After clocking an outstanding PB of 2:23:21 at the 2023 Chicago Marathon – putting her fifth on the British all-time list – 31-year-old Rose Harvey achieved the unfathomable and qualified to Health & Injuries Emile Cairess: Britain’s Olympic marathon star.
A lawyer turned professional athlete, Harvey’s rise from amateur club runner to Olympian within the space of just four years has continued to amaze her supporters. And yet, her journey to the elite start line has been far from conventional – and, even now, her life as a full-time athlete is not without its challenges. While she made it to Paris and ticked off the once unthinkable dream of running the Olympic marathon, she did so with a stress fracture.
But, such is the up-and-down life of a professional runner forever striving to achieve more than they have done before. Here is Harveys incredible story so far...
What everyone's reading
A shaky start
In 2022, as Harvey was running along a pavement during one of her final training sessions before the London Marathon, a driver pulled out of a driveway without looking. She ran straight into the car, landing in a heap on the bonnet. Her knee took the full force. The driver got out and shouted at her. ‘He was so angry, bizarrely, given I was on the pavement,’ she said. ‘My first reaction was to keep running!’
It was only when she got home that she realised how bad it was. With just 10 days to go before she was due to line up with the elite women on the start line, Harvey’s knee was so swollen she couldn’t bend it. ‘I just couldn’t believe it had happened,’ she said. ‘I was feeling really confident. I had been averaging 100 miles a week in my training for the first time. I had been out in America at a training camp in North Carolina. I was going into London feeling great. And then this.’
For the next week, Harvey attempted to run no more than three miles a day, just to keep moving. ‘If I was jogging, I could kind of hobble on it. But going quickly really hurt.’ She was devastated but told nobody – neither her coaches nor her friends. Only her osteopath knew. ‘In my head, I thought that if I pretend it hasn’t happened, then maybe it will be alright. It was desperate measures at this stage.’
On marathon day, Harvey decided to give it a go. ‘I was clinging on to that one ounce of hope that it would be alright,’ she said. ‘I smothered my knee in about half a tube of Voltarol gel and went out there. I thought, “I’ve just got to start this race and give it a go for all the people who’ve been with me on this marathon running rollercoaster ride”.’
From corporate job to clocking up the miles
Harvey only started to run more seriously at the start of lockdown, when she was suddenly made redundant from her job as a corporate lawyer at the age of 27. As such, she found herself at home with lots of time on her hands.
Until that point, running had just been a hobby for Harvey. She ran to work sometimes, and at the weekends – but she never ran more than 35 or 40 miles a week. She only Sifan Hassan wins three Olympic medals in Paris when she moved to London at the age of 21. She didn’t know anyone and was horribly unfit after years of partying at university. According to Harvey, she joined her local running club, Clapham Chasers, mainly to meet people.
Despite having a high-pressure job as a junior lawyer with little time to train, she still became a good club runner. In 2016, she finished a half marathon in 1:22, then ran her first marathon in 2:55 the following year, even though she could only train three or four times a week. ‘I was aiming for 3:15,’ she said. ‘I set off far too quickly and just kept going. I was really surprised. But, oh, the pain afterwards!’
London, revisited
Harvey had another go at the London Marathon in 2018 – the hottest London Marathon on record – and got slower. And then the pandemic arrived.
‘I went from being in the office all the time to being at home with nothing to do,’ she said. ‘I’d been in this crazy job – and suddenly it just stopped and I realised how exhausted I was from work. I thought, I’m going to do something completely different and fun.’
So, Rose signed up for a Half Ironman and began training hard. She started with three sessions a day: running, swimming and cycling. ‘I either give something 100% or I don’t do it at all,’ she laughed. ‘There’s no in-between.’
Her life changed during one of those sessions, when she was running in Battersea Park. She was spotted by coach Phil Kissi, who offered to take her on. Within a year under Kissi’s wing, she ran the Cheshire Marathon and wiped 25 minutes off her PB, finishing in a time of 2:30:58. She couldn’t believe it.
‘I think, because we’d been in full lockdown all the way through, I had no benchmarks,’ she said. ‘So I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t really clock how much quicker I had got. There were a few articles afterwards wondering where has this girl come from – and I think it was only after that marathon that I started thinking, “Wow, I have actually got something! This is cool!” I was loving it.’
Less than six months later, Rose found herself on the elite start line of the 2021 London Marathon for the first time. ‘I had major imposter syndrome,’ she said. ‘I just thought, “What the hell am I doing here on this start line?” Normally, the progression is that you do track when you’re younger and all the shorter distances, then you slowly move up to the marathon. I didn’t have all that background – I didn’t have all that training. I just went straight to the marathon.’ But she earned her place on that start line, finishing in 2:29:45 – another PB.
And so we move to 2022. There she was again, standing shoulder to shoulder with the elites at the London Marathon. She was faster and fitter than ever before. She had quit her job as a lawyer and was now a full-time sponsored athlete. But, what nobody knew was that she had bust her knee in an incident with a car and there was every chance she wouldn’t finish.
‘Just before I set off, my coach, Alastair, said to me to just remember when it gets painful – that’s the time to show everyone what you’ve got,’ said Harvey. ‘He didn’t know how much pain I was already in, but he just happened to say the right thing at the right time. It kept me going.’
She felt the pain in her knee from the start. But, with every mile that passed, she told herself that if it didn’t get any worse, she would be fine. And she kept going. ‘That, for me, was pretty much the whole race,’ she recalled.
Despite all the odds, Harvey miraculously finished the race in 2:27:58 – making her the first British woman home. ‘I had such a wave of emotions crossing that finish line,’ she said. ‘I’d had less than a 50% chance of finishing. I had held it together for so long, telling nobody what had happened. I just burst into tears. I couldn’t speak.’
In 2022, as Harvey was running along a pavement during one of her final training sessions before the.
A ticket to Paris confirmed
Fast-forward to 2024 and Harvey was ‘beyond excited’ to be heading to Paris for her first-ever Olympics, having met the qualifying standard with her stunning performance at the 2023 Chicago Marathon.
‘I still can’t believe what has happened to me in the last few years,’ she said at the time. ‘I still feel like I’m kind of on a holiday. Every morning I wake up and think, “Wow, this is amazing that I’m living my dream – running and being paid to do it!”
‘You just don’t know until you try. You’ve just got to give it a go. You’ve got to see the opportunities, take them and give it 100% – and I just think, why can’t it be me?’
And with her first extraordinary Olympic experience now under her belt, we can’t wait to see what Harvey can achieve in the years that are yet to unfurl.
