McColgan: “In Kenya they do big runs, in Scotland we do Big Macs”

One of Britain’s top runners may have to practise her sharp sprint when she’s next home to get away from the locals!

Commonwealth Games hopeful Eilish McColgan has been preparing for Glasgow with super-tough altitude training in Iten, 8,000ft up Kenya’s Rift Valley.

The runner daughter of Scots Commonwealth champ Liz has marvelled on her online blog at the Kenyans’ passion for running.

But she may have inadvertently upset fellow Brits, including her little brother, by portraying them as couch potatoes!

Eilish wrote: “The whole culture in Iten is altogether different to anything I have ever seen before. Running is the norm.

“Back in my hometown of Dundee, running is definitely not the norm. You have to persuade people out on a run by claiming they can have a McDonald’s after it or that they can have a bottle of wine later that evening.”

She added: “On the majority of my runs, I had numerous little kids some as young as five with no shoes on running alongside me.

“I would literally have to throw my little brother’s Xbox out of the window to watch him run outside two metres to collect it yet these tiny children were out nonchalantly jogging alongside me.”

Ultra-focused Eilish is putting in the hard training in the hope of emulating her mum’s distance running heroics when the Games come to Scotland this summer.

In Kenya, she joined hundreds of the world’s top athletes and coaches including Mo Farah, Paula Radcliffe and Steve Cram for five weeks of intensive training.

The athlete said training in the heat and dust of Kenya was a culture shock from the freezing weather back home.

She admitted: “Running in Iten doesn’t come easy. It really is an awe-inspiring place to visit and the locals are the friendliest people I have had the pleasure of coming across.”

Now back home, Eilish is hoping to make Scotland proud when she competes on home soil in the 3,000m steeplechase.

She wrote: “My focus has always been and still remains the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. So it’s back to the cold, lonely grind of training in the UK. What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger so they say!”