Olympic runner who finished marathon with broken leg resumes training

An Olympic marathon runner who completed this summer’s race with a broken leg is to resume training this week.

Rose Harvey, from Evesham, in Worcestershire, said she could not wait to get back out, “hungrier than ever, ready to work hard”.

She battled through the “agony” in Paris to finish 78th in a time of 2:51:03 in 24C heat.

Harvey said she was focused on the next Olympics: “I’ve got four years to LA, and some really exciting potential races in between.”

As well as regaining her fitness in the months since the games, Harvey got married to fiance Charlie Thuillier.

“We got married three weeks after the Olympics, which seemed a really good idea when we were planning it, because I would be off training and able to let my hair down a bit,” she told BBC Hereford & Worcester.

In the event, she was still using crutches on the big day: “I just about made it down the aisle without them – I was let off by my physio for that very special occasion.”

She added that spending the rest of the day on crutches “was a bit of a pain”, but “didn’t hamper our fun”.

Looking back on the marathon itself, she said: “There were a couple of points where I did stop in the race and thought ‘I can’t do this any more’.”

But she said she asked herself if she would look back and wonder if she could “run just an extra five minutes or an extra mile”.

“I went into that race with such different goals, and my harsh critic inside me always looks at what I wanted to achieve – I was a long way from that,” she said.

“I think at the moment, I’m not at the stage where I can feel proud of it. But I hope I’ll look back and feel proud of some part of it in time to come.”