Calli Hauger-Thackery: Sheffield runner qualifies for Olympics after ONE marathon

By contrast, Calli Hauger-Thackery of Sheffield, who was this week selected to race the marathon in the colours of Great Britain, heads to the French capital having run just ONE marathon in her entire life.

Granted, Thackery is not someone who has just scraped herself off the sofa and set off on a 26.2-mile jog on creaking knees and a dodgy ankle.

She has been running her whole life. Her dad was a marathon runner, her mum a sprinter/hurdler, and she was good enough to attract scholarship offers from American colleges, eventually taking one up at the University of New Mexico.

But it took until she was 30 to try the marathon, and on that one attempt at a micro event in New York in October, she achieved the Olympic qualifying standard.

“People have always said you’d make a good marathon runner - they looked at my biomechanics, they looked at my family history,” Thackery, now 31, tells The Yorkshire Post. “I was like ‘maybe one day, but first I want to give it a go on the track’.”

Thackery’s event of choice is the 5k. She was good enough to qualify to represent Great Britain at European Championships and England at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022.

“My heart had always been set on the track,” she says. “But I’ve always seemed to struggle with the trials. They’re just crazy to me. It’s just a jog for 4,000m and then you basically sprint. You’ve got to be in the right position, it’s so tactical, and I’ve just never been able to run well in that situation.

“Whereas the marathon is so different - and it seemed to suit me.”

After years of being told her style suited that of a road-runner - “I’m very flat-footed, very efficient, quick on my feet,” she explains - she decided to give the marathon a go. Two weeks prior to October’s Micro Marathon in New York she did a gait analysis that revealed just how high her VO2 max was - basically the engine for a long-distance runner.

“I can go in the hurt locker for a very long time and nothing phases me,” she says of her threshold for pain. “They had to pull me off the treadmill because I was in the red zone, but I could have carried on.

“So my plan was go to New York to get a marathon on the board, see how it goes. I was hoping to then do a second one to try and solidify the Olympic standard.

“I was worried about a number of elements, I’ve never really done fuelling before, but I was able to take on loads of gels, loads of drink, I just felt stronger as the race went on. My fastest 5k was actually the last 5k of the race when I was able to sprint into the finish and get the time I needed.”

What also helped was the circuit of the nine-lap race was the same length as a lap of Rother Valley Country Park, where she has trained for much of her life and can often be found now when she returns to her Killamarsh home.

“Rother Valley is a three-mile loop around the lake, it’s my stomping ground. Any time I’m back home that’s where I do my tempos, all my long run sessions. The New York race just brought me back to that. It made the marathon feel like home. And once I’m in a rhythm I’m locked in - and it paid off.”

Her instant success over the longer distance begs the question of should Thackery have converted to the marathon earlier?

“Yes and no, I’m glad I did it when I did,” she replies. “My story would have been different, who knows. Nowadays you see so many 40-year-olds do amazing times, running low 2hr 20s, so I think I’ve got so much time with the marathon and it never felt like there was a huge rush.

“I’m so passionate about the track and I genuinely wanted to give that a go, so it would have been a disservice to myself if I didn’t at least try. I never realised how much I would love the marathon until doing it. My journey has been how it is for a reason.”

It is a journey that began not through her family of runners, but when she was spotted by a scout at a school sports’ day.

“My dad was a very good runner back in the day, bronze medal in the world half marathon which I did recently which was cool,” says Thackery, who runs with her dad for Hallamshire Harriers.

“He inspired me, and my mum was a sprinter/hurdler, so I’ve got good genes.

“But it was more like a sports day that got me into it. A woman spotted me and suggested running, so I had to go and ask my mum to take me to a club. She took me to training and races growing up.”

By her mid-teens, Thackery was receiving offers from American colleges.

She resisted at first, opting to go to Leeds Beckett University, but after a year the pull became too great to ignore.

“I just thought if I don’t go what an opportunity missed when you’re offered a full athletics scholarship. It would have been a waste not accepting it,” she remembers.

“It was the hardest choice of my life, I narrowed it down to Iowa and New Mexico and New Mexico is better for altitude training and Iowa reminded me of Sheffield when I wanted something different.”

Without fully realising it until perhaps last October’s marathon, that competitive, winning mentality instilled into college students in America will have served Thackery well when the chips were down in her one and only marathon to date.

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Certainly, when asked what her ambitions are for what will be just her second marathon in Paris on the final day of the Olympics on Sunday, August 11, her response is in-keeping with that winning mentality. “Absolutely I want to be Olympic champion - I’m not going to go in there and half-heart it,” she proclaims.

Her ability to go deep into the hurt locker will make her a formidable opponent for even the most seasoned of marathon runners.

“The course is savage, so it will open the race up and make it a bit of an equal playing field for a lot of us,” says Thackery, who will join Hallamshire Harriers alumnus like Jon Brown and Lord Sebastian Coe in competing in the Olympics.

“That could slow a lot of the top girls down, they’re not going to be able to run anything like they normally can. It’s going to be a tough race and there’ll be a big pack of us together for a long time. It’s who can hold it for the longest.

“Tactically, I don’t look at my competitors, it’s just a case of doing what I can do.

“I’m an under-thinker and that’s served me well in the past, I’m not on websites worrying about what other people have run. I just have to trust what I’ve done in training and go for it. They might be three minutes quicker but who knows what can happen on the day.”

As she proved in her one and only marathon.