Jo Pavey
Jo Pavey’s greatest year as a distance runner was arguably 2014 - gold at the European Championships came just 10 days after a famously gritty bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games.
All of that came as she juggled the needs of a one-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son - much to the acclaim of people everywhere as they celebrated the Exeter-based runner a “supermum”.
Two years on, with her little family getting bigger, she is preparing for her fifth Olympic Games - a record for any British track athlete.
It is a training regime, which is balanced around her son Jacob, who is almost seven, and little Emily who is approaching her third birthday. On the evening I meet her at the Exeter Arena, she and her husband Gavin, who is also her coach, were up against the clock as the children had been left with their grandparents.
But Pavey says making training a family affair has reinvigorated her - how many 42-year-olds will be donning their spikes in Rio?
“As a mum it’s made me enjoy my running more,” she said before one of her last training sessions on British soil before jumping on a plane to Brazil.
“It’s made me feel happy in my personal life, I feel like I’ve got that balance and it does make me enjoy running.
“The needs of the kids change and the way we can train as a family changes.
“It used to be my husband with a little boy on the back of a bike, but now my little girl goes on the back of the bike and my little boy’s like a training partner now - he just whizzes ahead of me on his bike and I can’t keep up with him.
“It’s really kept my motivation going at this old age that I am now.”
- Guardian