There’s nothing quite like a British record to start off the season on the right foot and so, on the face of it, Neil Gourley’s build-up to this weekend’s UK Athletics Indoor Championships couldn’t be going better.
Except that even a British record hasn’t fully satisfied the Glaswegian.
Gourley set a new national 1000m record of 2 minutes 16.74 seconds at the Keely Klassic in Birmingham last Saturday but given the shape he’s in, even this wasn’t quite enough for him to consider it a perfect weekend’s work.
"My winter training has been great and the 1000m distance is right in my wheelhouse so the goal for last weekend was to break the British record,” the 30-year-old says.
“I believed it was within my capabilities but honestly, I actually thought I could go faster. So funnily enough, immediately afterwards when I should have been really happy with the record, I was a little bit annoyed that I hadn't run quicker.
“But I'm still glad I got it.”
(Image: Getty Images) That Gourley’s winter has gone so smoothly is in stark contrast to 12 months ago, which saw his winter training block heavily disrupted by almost constant injuries.
Despite this, he reached the 1500m finals of both the 2024 Olympic Games and the European Championships and won his second national outdoor 1500m title but his injury challenges caused him more than a little mental turmoil whereas this year, his mindset could not be more contrasting.
“Last year, I spent the whole winter injured on and off. You can deal with the physical drawbacks of being injured but it's the toll that it takes on you mentally that's really hard,” the Giffnock North athlete says.
“It meant that last season, I just didn't have that base behind me in terms of endurance work so I wasn't able to sustain my performances but hopefully this year, having built that base means I'm not going to fade.
“My past few months have been so much more enjoyable because I’ve been able to train exactly how I want - it really makes you really appreciate being healthy.
“So I'm in such a different headspace this year.”
Gourley will be back in Birmingham for this weekend’s British Championships, which double as the trials for next month’s European Indoor Championships, and a third national 1500m indoor title is very much on his radar.
It could well be a busy month for Gourley, with the World Indoor Championships also taking place in March and although a lengthy trip to the Chinese city of Nanjing will likely put some of his fellow Brits off competing at the World Indoors, Gourley admits that given the shape he’s currently in, the lure of potentially winning a national title plus major medals at two championships within the space of a few weeks holds quite an appeal.
“At the beginning of the year I wasn't thrilled by the thought of going all the way to Nanjing but then when you start racing and are getting better and better, you start to think why shouldn't this trend continue?
“An athlete’s lifespan is not long and you don't know when your career is going to end. And so while I'm still able to compete at this level, I’d like to do as many major champs as I can.”
The men’s 1500m remains one of the sport’s most attractive events for fans and all the signs are that the already astronomical level at the distance will only continue to increase in 2025.
Already this year, both Yared Nuguse and Jakob Ingebrigtsen have broken the world indoor mile record, while Olympic champion Cole Hocker also appears to be in even better shape this year than last.
This further increase in the standard of his event, however, comes as no surprise to Gourley, who has spent the winter knowing that aiming merely for 2024’s standards will likely leave him trailing in the wake of the event’s front-runners.
“There's so many very fast guys in the 1500m and in the last few weeks there's been a lot of great results. Actually, it’s gone a bit mad,” he says.
“But for us inside the sport, that's not a shock. For about the last five years the event has been getting better and better every year and guys are raising their game and I don't expect that to change.
“So I need to expect the level this year will be even better than last year and I can't feel taken aback when the times keep improving.”
Gourley will be just one of a number of Scots in action this weekend, with Laura Muir hot favourite for the 3000m title. Elsewhere, sprinter Alyson Bell has been in good form in recent weeks while middle-distance runner and training partner of Keely Hodgkinson, Erin Wallace runs the 800m.
However, 1500m world champions past and present, Jake Wightman and Josh Kerr, as well as world indoor 800m medallist, Jemma Reekie, are missing.
