by Jo Pavey
The previous record stood at 4:31, and Heidi went under it too. I was genuinely shocked, and excited, but could not take it in. At the finish line I saw Tony and Mrs Sexty, who had supported me from my very first attempt at distance running. It’s still an amazing memory. Tony’s faith in me was validated, and he still talks about being chuffed to find himself being congratulated by Linford Christie’s coach that day! There was a chill on the breeze. I recall feeling a bit hypothermic and my gran had to be taken back to the car because she was frozen. It seemed surreal – what did it mean to be an English Schools Junior 1,500m Champion? If you look through the record books you see that few juniors stay the course to become senior athletes. But also in the field of the 1,500m that day in Yeovil was Paula Radcliffe from Bedfordshire. We later became GB teammates, of course – and she went on to have a stellar career. We were two fourteen-year-olds among a hundred other juniors from different parts of the country competing in our biggest race yet. Both being from the West Country, Heidi and I became friends and I went to stay at her house in Cornwall to train with her. She took me for a session on the sand dunes near her home and completely thrashed me. Horses for courses, as they say.
It is funny when I look back on the English Schools now and see so many seeds of my future life: Tony steering my running career, me loving the thrill of the race, and Gav, my future husband, in the crowd watching. He remembers seeing me run as a fourteen-year-old and it’s magical to us that he was there that day, although we didn’t meet each other until the following year, in 1989, when he joined Tony’s group in Exeter. In 2014 we went training as a family to the same Yeovil track, and we have a funny photo of me passing the finish line with Emily sitting on a rug on the grass right next to it. We can contrast this new photo with one of me at the same point in the race in 1988.
Back at school, the PE staff kindly wanted to award me my medal in school assembly. Rather than feeling proud, I dreaded the moment my name would be called out and I’d have to walk up to the front past hundreds of boys and girls to receive my prize. My dedication to running – disappearing off at lunchtime to run, having a talent for something – had sometimes made me a target for bullies. Times have changed and now youngsters are celebrated for their individual interests and achievements, but some girls made a point of being unkind to me because of my commitment to running. None of the girls in my form were interested in sport so I stuck out from the crowd at that very age when teens tend to hang out in packs, but I think fondly of the King’s School and of the lifelong good friends I made there, like Caroline, and especially Mrs Sexty, who was key to my running career. Today I feel very honoured to know my running vests hang on the wall there.
School broke up for the summer holidays, but I was still working on my running dreams. Next up was the AAA National Championships at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, a meeting which for the first time also incorporated the GB trials for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. I was very fortunate because that was the year it was decided to hold the U15 races there, too, for youngsters to gain experience. The Olympic trials are always a huge deal. In 1988 crowds flocked to Birmingham to see the likes of Steve Cram, Sally Gunnell and Colin Jackson. To qualify, each athlete needs to have run an ‘A’ standard time, and to finish first or second in the trial. And there’s a third, discretionary spot, too. There is a lot of potential drama. Fans would camp overnight in the nearby parks and join the very long queues for tickets to gain entry. As a fourteen-year-old, it was incredible to compete in that feverish atmosphere. My journey there was suitably epic, too. As Dad was down in Cornwall with his brother Mike, who was on a rare visit over from the States, my mum and I travelled up to Birmingham on the train. We took a bus to the hotel, and then found another bus to get us to and from the stadium each day where we met up with my teammate Liz Taylor and her parents.
The meet took place over three days, which left me scope to race in both the 800m and 1,500m. On Friday it was the 800m heats; on Saturday the 800m final and on Sunday the 1,500m, which was a straight final. The temperature was searing on Saturday and by the afternoon you could have fried a full English breakfast on the track. You could feel the heat radiating off the running surface. The whole scene blew my mind. Compared to the English Schools Championships, staged down the road from me in Yeovil, the AAAs seemed like it was on the scale of an Olympics. Everything felt bigger, louder, brighter: the noise of the crowd and the stadium announcements, the scale of the timing technology and scoreboards, the different areas to warm up, warm down. I felt extremely nervous and under pressure, with the expectation on me following the English Schools result.
I considered the 1,500m my specialty, but first up was the 800m. Tactically I raced my heat as I always did, front-running all the way. I approached the final the following day in the same spirit. Two Irish girls stuck to me, but I surged and managed to break away from them to win in a personal best of 2:12. As I crossed the line, I didn’t have time to register an emotional response to my win. My feet were absolutely killing me. They were so painful I sat down as soon as I could. I couldn’t face warming down. I told Tony and we both looked down at my feet. Blood was slowly seeping out of my spikes. I thought it must be blood blisters. He suggested my mum take off my spikes and socks. Horrified, she tried to take off one very cautiously but blood started gushing out, and my socks seemed stuck to my feet. Mum managed to ease the spikes off my other foot too and the first-aiders took over. I had to have the socks soaked off from both feet. The heat from the track had scorched the skin, and it tore off, leaving the surface of both soles red raw. It was a terrible sight. Tony had never seen anything like it.
‘How on earth did you finish the race with pain like that?’ he asked.
I thought back to the last lap. I was in a bit of pain, it was true, but I knew it would be over in seconds, so I put my head down.
The first-aiders cleaned my feet and told me to keep off them for a few days to allow them time to heal. They said I must not run. Mum went off to find a chemist for blister packs and came back with sanitary towels, too, to cushion my feet and mop up the blood that was still flowing. The drama over, I looked back on the 800m final and tried to enjoy the fact I’d won. But the 800m wasn’t the reason I was there.
‘Jo, my love, you’re not doing the 1,500m tomorrow,’ Tony said gently.
‘Don’t worry, Tony, I’ll be fine.’
‘Jo love, you can’t. Your feet are in no fit state.’
‘Don’t worry, Tony; they’ll be fine tomorrow.’
We left it at that. In the evening we had a pub dinner with the Taylors, and then went back to their family caravan. I sat in the front seat, banked up on cushions with my feet dangling out of the window, enjoying the cooling sensation of a light breeze on my burnt feet. The first-aiders had told me to make sure my feet got plenty of air. After a while Tony came over and said he and Mum thought I’d exposed my feet long enough now, and I should put on the blister packs to prevent infection. I did that . . . and put my trainers on. To Tony’s horror, I went off to have a little jog. I hadn’t warmed down and I wanted to do the best I could to prepare for the 1,500m final. Everyone had told me not to run, but nothing they said was going to change my mind. A little bit of pain wasn’t going to stop me. Why wouldn’t I still want to run?
The 1,500m final was at 3 p.m. the following day, and it was, I had to admit, pretty hot again. Clocking my determination to race, Tony said he needed to see me run in my trainers to check I was fit. I warmed up under his beady eye and he didn’t detect any limping whatsoever. I was honest when he asked me how I felt. I did feel a bit sore, as I suspected I would, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t overcome. I knew I’d be able to hold it together over 1,500m. I had already decided I wasn’t going to put my spikes on until just before I lined up. I warmed up and did my pre-race strides in my trainers – and as he took me down to the start line Tony made me promise I’d stop if I felt uncomfortable. Then he went off to watch, muttering ‘Little madam�
� under his breath!
There were twelve girls in the final. The gun went. I moved to the front as usual, put in a steady first couple of laps, not putting undue pressure on my feet, then took off halfway down the back straight, running away from the field. The bell was my signal to accelerate as much as I could on the final lap and it was a fantastic feeling, stretching my legs and putting every ounce of energy into crossing the line first. I’d won again! I waited to shake hands with all my competitors as they crossed the line, and then went over to debrief with Tony.
My feet were killing me, but I didn’t care. I was so excited about another win. Mum nervously removed my spikes and socks again, and there was less blood this time. I had run with my feet wrapped in sanitary towels.
The summer of 1988 was a turning point in my life. At the AAAs I became the first U15 ever to do the double – win both the 800m and the 1,500m. And I’d set a new U15 national record for the 1,500m. In running I’d found something I absolutely loved and something I wanted to pursue with single-minded determination. Tony likes to say that the day of the 1,500m final was the day he learnt what sort of a person and an athlete my fourteen-year-old self was – and the extent of my pain threshold! He could see in my unflinching determination exactly what running meant to me.
People came up to me that weekend and kindly said I had a bright future ahead of me. I couldn’t see it though. It was satisfying to achieve the goals I’d set but I never had a high opinion of my abilities. In that first ever combined AAAs National Championships and Olympic Trials, I had watched the same seniors race that I’d seen on TV, raced the junior events alongside them, and thought, ‘How on earth can they run like that?’ I couldn’t see a trajectory stretching from a junior athlete into senior competition. My GB Junior record for the 1,500m was 4:27. How was it humanly possible to run that distance sub four minutes – almost half a minute faster – when my experience over that distance already was of pushing my body to a point where there was nothing left inside me. I didn’t leave Birmingham thinking, ‘That’s it, I’m going to become an Olympic athlete.’ All I knew was that I enjoyed running and the lifestyle it gave me. I loved going to the club and going away to compete at weekends. I loved trying to better my PB. I loved leading a race . . .
My instinct to front-run my races was going to be a hard one to relinquish. What that summer of 1988 had taught me was that unless I was out in front I wasn’t happy. In 1989 Tony asked me to experiment a bit with the 800m; he wanted me to work on different race tactics and speed and to become more race-savvy. He set me a target of achieving an 800m personal best, which happily I did. However, after my surprising successes of 1988, the following year was up and down. I had the highlight of being picked by the GB selectors for the Under-20 team and ran in Athens. I was excited to be chosen to represent my country in a junior international competition, and to travel abroad and compete in the huge stadium with athletes I looked up to like Donna Fraser. We were taken to visit the marble-stepped Panathenaic Stadium. Seeing that black hairpin-shaped track, built on the remains of an ancient Greek stadium, was fascinating.
But as a whole, 1989 was a disappointing year. I struggled with injuries – shin splints, Achilles problems. Youngsters develop and have growth spurts at different stages and my body was changing. I lost some of my energy, and I couldn’t understand it. I was training harder and running slower. It seemed the reverse of what should be happening: shouldn’t I be getting faster as I grew older and stronger and trained harder? It’s a phase you often see in girls. Going through puberty can take a lot of your energy for a while. I wish I’d understood that at the time. I just couldn’t comprehend why I wasn’t improving and I grew very frustrated with myself. I make a point of explaining this when talking to young athletes now: everyone develops at different stages.
Nonetheless, no injury was going to take my joy in running away from me. Over the years I would develop a bit of a reputation for being ‘stubborn’ – but only in a running context, I hope! I prefer to think of myself as determined. To this day, I have such a passion for running and racing that I never want to be told to stop . . .
CHAPTER 4
Gavin
Gavin Pavey, a keen 800m and 1,500m runner himself, was also at the AAAs as a spectator and supporter of Devon’s athletes. When we look back at that day in Birmingham now, I recall my races, the people I met and the famous athletes I got to see perform, while Gav remembers thinking, ‘Oh, there’s that girl from Exeter again . . .’ We hadn’t met when he approached Tony White and asked if he could join the Harriers.
Gav is two years older than me, so when he first joined Tony’s group in the late summer of 1989, I was 15 and he was 17. On his first evening training with us – so the first time I met Gav – Tony set him off on a five-miler with me. And he couldn’t keep up! He was gasping for breath, but determined to stay with me for his ego’s sake. After a while he had to drop back. I was this little kid in blue Lycra tights, and I left him for dead. Quite an amusing way to meet your future wife! We got on from the very beginning though. He was supportive rather than competitive. Many other teenage boys might have taken a bit more of a blow to the ego at being beaten by a girl two years their junior – though he soon found his form once he’d got some sessions under his belt. I liked him as a friend, but as time went on it became clear that he wanted to be a bit more than that. He was a bit of a stalker – as he puts it himself – phoning me at home every night – any excuse – and we’d talk for hours. His excuses to call became more and more ridiculous, which amused me. He’d ring to ask if I had somebody’s phone number, which I knew he didn’t need, then the next night he’d ring again saying he’d lost it, and needed it again. I didn’t fall for any of it. He’d come and hang out at Exeter College – where I’d moved for my A levels – even though his college was 20-odd miles away. At the time I was going out with a boy at my college and I had no intention of ‘being unfaithful’ to a good guy, so even though I liked Gav I refused to call him back.
My time at Exeter College was extremely happy. We had our little posse – Rachel, Rupert, another Rachel, Sophie and Paul. My close friend Rachel Staddon also ran at Exeter Harriers, and Rupert often went running with me at lunchtimes. I loved my new-found independence and the grown-up feel that the sixth-form college gave me. When my relationship with my boyfriend ended, my first instinct was to pick up the phone and call Gav. He took my call out of the blue as a signal that our ‘just friends’ status might be about to change. As I was just seventeen, Gav decided it was proper to ask Tony if he could ask me out on a date. So, apparently, one night after training Gav sidled over to Tony and asked for a quiet word.
‘I don’t know how to put this,’ he said nervously, ‘but how would you feel if I asked Jo out on a date?’
‘I wouldn’t feel any different!’ Tony said. ‘It’s up to Jo to decide if she wants to go on a date with you . . .’
Tony later said he was quite chuffed. Gav asked me out properly and we went on our first date on 24 October 1990. We headed into the bright lights of Exeter and had a great time. It was typical teenage fun, packing in as many activities in a day that we could normally only afford in a month. We went to the cinema to see Presumed Innocent – it was just what was on – followed by bowling, and ended up in SpuduLike. Up until then, we’d mostly bonded through the Harriers, but the dynamic in our relationship changed straightaway, and we fell deeply in love. We started doing everything together, from going out with mates to volunteering for sports days for the disabled. We bonded over music too, both being big U2 fans. It became our routine to meet for dinner every Tuesday and Thursday evening before going up to the club to run in Tony’s group. We would go to the Boston Tea Party and order Boston grill with chips and, as if that wasn’t enough fuel, we’d follow it up with a trip across the road to buy Mars Bars. It is hard to believe now, but we genuinely thought this was good preparation for a session. We both often suffered with gut problems during training but strangely ne
ver attributed it to our pre-session meals.
Soon it was time to invite Gav to ‘meet the parents’. They already knew him a bit from seeing him at a few races, but he’d never been to my house. On his first visit to the Davis household he was obviously keen to make an impression – but not the impression he ended up making or should I say ‘leaving’ throughout the house. We’d been for a run together first, then come back home. After getting a drink from the kitchen, we wandered through to sit in the lounge. My mum came in but before she could greet Gav, she wrinkled her nose in revulsion and exclaimed, ‘Oooh, what’s that smell?’ A bit of further sniffing revealed the awful truth: Gav had trodden in dog muck and brought it in on the bottom of his trainers, leaving marks all through the hallway and into the lounge. . .
After the dog muck incident, Gav obviously felt he needed to get my family on side, and we were all amused by the lengths to which he went to impress my brothers. He used to ride BMX bikes so, eager to prove he was cool, he would cycle over and show off in front of my parents’ house. His main trick was a somersault over the handlebars – a trick he occasionally still does in our garden today, to impress our son Jacob, ever the kid at heart. After all the phone calls, the dog-poo episode and the BMX showboating, Lord knows what my parents thought, but Mum says she knew Gav was ‘the right one’ when she came home to find a note from him pinned on the fridge. ‘Don’t worry,’ he’d written. ‘Jo’s in hospital. I’ve packed her a bag and that’s where we are now.’ The day before I’d had an accident in the chemistry lab during my mock A level practical exam. The task was to identify an unnamed chemical. I had undertaken a series of basic tests, but had seen no initial reaction from my mystery substance, so I’d pushed my protective goggles back on my head. Without warning, there was an explosion in my beaker and the chemical – which turned out to be hot sodium hydroxide, a strong alkali also known as caustic soda – bubbled up like a geyser into my eye. It was agony, and the teacher told me I should get my mum to take me to the eye hospital. Mum found me sitting on the pavement outside college and took me straight to the eye specialist. I was treated and came home, but overnight the pain was still unbearable so Gav decided to take me back in the next day when everyone else was out. The alkali solution had burnt off my cornea and I ended up staying in isolation in hospital for a week to avoid infection while the cornea grew back.
