Megan Keith ran her first track 10,000m as ‘an experiment’ in March this year. Since then, the 22-year-old has become the British champion and European bronze medallist over the distance – and both qualified for and competed in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. What’s more, she is already the fourth-fastest Brit of all time in the 10,000m.
These performances have propelled her to the top level of British distance running – however, her rapid rise has been long in the making.
Keith grew up in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands as part of an active family, and from an early age participated in a diverse range of sports. She joined and competed for her local athletics club, rowed for Inverness Rowing Club, competed in orienteering and skied.
Athlete in the making
‘Megan was around the Harriers [Inverness Harriers, her local athletics club] from the age of about 12,’ recalled Keith’s coach, Ross Cairns, in an interview with Scottish Athletics – and she ‘really started to blossom in her second year as an U17’ after taking a short break. Describing what she is like to coach, Cairns highlighted how Keith ‘is a great example of a development athlete. It has taken a few years to reach this, but above all, the key thing is: Megan runs for fun.’
That said, Keith’s focus hasn’t always been on athletics. A former junior world and European champion in orienteering, it wasn’t until she was around 16-17 years old that she decided to focus on running. Spurred on by this sport, she then balanced training with academics and completed a degree in sports science at the University of Edinburgh.
Like many elite track athletes, Keith also has a background in cross country. In 2021, she won gold at the European U20 Cross Country Championship in Dublin. Then, in 2023, she won the U23 event in Brussels.
Keith has replicated this success on the track, with her 5000m time steadily improving year on year. The biggest jump came between 2022 to 2023, when she bettered her PB by almost a minute – 15:53.53 to 14:56.98. She has since improved on that time by another 13 seconds, having run 14:43.24 at the Shanghai Diamond League in April.
However, this year, she has turned most of her attention to the 10,000m. In March, she ran her first-ever track 10,000m at The Ten race in California, where she ran 30:36.84 to become the fourth-fastest Brit of all time and slip within the Olympic qualifying time. This was followed by success at the Runners World, Part of the Hearst UK Wellbeing Network, where she ran 31:03.02 to snatch the win and take the British title. Keith then went on to win 10,000m bronze at the European Championships in Rome, with her gutsy display of front running resulting in a time of 31:04:77.
Priceless experience in Paris
Speaking in a BBC interview ahead of the Paris Olympics, Paula Radcliffe said that Keith had ‘nothing to fear and everything to learn’ on such a prestigious sporting stage, especially at such an early point in her 10,000m career. And while, at the Games themselves in August, she may have been the final athlete to cross the finish line in the women’s 10,000m final, Keith achieved the greatest cheer of them all from the thousands of spectators lining the Olympic Stadium. Meeting this reception with heartfelt emotion, it was clear to Keith that – no matter what her time or position – reaching the Olympics was, in itself, an almighty and worthy achievement.
After all, as Radcliffe again notes, Keith has plenty of ‘room for improvement’ – which means even better results in the many years of world-class running that await.
