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Track and field is tough.

Grinding it out almost every single day, through bitter, cold winter nights, all to try and make the smallest improvements that could be the difference between representing your country or not in major Championships. The one saving grace is that our sport is based on facts; who can run the fastest time, jump the highest, throw the furthest, so in theory if your performance is better than your rivals, the selection is guaranteed, right? Well, apparently not.

My career has …

Featured image by Jodi Hanagan

Generally in sport there seems to be a bigger emphasis on who the winners, medalists or top runners are. This can be seen across many sports, with track & field being no exception. This emphasis can create difficulties for those who are one-step below the top guys, with feelings of inadequacy being one that hits close to home for myself.

My name is Jacob, I’m mainly a 200m athlete. At youth and junior levels I regularly made finals in the 200m at the English Schools’…

If you could talk to your younger self, I wonder what you’d say?

Would you tell yourself to stop putting so much pressure on yourself?

Would you tell yourself that fast times aren’t determined by what you eat?

Would you tell yourself that thinner doesn’t equal faster?

I certainly would.

I had known for a while that something wasn’t quite right. Irregular menstrual cycles... cold hands and feet... always tired... lean, but not strong. I knew there was something, but didn’t want to admit it. Then my me…

📸 by Jodi Hanagan

I. Am. Fed. Up.

Fed up of hearing sports commentators discuss a professional athlete’s weight, size and body shape. Fed up of watching runners – and more importantly, friends – lose their way in the sport in attempts to achieve some sort of aesthetic or “ideal.” Fed up of hearing how scary sugar and fat and carbohydrate is. Fed up of being unable to help.

I’m fed up of the obsession we have with athlete’s bodies. Do they have a period? Have they lost/gained weight? Are they eating…

📸 by Jodi Hanagan

Post-viral fatigue syndrome is nothing new. Yet in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become a far more prevalent issue, with swathes of people struggling to make a full recovery from the initial infection. Dubbed “long Covid”, the drawn-out symptoms include severe fatigue, breathlessness, and anxiety. Below, I share my experience of post-viral fatigue, how I failed to avoid it, and what I am going to do differently this time around to ensure I don’t make the same mistak…

Featured image by: Jodi Hanagan |

Athletes are always in high demand when it comes to modelling, but how do you get into modelling as an athlete? There are various ways, such as being scouted or applying through agencies such as FORTE. I see it a lot like most (all) things in life, it's mainly about being in the right place at the right time and about who you know.

As I am (clearly) not a model, it is still so good to see people I know and have grown up with juggling careers as students, athletes,…

1. Introduction

Everyone knows the last few months have been stressful - and it’s been different for all of us.

On one hand, you see some people are on top of the world; athletes in Dubai at the NAS complex, living life, soaking in the sun, getting some top class training in. 

On the other end of the spectrum though, you see a group of athletes travelling over an hour from Cardiff to Aberdare just to get 40 minutes of hammer throwing in the books.

How can you stay leve…

📸 by Jodi Hanagan

For the sake of being concise, I’ll start my story in 2017. That year was the high. I'd gotten married, I’d won my second British Masters M35 title over 200m with a lifetime PB, and then gone on to the European Champs later that summer – where I’d picked up an individual bronze and a relay gold.

It felt like vindication; for all the training, for all the hard work. But, most importantly, it felt like a victory over my mental health – that I could accomplish something despite the …

Let me start by saying, not a single professional athlete on the planet is healthy. Is it healthy to put that much stress through your knee every time you jump onto a high jump bed? Or the amount of physical pain you endure training for an Olympic 10,000m? Or bending your arm into all sorts of wacky positions to ping a javelin 90m? None of this, in the long run will make you any healthier. It does however mean, that we, as athletes, are the fittest people on the planet, and this is a distinction…

My life literally changed, forever.

Sir Steve Redgrave, Henry Slade and Muhammad Ali - what do they have in common? Yes, they are all international sporting superstars, but they are also type 1 diabetics, the condition that changed my life, forever.

From the moment they told me I might not be able to do gymnastics anymore, that was when I knew I was going to prove them wrong. My name is Abi. I am a final year student and an ex-international acrobatic gymnast, and on the 11^th Sept…