9/8/2025: IFAM Oordegem - The Subtlety of Progress

12/8/2025

Last weekend I had the privilege of popping over to Belgium to compete in the final IFAM meeting of the 2025 athletics calendar. I got to share this experience with several of my training partners, as well as one of my closest friends, Natasha. When you go abroad to athletics competitions, you're often sharing a room with someone you don't know, which of course presents a wonderful opportunity to get to know someone, maybe even cultivate a friendship (which I have been very lucky to do a couple of times this year), but after a long day of travel it's always nice to be sharing with someone with whom the friendship, comfort and authenticity is already there.

Natasha and I first met in 2018 when we made our GB debuts at the European Youth championships in Gyor. Since then we've had quite similar journeys; we subsequently went to the European Junior Championships the following year where she became European Champion in the 4x400m relay, and I clutched a cheeky bronze in the 100m Hurdles. It then, through convoluted circumstances, took us both six years to get back on a GB team, bringing us to the present year, where we have both recently returned from representing GB at the world university games, both having made our respective semi-finals. I'm very proud of her perseverance, commitment and determination, and incredibly grateful to call her my friend.

I went to Belgium feeling pretty beaten up from my high speed interaction with the ground at the British champs the previous week.

But nevertheless, having got so close to my PB in the heats of the British Champs the week before (one one-hundredth of a second off of it), I went to Belgium with the aspiration of reaching new personal territory. However, I ran 13.44, 0.24 seconds off of my PB and my slowest time for several weeks.

When I crossed the line and saw that time, initially I was pretty disappointed, but within moments I came to my senses. What a wally I am to have seen that time and thought anything other than you lucky sod. Look at you doing what you love. Putting up a fight. Going after progress. Chasing your dreams.

Two months earlier I had just come to the end of five weeks of competitions, for all of which I was endeavouring to run a time of 13.45 seconds; the time I needed to qualify for the World University Games. Having come off the back of five years of injuries, as well as a bone oedema in my ankle in April/May of this year, running that time was quite a meaty ask.

I ended up running 13.45, only four hours before the qualifying window for the world uni games closed. Merely eight weeks prior to my run last weekend, running 13.45 was a huge accomplishment, now eight weeks post, I found myself dissatisfied with that time. What a privilege that is.

You see that's the thing with progress, every now and then its obnoxious and demands your attention. It can be unequivocal and rambunctious, but often, progress is very quiet. And often, if you're not paying attention, it can go under the radar.

One is allowed to be ambitious and aspire for bigger and better in the future, so long as one doesn't forget the gifts of the here and now. Progress should not always be about the objective and quantitative, it should also champion the subjective and the innate. To feel better, to feel more peaceful, to recognise the context of a situation and how far you have come despite circumstance, are all notions that are by-products of progress at work.

To recognise that you are a human being who will forever be a work in progress is one of the most liberating lines of thought, and no matter how much time you think has passed, you have always, only just begun.

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I'm a big believer that poetry and physics are one and the same. If I were to describe this to someone who has no interest in the sciency wiency explanation that fuels this belief, I think I would just say; everything sings, so long as you're paying attention.

LM