Marathon · 1990s–2000s

Paula Radcliffe

Counted to keep her head in the race, and said so.

2:15:25

London world record, 2003, stood 16 years

The record

2:15:25 in London in 2003, a margin so far ahead of the event that it stood for sixteen years. She ran it from the front, which is the hardest way to run fast.

The counting

She has described counting her steps in threes to hold her attention when it started to drift. It is an unglamorous, almost childish technique, used by the fastest female marathoner of her era, in her fastest races. That is the most useful thing about it.

Athens

At the 2004 Olympics she stopped on the side of the road in the heat, unable to continue, in front of everyone. It is the image that followed her for years. She went back to the marathon and kept winning.

Confidence built on evidence

Her training was famously heavy and famously documented, and the confidence she raced with came from that logbook rather than from feeling good on the day. It is the clearest example in the sport of an evidence account you can draw on when it hurts.

What to steal

Bank the evidence in training so you have something to draw on when belief runs out. And counting is allowed.

Where they come up

Checkpoint 07Earned ConfidenceHeld the women's marathon world record for 16 years, and also sat down at the side of the road in Athens in front of the whole world. Her career is the full confidence story: built on training evidence, tested by a public failure, then rebuilt the same way it was built the first time.

All 26 case studies. Profiles are factual and drawn from the public record. Where a performance carries an asterisk, this app says so rather than leaving it out.