The last time I spoke to Callum Elson, he sat in front of a webcam in Springfield, Massachusetts, the blue and yellow of a Leeds United flag a rare interruption from a beige vision of the usual furnishings of a college dorm.
In early 2022, then a newly-minted sub-four miler, the American International College athlete had reached the point where his rate of improvement had hit an irrepressible upward spike.
His next 18 months would read as follows:
- NCAA Division II Indoor Mile Champion
- First GB Vest as part of the Mixed Relay team for the 2022 European Cross-Country Championships
- Sixth place as part of the Mixed Relay team at the 2023 World Cross-Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia
- 3:35.39 over 1500m, bettering the all-time British Milers Club record
- World silver medal over the Road Mile at the World Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia. His time of 3:56.41 was then a European record.
Speaking openly on his various social media feeds, Elson’s gathering charge set its sights on more international vests, the next logical progression a track debut building into an Olympic summer.
So it came as little surprise when, in February 2024, he made that ambition a reality.
Red on blue and white
Clocking the qualifying standard for the Glasgow World Indoor Championships in Boston (3:53.22 Mile – seventh UK all-time), eight days later Elson edged out Adam Fogg for second at the British Indoor Champs.
Opponents changing around him, where once the faces of his contemporaries sat on increasingly speedy British legs, the field that presented itself for his heat in Glasgow’s Emirates Arena was the next echelon up the international ladder.
Gold and bronze would eventually come from Elson’s heat four and for 500m he would track the feet of Hobbs Kessler, the man who had denied the Brit a few months prior in Latvia.
Eyes locked and laps ticking by.
Off the bend a sharp scratch, a pain and over the course of 100 surreal metres, the steady realization for Elson that one leg in front of the other was no longer possible. The spikes of the 6ft 6 inch Elzan Bibic had severed his achilles tendon.
Within a couple of minutes, as Vincent Keter, Hobbs Kessler and Geordie Beamish qualified across the line, Elson sat uncomfortably in a wheelchair. No final in two days time it would be over six months and a steady return from surgery until the 25-year-old raced again.
Choosing a different narrative
Chatting to Elson, my initial intentions were to talk about the comeback, overcoming the dips and disappointments and now finding himself in a position to put himself back into contention.
But despite the founder of Youtube’s the Distance Project clearly being adept at selling a story, it would be disingenuous to paint this as Elson’s return from the brink.
From minute one he wanted to, deliberately or not, approach his injury in a different way:
“The day after I got injured, I went for my MRI. The injury was on the Friday night, I went on the Saturday. And then the Sunday I got back and was like, can I go to the stadium? They were like, why would you want to do that?
I would want other people, if they were injured, who I was friends with or whatever, to still be as supportive for me as I’d like to think I was for other people. I’d hate to think of, people sat at home injured going, I hope Callum runs bad, because I can’t run well this year.”
Never far away
Viewers will have seen that represented as he hobbled to celebrate the successes of many of the teammates that now form the basis of Team Makou, Hoka’s professional outfit, he and a few others largely birthed during his time out of the sport.
From Rory Leonard running the European qualifying standard at the Night of the 10,000m PB’s to revelling in Ellis Cross’s takedown of Jakob Ingebrigtsen at the Copenhagen Half Marathon. Staying close to the sport seemed to invigorate Elson more than distance away might have insulated himself from his own frustrations.
And actively observing did give Elson time to ponder some takeaways on his own trajectory in the sport.
After a couple of years being remotely mentored by his old college coach Nick Aguila (to success – he might add), the Leeds native had been jumping in with various different groups as and when he saw fit.
Often with his Cambridge & Coleridge club teammates, Jack Gray and Thomas Keen in particular when at home. At other times as the link with the Hoka setup was starting to form, Elson would drop in with the three or four that were starting to form the basis of the group.
It was a bit of everything and nothing at the same time.
I can’t just do it Callum’s way
Watching others over that running-free summer, more and more Elson began to see his position as an outlier.
“I think you can be way more consistent if you have a group. I think over time it will add up.
If I want to make an Olympics, if I want to make World Champs, if I want to do whatever, I have to not think that I can just operate at seven out of 10 and just do it Callum’s way.
I will just slip into just being, okay. There’s a reason why all the best runners in my opinion are – obviously they’ve got the contracts that allow them to do so – but they’re fully in. They’re looking at what are the marginal gains they can get here. They’re moving closer to a physio. They’re getting help with nutrition. They’re having a blood test because like, why not?”
Team Makou in motion
That obvious group for Elson was the Hoka setup, soon to be known as Team Makou. The aforementioned, Cross, Leonard, as well as Scott Beattie and Efrem Gidey.
Criminal solicitor by background, Andy Hobdell was chosen as the coach, with Elson being up front from the start:
“I just said to Andy – look, I’m basically all in to run 3:32 or whatever we have to run next year. Between now and then, everything’s just a bonus. I don’t really care about indoors. I don’t really care about cross country.
It’ll just be nice bonuses to see where I am, whatever. But whatever I need to do between being essentially on crutches to then trying to do 3:32 and go to British Champs with a qualifying time, I’ll just do what I need to do.
So if part of that is hanging on to Rory who’s run 27.30 and Ellis who’s run 62 for the half and basically feeling like I’m crap at running when I’m with them, then so be it.
Like I don’t care, I don’t have any ego enough to want to be the best in the group. I just want to run well when it matters.”
Elson had every right to sit in the emotion of a long-term injury at a time when everything seemed to be going upward, but how helpful is emotion to a sport that is so often defined by the cold hard science, the day-in-day-out regularity?
If Elson comes back and indeed makes the World Champs team in 2025, precisely avoiding that emotion may have been his smartest move.
Mansfield Return
246 days after being wheeled off that Glasgow track, Elson returned for the National Cross-Country Relays in Mansfield. A year after anchoring his Cambridge & Coleridge quartet to national gold, Elson headed to Berry Hill Park, a far cry from the world silver medallist that arrived there 12 months prior.
That day only Will Barnicoat ran quicker on the final leg. In 2024 Elson says he couldn’t even tell you how many beat him (he was seventh fastest on leg four), but he still came away with a national medal, holding off a fast-finishing Leonard to do so.
Three weeks later in a return to Liverpool, a bid for a short-course relay spot at Turkey’s European Cross-Country Champs, ended in the early stages and somewhat cruelly with a long gash down the same heel that bore the brunt of Bibic’s spikes. I’d share the picture but it’s not a pretty sight.
Yet feeling sorry for yourself never helps.
No longer the return.
“I still could be going on about oh I’ve only being running 15, 16 weeks or whatever but no one wants to hear it. It’s boring. Like you’re back running now. So you’ve just got to crack on with it.
And then the other thing is, if I keep telling myself I’ve only just got back running, I’m basically giving myself an excuse for every session I want to drop out of, every time I want to run the reps a bit slower, every race when it gets a bit hard. I can’t keep falling back on like it was pretty good run, because I’ve only been running for so long.
How long is it going to go on? You can’t do it forever. So for me, I’m just like, look, I’m back now.”
For six months or so you may well see Elson take a defeat or two from athlete’s he might previously have negotiated with some ease. At times he might run slow, others probably surprisingly fast.
Putting the ego at the door, embracing the here and now, a refreshed Elson is doing everything he can with his brain. Some time next summer, expect his legs to catch up.
