Pashley completes London Marathon, sets sights on Olympics

IT MAY not have been the time she was hoping for in the London Marathon, but Ellie Pashley’s Olympic dream is still on track.

Pashley, who has lived in Torquay for 10 years and now resides in Aireys Inlet, was granted a travel exemption to compete in London in October as she continues to search for race opportunities amid an interrupted preparation.

She ran a time of 2 hours, 31 minutes and 31 seconds to finish 12th out of the 18 women running, with a number of others not completing the race.

Pashley said she was disappointed with her performance but was also appreciative of the opportunity she was given to compete in the event.

“I was a bit disappointed, to be honest.

“I wasn’t really sure where I was at, I was hoping to run a bit faster than I did but I was lucky to get the opportunity to actually race.”

She said she entered the race with a slight niggle, and staying in a restricted bubble in London was not an ideal preparation for such a race. While she didn’t feel these were big factors on her run, she admits that they could have contributed.

“It was a different race-week experience, that might have affected it, but I didn’t really feel that any of it worried me too much… maybe it played a part more than I realised.”

Pashley’s dream of competing in the Olympics remains a reality as she sets her sights towards the Tokyo Games, which have been rescheduled to July 2021.

She is vying for selection in the 10km and marathon, but is the only one to have run an automatic selection time in the 10km while being one of the top three marathon runners in the country.

In order to be selected, athletes can either run an automatic time to be one of the three athletes selected in an event, or, if more than three automatic times are run, selection falls to a world ranking system.

Pashley is now in the process of finding races to continue her preparation, and said it would be an amazing experience to represent her country, even if it was in a unique Olympic Games.

“It’d be awesome… it might be a bit different, either way it will still be a really cool experience if it all goes ahead.”