by Puma.
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In 2021 she ran 2:29:45 in London Marathon, following it up the following February with 2:27:17 in Seville. This led to selection for the World Championships in Eugune, where sadly she had to pull out at 26km after suffering awful cramps during the race. At the time, she described it as "heart breaking".
She bounced back in 2022 to finish as the first British woman in the London Marathon - despite running with an injured knee from a car pulling out into her when she was running on the pavement.
She's spoken before about having the Paris 2024 Olympics in sight, telling our own columnist Sophie Raworth recently that though it seemed ambitious, "I’ve taken 25 minutes off my PB so far. So yeah – I think, why not? You just don’t know until you try. You’ve just got to give it a go. You’ve got to see the opportunities, take them and give it 100%, and I just think why can’t it be me?’
On today's performance, it most certainly should be.
