Yorkshire runner Becky Briggs using London Marathon as a stepping stone back to the top

For Becky Briggs, a 24-year-old online running coach from Hull who represented Great Britain at the European Championships in 2022, merely being on the startline for the London Marathon is a victory in itself. Anything else would be a bonus.

That is because since competing in Munich in the aforementioned continental championships 20 months ago, she has been taken on a journey of injury and rehabilitation that has been both infuriating and enlightening in equal measure.

“It was frustrating but also the best thing that could have happened to me from a learning point of view,” Briggs tells The Yorkshire Post from her London home.

“It needed to happen. It was like a sign to me that you can’t keep going and going forever. You’ve got to respect your body. You’ve got to respect the marathon distance. Being a young female athlete you’ve got to realise that you can’t do more and more and expect everything to be okay.

“It wasn’t without its tears because I so badly missed running and that feeling of why I do it and why I enjoy it. But it was a really good learning curve and I took more from that about myself than I have from everything else or any other race.”

That last marathon distance in the heat of summer in Munich was actually only the fourth marathon she had ever done. Her first attempt - an Olympic trial through Kew Gardens in Covid Britain back in 2021 - she admits now was something she was not fully prepared for.

“I’d trained at the Olympic trials pace and it was in all honesty a bit of a disaster, but again looking back that time was pretty good, even if I ran-walked the final 10k,” she confesses.

Briggs’ progress in running mirrors that of a long-distance race, a nice steady pace with the occasional burst of acceleration.

She only started running when she was 10, and like so many athletes, it began for her when she was dragged along to a sports club by her parents.

“My mum and dad always ran when I was little, they were part of Beverley Athletic Club,” she begins.

“We were always a very active family. My sister was two years older than me, she got into running and we’d go down to Costello Stadium twice a week.

“We lived in Leconfield so it was a good 45-minute drive either way.

“Eventually I got bored of going and watching so just joined in, that was when I was nine or 10. I wasn’t very all-round sporty, just did gymnastics and dance.

“But my mum and dad had that endurance-based background so I got into the longer distances from a younger age.

“There was an element of being a natural in there, but there was a lot of hard work.”

The first acceleration came when she was 18 and it was actually Briggs who decided to pick up the pace.

She had enrolled at the University of Leeds to study geography and business management when three weeks in she raced in an England vest for the first time.

“I’d spent the majority of my teenage years being in the middle ground of the big cross-country races, it took me until the end of my A-Levels when I really took off with it and started getting to the front of the field,” she remembers. “That first international race gave me such a perspective shift that while I’ve worked really hard academically to get to this stage, it’s not what I want to do. I love running, so why can’t I do something that’s related to it?”

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So she dropped out of university, took a year out to focus on running and when she resurfaced academically, did so at St Mary’s College in Twickenham.

“I chose St Mary’s because the area is renowned for having talented athletes and being a good base to train,” she says.

After graduating with a degree in sports nutrition she has stayed in London, growing her online running coach business and pursuing her marathon career.

The pace of the latter picked up again with selection for the European Championships in Munich.

“That was an incredible experience,” she remembers fondly. “If you could have told 10-year-old me when I was just starting out that at the age of 22 - which is still really young in marathon terms - I’d be competing as a senior I would never have believed you. It really was a ‘pinch me’ moment. I had a rocky build into it; I’d had Covid, I’d been injured, so it was a tough race but what an opportunity and I’m really glad that I held it together and for all things considered on a hot day, put out a really well executed race. It’s only when I look back now that I realise how special that was.”

It only increased the frustration when two weeks later she was diagnosed with two stress fractures in her lower back, stopping her in her tracks.

Which is why she will head to the startline of the women’s elite race on Sunday unencumbered by the pressure of trying to join Sheffield’s Calli Hauger-Thackery in qualifying for the Olympic Marathon in Paris this summer.

“The biggest part for me is getting back on the startline rather than focusing too much on the race outcome itself,” says Briggs. “In previous races there have been times I was pre-occupied with, but for this one, I’m just doing it for me.

“I’m obviously nervous, but also excited to be going into it with no expectation, no pressure and to think this is the reward for really sticking at it when there were so many doubts from myself and other people about whether I’d actually get back to a position that I’m in now.”

Briggs, who is a COROS athlete, concludes: “The Olympic qualifying time is 2hr 26m 50s. I’m not in that position right now. Female marathon runners peak after their 30s. I know this is not going to be the fastest marathon I ever run and I don’t want it to be. I want this to be enjoyable and a stepping stone to where I might be in five or 10 years time.”