Berlin in 2011 according to PowerOf10. 3rd place in 2:23, I’m guessing it was her last throw of qualifying for London 2012.
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Crikey, lost 35 minutes in 14 years 
She needs to get onto our over 50’s thread for tips on extending her career 
Or pensions 
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Just started listening to her new podcast, pretty good - all quality…no crap 
….
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Probably not a huge surprise and maybe for the over 50’s thread as well but Paula through halfway in Boston in 1:23!
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Boston quicker than Tokyo then. Although it still doesn’t put her in the top 10 all time British W50 rankings!
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Got a feeling I know someone who went faster in F50 at London a few years back.
Or she was in better / building form, or the weather / day, or just went for a 2:59 (sub 3) in Tokyo and Boston was more representative of actual fitness. 101 things, you cannt conclude anything from the two, except still very decent.
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UK has a long and proud history of pretty much ignoring distance runners and offering little to no support unless they achieve great things on their own. I used to run with Matt O’Dowd in Swindon late 90’s/early 2000’s. He was a very bright prospect, running sub 14min 5000s at a young age, but getting almost zero assistance from British Athletics. Ended up chasing money in the US college system at one point and a 2.12 in NY mara (8th place) as a private athlete finally got him noticed. He did run a few times for GB in major events in the end, including a 1.02 WC 1/2mara, and ran in WC and Athens Olympics marathons, but never really seemed to get the coaching and support he deserved at any point to get the last few % of performance out of him. I don’t think that situation has improved much lately, such as the guy in the news a few weeks ago who was selected but asked to pay to go to the world road-racing champs to do the 1/2mara, even though he was our best prospect.
When MK marathon started up they were offering a few £K cash prize, but 1st place this year is £200 of shopping vouchers even though the field size is larger than ever, so there is not really any financial pathway to making any kind of living out of it, particularly as a male.
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I think these days, there are too many alternatives to marathon running to make it ‘lucrative’ at the top-amateur level. I guess organisers would rather make more profit than offer decent prize money; hell do they even make much profit these days?
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