I already knew that as an eleven-year-old in Dundee, Liz McColgan had started #running for her life and a future that would change her family fortunes forever. ‘Going the Distance’ was the first #sports film I would make with a #femaleathletes, and I was going to direct and photograph the athlete myself.
The truth is, you don’t direct an athlete, you watch and respond to the magic moments in their training regime that best illustrate the story you are trying to tell; being aware at all times of the privilege of being allowed so close to somebody, trying to be the best in the world.
Liz was already a very successful multi-award-winning athlete by the time we came together to discuss the #film. She’d won gold at the ‘1986 #commonwealthgames in #Edinburgh’ and a silver at the ‘1988 Seoul Olympics’
Liz explained that her early life had been tough. At the age of sixteen she was getting up at 05.30 to work in a Jute mill and earned extra money by working in the local chip shop in the evening. All this time there was no let up in her training, whether running in the freezing dark streets of Dundee in the pouring rain, or sweating on a treadmill on Christmas Day.
Other people recognised her phenomenal work ethic. When she needed a new pair of running shoes the local working men’s club had a collection and bought them for her. On another occasion Liz’s first coach, Harry Bennet and an uncle paid for help her take up a Sports Scholarship, at the #university of Alabama.
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