Youth Incorporated Magazine

Hayley Carruthers, an NHS Radiographer had a memorable Marathon in London as she barely made it to the finish line. Exhausted beyond compare, Hayley sank to her knees before approaching the final line, but undefeated, she courageously crawled to the finish.

The 26-year-old British athlete manages a full time job with the NHS along with her running. She looks after her cancer patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. She clocks in a nine-hour-shift at the hospital and trains and she trains at five in the morning and evening to prepare for the races and marathons.

Unimpressed by her performance, Heather pointed out that she should have been more cautious in her approach during the early yards. Although she was proud of herself that she managed to make it to the end, she would have preferred to not have put herself in that position in the first place.

She insisted that she could have paced the first half, and conserved her energy in a better way. She thinks of it as a lesson learnt for the future.

 “Ultimately, though, it was about racing the other girls today and our pack definitely went off too fast. I’m not badly injured at all, apart from my pride! I’m really touched that people have been so kind about it. It’s not a reaction I expected – it’s certainly not my goal to end up in that state at the finish. We train very hard to cover the whole distance strongly and that will be the goal for next time. I’ve just had a lovely meal with my amazing family; they’ve looked after me brilliantly as always and keep things in the right perspective,” she said in an article in Fox Sports.

In spite of crawling over the finishing line with the help of marathon marshals, Hayley still achieved her personal best time by three minutes, finishing in 02:33:59. That record time is three minutes over the World Championship qualifying standards set by British Athletics, and six minutes off the time required to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

The distance runner is an inspiration to all after she declared that she’d report for work on Monday.