|Start dreaming Paula!|
|Around the Academy:
Success certainly did not happen overnight for Paula.
She didn't win a major race until her late teens.
But she was always a very organised girl. Her whole life was organised.
And that really helped her in her preparation for progressing up to the top.
She never got behind on anything. And that included everything like her homework at school.
She knew exactly where she was going.
And she just worked incredibly hard.
She first won the world cross-country championships in 1992 in her last year at school. It was at Boston in America.
That race is now six kilometres but back then it was four km. So it was a little bit easier for Paula!
Our preparation was thorough. We knew what times the opponents would be running.
And all we had to do was make sure that Paula could run faster than anybody else! Sounds easy doesn't it?!
Paula had just won the English Schools and we knew she had a great chance of winning.
And she did exactly that.
And that was the beginning of it all really. And all her training just gradually built up slowly over the years after that.