Looking good for Eilish at London

Yep. I see she’s heading up to altitude now too. So I just hope she can stay healthy!

Me too. She's had such a bad time of it with injuries.

While this is an encouraging performance given she's coming back from injury, reality check, she's probably looking at 15-20th place at London with this form.

Yup, scary that a great performance for her would still see her 11 minutes behind Ruth's WR. Truly baffling times.

Must be a bit demoralising for all these marathon runners with the insane times recently. I guess the focus is on national records, being the first Brit, American etc.

She nowhere near the shape she was in before her planned debut that she had to call off.

I don’t care for her music, but I fear my tween daughters will want to watch her perform. Definitely not going all the way to London, though.

bit far for you hey?

Indeed. Though DNS/DNF of those ranked ahead may bring her, or someone else at 2.21/22, c 8th .

She'll have x trained like a beast and has been back running for some weeks. Fair play if she comes through with 2.21 off barely beating 69 mins just over 2 months prior. Her trend seems to be getting injured from chasing longish road races close together. Not unlike her mum when she was road racing.

The elite field looks look it has been partly structured to support her on that sort of pace.

Yep she needs to not be stupid like she was last time with the knee issue! Got injured then decided to hop in to the Berlin half without rehabbing the knee and tore the hamstring if I remember.

If she’s heading to altitude then hopefully she’ll zone in on training and not do any back to back long road races. And a proper taper!

Be interesting to see how Charlotte does against her.

Yeah. Was a shame she twisted her ankle before the Olympics. I have to say though I’m surprised she’s not raced since. I saw her hobbling round my town just after she did it. She looked down but wasn’t on crutches and it wasn’t strapped up. I expected to see her back quicker.

I know she’s been training - I guess she just set her sights on London. She’s had a real run of bad luck with illness and injury. Such potential.

And there’s Rose Harvey back after her stress fracture.

I'll take the downvotes but I don't believe Eilish's coach has genuine credentials for current world class marathon coaching. Possibly a great motivator, and she knows Eilish better than any other coach could ever do, but that only gets you so far. One small example which imo illustrates plenty; she coached another GB woman international to a global 'QT' at the Edinburgh marathon, barely 50 miles from Dundee hometown. It was common knowledge that the net downhill barred results from being validated. The athlete promptly moved coaches and made fine further progress (that coach sadly now deceased).

Looking good

Another small example -- Mike Scannell.

I saw that Gardadi was entered in a smaller marathon before then as well.

she isnt built for the marathon. has a terrible running gait and has missed the boat by 3 years. clearly in the twlight of her career and on the decline now. can see a bang average lonely 2:23 - 2: 25 on the cards in what apart from her and Purdue, is a dysmally poor English field

With regards to a ‘dismally poor English field’ what’s your criteria?
As there aren’t many US women who are in sub 2.23 shape consistently at the moment. Charlotte Pudue is fantastic when fully fit and Rose Harvey has run around 2.23 I think.

If she ran in that range that would be a great debut. And women do get better with the longer distances as they get older until about 40.

Her biggest weakness is that she’s injury prone. And I know she’s struggled with fuelling on long runs so she needs this dialled right in. She’s mentally very tough though. We’ll see. I suspect her best distance may well be the half and that’s where her focus should be.

Sorry but I think that last para is really questionable. Maybe elite very long distance women can just about hold their best form or close to it until they approach 40 but the statement they "get better" is very rarely borne out by stats. And I know of Priscilla Welch.

Increasingly elite GB runners are finding that the ideal place to get global QTs isn't necessarily London. It's better to have a group of 8 on QT pace than one plus one pacer. My guess is they are torn between the objectively better overseas racing opps and the London cash (for Brits) and pizzazz.