Phily Bowden sat down and wrote out a poster.
“I’m running for England” she eagerly scribed before wrapping it up to surprise her mum.
Eight years after she first turned out for Bracknell AC, the 21-year-old was representing her nation at the Home Countries International.
She would go on to finish fourth at Margam Park, nestled in the distant shadows of the gigantic Port Talbot steelworks.
A glamorous debut perhaps it does not seem, the white and red vest she adorned more than made up some of the majesty.
A Varsity crossover
Bowden was in the midst of a purple patch. The Brunel university graduate, a talented but not necessarily prolific junior first started training with the Mick Woods group at rivals St Mary’s in Teddington in 2015.
A top 100 English Schools performer as a junior girl, prior to then Bowden describes herself as a little above average. She is speaking in the context of what came next but it’s fair to say she grew used to the fringes of the top 100 at national competitions.
Rather than get by on pure talent alone, in south-west London Bowden laid the foundations:
“I think it really shaped me as a person and my personality. It taught me all of the all of the good things that perhaps I was lacking back then: sticking to something and having to be disciplined, learning the value of a routine, giving me the structure that I probably needed at that young age.”
For two and a half years Bowden continued to surprise herself. Top 50 at the English National within a year, nine months later she finished 29th at the Euro Cross trials. A rare athlete actually thriving on the jump from juniors to seniors.
“I just got used to making improvements week on week, month on month. So I would just go into a race thinking I knew it would go pretty well.”
A GB vest followed her maiden red rose outing. 13th in the U23s at the 2017 Euro Cross in Slovakia, she was sixth of a gold medal-winning Great Britain and Northern Ireland team that day.
Postgraduate options
Bowden had by then graduated from Brunel, learning to juggle work with an increasing desire to train at the highest level. But performances had opened doors.
She began speaking to Helen Lehman-Winters about joining the University of San Francisco (USF) for a postgraduate degree. A successful breeding ground for Brits including Jacob Allen, Jack Rowe and Scott Halsted, the Californian university offered the opportunity to continue her journey free from the harshest pressure at a school not necessarily the very best in the NCAA.
All of a sudden everything changed:
“It was probably two or three weeks before I was due to fly out there that the coach called me up to say that she’d taken a job at Oregon and wasn’t going to be there.
I was upset about that but decided to stay going to San Francisco because the assistant coach was going to stay there. And I think it was like four days later that he was like, yeah, I’m leaving as well.
So I planned this all out and went on these visits. And now I don’t even know who the coaches are going to be. And having realized how important that was, you know, being quite happy with my coaching situation with Mick, I didn’t want to then go somewhere where it was the total opposite.”
Bowden’s state of flux ended with a call from Lehman-Winters. Given changes in the team, Oregon had near enough a full scholarship for her. Instead of joining the 22nd best women’s squad, Bowden would be joining the 2017 champions.
Where Bill Bowerman conceived Nike, Steve Prefontaine made his name and ten different future Olympic champions played out their college career.
Pressure from the off
“I obviously knew that it’s a massive school and a big deal to run there. But I don’t think I really knew how big till I got there.”
Bowden had learnt what hard training was but expectations on the West Coast have to be experienced to be understood:
“I think I felt the pressure pretty much straight away. That first season, at the time I felt like I was finding my feet and that the performances maybe weren’t quite what I wanted, but coming off the back of that period of time where I just improved, it would turn around.”
Bowden was 97th in her debut NCAA Div One Cross-Country Championships, 17th in the PAC-12 Conference, all decent results but short of the uncompromising targets set for her.
“I think progressively as I was there and that continued to not be the case, I was underperforming. It was made quite clear to me that was the case. Obviously I knew that was the case anyway.
The pressure sort of mounted like more and more over time. It got pretty intense by the end of it.”
Bowden has made clear previously the college’s unhealthy obsession with weight and the consequences it caused.
As summer arose Bowden ran one minute slower over the 10,000m than she had pre-Oregon and her Cross-Country performances the following autumn would struggle to match her first year’s results.
UK return
Running had lost its joy and Bowden returned for good just before Christmas 2019.
“I came very close to just quitting.” She recalls of those winter months.
Full of baggage, competing at the highest level had lost its charm. Then the world lost its momentum too.
COVID-19 and for Bowden a realisation:
“I was unemployed, living at my boyfriend’s parents’ house, sewing, I was like what else do I do?
I just would go out. Do sessions and runs and stuff on my own. I was quite unfit. I think actually it being stripped back to the simplicity of me doing a grass session on my own, not really caring about the watch because there’s no races coming up anyway. It kind of started to get the wheels turning in motion to get me to a place where I actually enjoyed it again.”
Then 26, Bowden refound some of that desire to compete and in doing so went in search of a new coach.
Helen Clitheroe, now Head Coach of New Balance Manchester, started working with Bowden in the second half of 2020. Despite finding a much more healthy relationship with the sport it wasn’t the end of the Aldershot, Farnham and District’s setbacks.
Adjustment period
“The first nine months I just felt I was s**t. Maybe it was my body kind of sending me a sign that I hadn’t been treating it properly for a while.”
Stop-start injuries saw the early partnership dominated by periods of inconsistency. After one niggle too many, Clitheroe had had enough and forced Bowden to build up from the beginning. Low mileage, long time horizon.
Things started to turn. Consistency creeped in. Then Bowden threw in the curveball of a marathon.
“I wanted a new stimulus, something new on the roads. It was like if I run a marathon, I’ve never run one before. So it’s not like there’s a benchmark. I can’t fail at it.”
Clitheroe was on board. If it was what Bowden wanted, then they could work with it.
It’s safe to say what came next was a steep learning curve. The date was set for Seville Marathon in early 2022.
Marathon debut in Andalusia
Bowden turned up to Spain in her own words ‘scared’:
“I can just remember being the sickest with nerves I’ve ever been because I was just like trying to fathom how I was going to run twice as far as I’d ever run before in a race.”
The nerves left her as she stepped off the startline and for 30km all was going well. 2:30 was the soft target, one she maintained for three quarters of the race. Then some of her nutrition plans started to fight back.
“I smashed it on the drinks front, but I definitely overdid it in terms of carbs. I was having a carb drink every 5k with a third of a bottle of Maurten and a 22 gram SIS gel every other drink.
Then I took this caffeine gel that I’d got in a sports nutrition sale at I think it was like 35k. It was a footballers pre-match gel. So it was like 250 milligrams (of caffeine).”
I’d practiced taking that in training but because I’d only ever really got up to sort of 30, 35k, I’d take that gel and be done and then I’d just be buzzing all afternoon and not sure why. But I think the 7k that I ran after that gel with the rest of my fuel in my stomach accumulated into quite a spectacular display just before the finish.”
She was violently sick within 600m of the end. I submit, it could have been worse. But regardless the touchpaper was lit.
2:34:30 on debut and despite the ending, a wholly positive introduction to the distance. She even ran less miles than she had done at college, averaging 63 miles a week in the build up, down from 70-80 at Oregon.
Copenhagen calling
Bowden knows better than most that running will rarely be a straight-line graph. Whilst the rest of 2022 would not yield the breakout performances she might have expected, she had put herself back in the mix.
And by doing so she earned an opportunity to represent her country once more.
Fast-forward 15 months and she stands on a Danish startline, a team of five England internationals have made the journey to the Copenhagen Marathon.
Control the emotions for as long as you can, her sports psychologist Leah had reminded her, those words ringing in her head as she stands there in the final pre-race moments.
The gun goes and Bowden looks to the ground in front.
Lock into the rhythm, she tells herself. Nothing exciting just make it to the second half. Use logical practical tools.
Method amidst the madness
Bowden had met Leah every three or four weeks in the build up to Copenhagen. Together they would plan how Bowden would feel mentally at each stage of the race.
Follow the plan she reminds herself as the miles tick by. But as they do Bowden edges closer to where the script is due to end.
“Those tools work for as long as your head is on your shoulders and you’re feeling good but when it starts to hurt, you have to get rid of those and go to the emotion.”
The pair know this point will come and when it does Bowden reminds herself to think of who she is doing it for, what they mean to her.
For her younger self, the pair had discussed. The little girl who had watched on in awe at the Aldershot girls dominating the road relays. The 21-year-old so excited to make her first England team.
A reminder from the crowd
There is another prompt Bowden has forgotten. As she passes by the crowds lining the Danish capital, the 28-year-old spots a girl on the side of the road cheering her on.
“To the little girls watching” Bowden remembers her words with Leah.
Her footsteps quicken and Bowden tries to calm herself down. It’s too early to go to the emotion.
At halfway Bowden allows herself a smile and a gentle reminder, “remember this is fun.”
“When’s this going to break?” – Squash that thought.
Miles continue to tick by. Bowden embraces the emotion. As the crowd cheers her on, she jees them up in return. Energy comes from everywhere.
With less than a kilometre to run, Bowden turns onto the Øster Allé. Copenhagen’s largest inner-city park the Fælledparken sits on her left. Its ash trees tower over her every step. A banner sits in front and it comes with pace.
Bowden lifts her head to the sky and holds her hands aloft. Two hours, 29 minutes, 16 seconds. Third place.
26.2 miles of tribute to her younger self.
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Featured image of Phily Bowden https://www.instagram.com/spartalob/?hl=en
Bowden Oregon photo: Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America <https://utah-primoprod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=digcoll_ore_47uo-athletics/df739h99r&context=L&vid=MWDL>.
Photo two: {{cite web | url= https://oregondigital.org/concern/images/df73cf443 | title= Philippa Bowden, 2019 |author= |accessdate= 2023-11-12 |publisher= }}
