For my blog this month I’m handing over the reins to one of my swimmers that I’ve had the pleasure to coach this year – Emily Loughnan from Perth, Australia. Emily has been on an amazing journey of self-discovery these past few years whilst travelling around the world. For those of us who have been lucky enough to know and work with Emily this young girl is a class act. Not only is Emily as brilliant physio & pilates teacher, she’s also an incredible athlete and running coach. I will never forget the first time I watched her coach running technique to a group of my triathletes, I remember thinking to myself my athletes are in GREAT hands. The work she has done with some of athletes has been remarkable, taking non-runners and turning them into runners with style, elegance and grace. This has been reflected in the significant times they have all dropped over a range of distances. Combine this with the fact she is a 35min 10k runner and can also swim like a fish this makes a dangerous athletic combination.
Recently Emily went on the trip of a lifetime to Kenya, the home of the world greatest runners. This happened to coincide with me reading a superb book called “Running with the Kenyans” by Adharanand Finn, so I was very keen to hear of Emily’s first hand experience of the place. The book is written by a journalist who loves running who decides to go to Kenya to discover the “secret” to why they are the best runners in the world. I won’t speak too much about what I read but the book was fascinating, just like Emily’s first hand account of her experiences there.
You see Emily simply loves running and anything connected to running, it is this passion that drew her to Kenya and what a trip it turned out to be in more ways than one. It turned out to be quite a journey of self-discovery and has re-ignited a flame inside her that might have started to fade. I’m so glad Emily agreed to let me share this with you, as I know she’s a very private person. In it she reveals a lot about herself, her past troubles with sport but most importantly how she has overcome them and is moving forwards with a renewed sense of purpose. I think we can all connect and learn something from what she written here, most importantly how balance in life and sport is all-important to be truly happy and content. We all lose track somewhere along the way but it takes tremendous strength of character to turn things around again and re discover who we truly are as individuals.
Thanks for sharing Emily and even bigger thanks for the work you’ve done with my athletes. You will be very much missed by all of us. You don’t consider yourself a world-class athlete but that just your unassuming nature, if you ever made the transition to triathlon, which I hope you do – I think you could be world class.
Hope you all take to the time to enjoy reading Emily’s Kenyan Experience below, I certainly did.
Julian
Thanks so much for sharing that. Loved reading about your Kenyan adventure Emily! Lessons for all of us there…. Jo x
A really fascinating piece, thanks for sharing it.