13.05.2009

Weightman races towards Berlin

Rewind the clock 12 months and Australian distance runner Lisa Weightman had just completed her very first marathon. Today, she is counting down to her first world championships in Berlin.

Just 12 months since competing in her first marathon in London, Weightman now has an Olympic Games appearance and selection to the world championships team under her belt.

But what seems a meteoric rise for the 30-year-old Victorian has been years in the making, the long-time cross country specialist forever intent on taking the step up to the marathon distance.

“I tend to be able to keep going at an efficient pace for quite a while so I always thought the marathon would be my ultimate event if I could overcome some of the injury challenges I had as a junior athlete,” Weightman said.

“I gave it a shot in London in preparation for trying to get selected for Beijing and it all kind of worked out.

“I always thought the marathon would be where I was headed so it’s good to see that I was on the right track.”

One week on from her selection to the world championships team and it’s life as normal in the Weightman camp.

“I’m feeling pretty positive about the outcome, I’d been working towards training and preparing for the world championships in the event that I was selected so I guess nothing has changed day to day,” she said.

“I’m focusing on training for the Christchurch half marathon on May 31 and that’s a stepping stone to the marathon in August and I’ve also pencilled in the Launceston 10km event in July.

“That’s all I’ve put forward on the racing calendar at the moment, I’m just trying to get my mileage up from what it was at the last marathon.

“In addition I’m currently trialling sleeping in an altitude tent, myself and my husband Lachlan have been doing that for a week or so in the hope of getting that one per cent extra into my performance.”

In just 12 months there have been no shortage of highlights for Weightman, who crossed the line in 2:32.32 in her first marathon last April to post the second-fastest debut in the event by an Australian woman. 

“The highlight is running at Beijing, it was a pretty surreal experience and given my objective was to make the London 2012 Games and everything was geared towards that, getting a guernsey in Beijing was a bonus and an absolutely amazing experience,” she said.

“Some of the stepping stones along the way have also been highlights for me, such as running in London.

“I got a stress fracture three months or so before running London so I knew it was going to be pretty touch and go in terms of running the qualifier so that was a pretty big buzz and definitely winning a medal at the world cross country championships last year was a big achievement and taught me how to compete against the world.”

Pounding the pavement en route to her third career marathon, Weightman will leave nothing to chance in her bid to better the personal best time she set in London last year.

“It’s definitely going to be all about looking to run a PB and if I run a PB I’ll be more than happy with my performance,” she said.

“I was a little bit conservative in the first part of the marathon in Beijing, I definitely felt at the end that I had a little bit left and should have gone out a bit harder than what was prescribed so I’ll definitely be taking a bigger risk this year because I don’t want to die wondering.

“I don’t want to put any sort of pressure on in terms of where I want to finish because I’ve seen the types of athletes that are competing at the world championships and there are some absolutely sensational marathon runners out there but I’m definitely going to be going out to run a big PB.”

While always destined to compete over the 42.2km distance it has only been in recent years that Weightman has developed the physical strength to handle the gruelling training regime required of all marathon athletes.  
“I physically wasn’t able to race the marathon a few years ago because I was suffering from stress fractures,” she said.

“Four or five years ago I was lucky to be able to run 100km a week without getting very sore in my shins so the body just wasn’t capable of doing the kind of mileage it needs for a marathon.

“I’m sort of at the stage now where I’ve had a great, consistent couple of years maintaining around 130-140km a week and to mix it with the best in the world I need to be doing a lot more than that.

“In my first race I wasn’t doing the amount of training in terms of mileage that was required because I was injured in the lead-up to the event and the second race was in a warmer climate where everyone thought it was best to go out conservatively and in the end we probably could have gone out harder, so that was another difference in terms of the marathon and now I know from that experience that I can go harder and that I’ve got the engine to go harder and we’ll just take some risks I guess and hope they pay off.”

But for all her success over the marathon distance in recent months, Weightman is not turning her back on either her cross country or track racing pursuits.

“Cross country is a great form of strength and I think Steve Moneghetti has said numerous times and also my coach Dick Telford, that things like cross country and racing on the track and training on the track all improve your efficiency so I definitely wouldn’t like to say that now I’m a marathon runner and that’s it.

“Obviously the marathon seems to be my best distance but I’ve still got lots of room for improvement on the track and in cross country races and it’s just that at the moment the focus will be the marathon and improving my performance there but come the world cross country championships next year and I’ll be training and preparing for that again when it comes around.”

The only Australian female selected to the world championships marathon in 2009, Weightman will be joined in Berlin by Martin Dent, Andrew Letherby, Mark Tucker and Scott Westcott, who will contest the IAAF World Marathon Cup to be held in conjunction with the marathon at the August event.