How She Did It: Stories, Advice, and Secrets to Success from Fifty Legendary Distance Runners

"I think exemplars are really important—having people who have done great things and being able to learn from them. This is a consolidated project about all these people who reached the greatest heights in the sport. They also did it in radically different ways. Some of them played a broad set of sports and came to running later, some of them came up early through the sport. One thing that we can be inclined to think is that there’s only one way to be successful. If this other person is doing more reps earlier than we are or their training looks differently than ours, then they know something that we don’t. This book gives you a good vision for how performance success can look a number of ways. Yes. A lot of the research that I rely on comes out of the Jubilee Center at the University of Birmingham. So exemplars are just anyone who is exceptional. It’s a way in which we become better ourselves. Why? Because if I just tell you what perseverance is, it could sound nice, but unless you see it in someone and see what excellence looks like, and you’re drawn to do likewise, it’s hard to do. Humans are imitative. Having someone you can admire, who will motivate you to do likewise but also show you what the excellence looks like, has that kind of epistemic but also motivational value. It’s showing you it’s good, but then also drawing you to do likewise. So that’s important. I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old. So just because of that, I’m taking a step back from competing on the national stage for at least the next couple of years. But hopefully, I will be returning in time and will do both because I love both. Both philosophy and running are vocations for me."