Alyson Dixon is hoping to fulfil promise

Oct 7 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Alyson Dixon has done a lot of learning since university – now comes her toughest test yet. Stuart Rayner meets a 31-year-old novice

WHEN Chester-le-Street’s Alyson Dixon says she is "not a naturally speedy runner", it is her style she is referring to. But it is equally true of a career which promised much at an early age but has only now reached the international stage.

Twice as a Sunderland student Dixon won 10,000m gold at the British Universities Championships, but it is as a 31-year-old that she will make her Great Britain debut in Sunday’s World Half Marathon Championships in Birmingham.

The trouble with hitting the heights so early is the rest of your career is played out in an expectant spotlight. Despite trying to pull the wool over the eyes of those keeping tabs, Dixon admits 2009 was her make or break year – and she nearly finished it broken.

"For both England and GB I’ve had a few close calls where I felt I’d performed better than people selected ahead of me," she admits.

"At the beginning of the summer I had a few things go wrong. I went to Ethiopia (for a training camp run by former Olympic champion Gete Wami) and I now realise I over-trained. My performances dipped a bit, I picked up an injury and ended up getting to the point where I thought, ‘I’m nearly 31, is it really worth going on?’

"I under-performed in Darlington at the start of my build-up (to Birmingham) but decided I had too much to prove to those who’d supported me and I wanted to go for it one last time. It was a case of now or never."

By the end of last month’s trials, it looked like being the latter. "It was a very fast race and I let the other girls go because I wasn’t sure if I could keep that pace," she recalls.

"At about the eight-mile mark I was the second Brit so I was quite confident. I did the silly thing of putting in a fast mile and that nearly threw things into jeopardy.