Guy Learmonth is, he says, ready to do what he’s been talking about for a very long time: win a major championship medal.

At the age of 31, it may seem somewhat late in the day for a middle-distance runner to produce their best form but Learmonth believes that with almost half of his senior career having been severely impacted by illness and injury, he’s finally in the shape required to force his way onto a major championship podium.

Certainly, the signs were there last season that the Borders man was as fit as he’d been in quite some time; a 1 minute 44.80 second run over 800m last July was the fastest he’d run for five years and it was, he admits, an overwhelming relief to realise that, despite his worst fears, he still had the speed in his legs to run world-class times.

“I ran 1.44 and in that moment, it felt like such a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders. I knew I could run that fast again but there’s a big difference between believing you can do it and actually doing it,” he says.

“It was such a relief – I’d fought through all the stress, the pain, the illness and the injuries and so it felt amazing to run that fast again.”

Learmonth has been one of Britain’s best 800m runners for a decade.

His major championship debut came at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 but the expected trajectory to the Olympic Games never quite materialised.

Injury thwarted his attempt to make the British team for the Rio 2016 Olympics and while 2018 saw him run his fastest-ever time, from there illness and injury pulled the rug from underneath him.

The Tokyo Olympics was another huge target but three bouts of Covid severely affected Learmonth’s health from 2020 onwards, so much so that he admits he had more than a fleeting thought that his best was behind him and it might have been time to hang up the spikes.

“I’m not going to lie, there were times, especially after having Covid, I wondered if I’d ever be the same athlete again,” he says. 

“I’m forever the optimist but I did worry that I might not ever get back to where I had been.”

Learmonth, who is part of Justin Rinaldi’s Melbourne-based training group, headed down-under last winter for what was, he says, the last throw of the dice.

If there were no positive signs in early 2023 that would have, he admits, been enough for him to call it a day.

However, the hard yards he put in over the winter paid off; a fourth British Indoor 800m title last February in his fastest-ever indoor time was the glimmer of light he needed to continue onto the outdoor season where he ran that self-affirming time of 1 minute 44.

And his success last year has, he admits, made the hard slog of his most recent winter training block considerably easier, with his mindset now as positive as its been for years.

“I’ve taken the confidence I gained last season into this winter and things have really progressed.

“I know I’m getting older but my body is feeling amazing and I’m in a good place physically and mentally,” he says.

“I’m so glad I stuck it out and I now feel completely revitalised. 

“I now feel like I can run the times I’ve always believed I can run.”

Learmonth will get a benchmark of exactly where he is in terms of form over the next few days.

Today, he begins his season in an 800m at a World Tour meet in Spain before racing in Erfurt in Germany on Tuesday, which is where he’s hoping to really show the improvements he believes he’s made over the past few months. And the indoor season will, he hopes, culminate in a strong showing at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March.

“I’m going all-out for this indoor season,” he says. 

The Herald:

“My race in Erfurt is the one I’m really targeting – I want to do something really special there. Then I’m hoping to win my fifth British Indoor title and I’d be looking to have a massive Champs in Glasgow.

“I’ve spoken for a long time about winning medals and I’ve always fallen short but I feel like this year could really be different.

“But one step at a time, I need to start racing and then make the team for Glasgow before I think about what I want to do there.”

While a World Indoor medal is a major goal this year, it’s by no means Learmonth’s sole target.

Despite having mixed it with the world’s best for so long, he’s yet to have earned the privilege of being able to call himself an Olympian.

And that’s something he’s going all out to rectify this summer.

“My goal is to be in Paris and if I make it there, it’ll be potentially a bigger achievement than anything I’ve done before,” he says.

“I’ve been around the block so many times but I still can’t call myself an Olympian and that’s constantly in the back of my mind. The Olympics is the one thing missing from my CV and so this year, I want to put that right.”