From lockdown runner to Olympic hopeful, Rose Harvey’s running journey proves anything is possible
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ROSE HARVEY WAS RUNNING along the pavement in South London on one of her final training sessions before last October’s London Marathon, when 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 says. ‘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 join the other elite women on the start line at Greenwich Park, Harvey’s knee was so swollen she couldn’t bend it. ‘I just couldn’t believe it had happened’, she says. ‘I was feeling really confident. I had been averaging 100 miles a week in my training for the first time and 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 no one, neither her coaches nor her friends.
On marathon day, she decided to give it a go. ‘I smothered my knee in 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.”’
Harvey only started running seriously at the start of lockdown, when she was made redundant from her job as a corporate lawyer, aged 27. She found herself at home with lots of time on her hands. Running, until then, had just been a hobby. She ran to work sometimes and at weekends, but never more than 35 or 40 miles a week. And she had only taken up the sport six years earlier, after moving to London for work. She was, in her own words, horribly unfit after years of partying at university, and joined a local club to meet people. But despite a full-on job as a junior lawyer and with little time to train, she became a good club runner. In 2016, she finished a half marathon in 1:22; the following year she ran her first marathon in 2:55.
She had another go in 2018 (the hottest London Marathon on record) and got slower, not faster. ‘I’m not doing that again,’ she thought. And then the pandemic hit. ‘I’d been in this crazy job – and suddenly it just stopped and I realised how exhausted I was. I thought, “I’m going to do something completely different and fun.”’ So, Harvey signed up for a half Ironman and began training hard. She
