She Had a Shoe Emergency 30 Minutes Before the European Marathon Championships. Then She Won Bronze

Abbie Donnelly made it to the European Championships marathon with everything she needed … except, apparently, two shoes in the same size.The British runner realized the mistake the night before Sunday’s marathon in Birmingham when one of her race shoes—the Kiprun KD900X LD+—suddenly felt a little off. By the next morning, her parents and boyfriend, Shane, were scrambling to get the correct shoe to the start.“I’m definitely the liability,” Donnelly told British Athletics TV after the race. “I actually brought two different sized shoes by accident to this race. I tried them on last night and I was like, ‘The right one does not feel right.’”The replacement arrived with little time to spare.“It was half an hour before [the race when] my boyfriend Shane put the chip on because I was so flustered,” she said.Once Donnelly actually got running, things went a lot smoother. She finished third in 2:27:33, becoming the first British woman to win a European Championships marathon medal with a performance that also helped Great Britain earn team gold.Donnelly told Athletics Weekly that the race itself was anything but straightforward. The eight-lap course through Birmingham featured plenty of hills, which led runners to fight for position repeatedly.“It was a really tough race, both just the course and the tactics of it,” she said. “There was a lot of surging because of the hills, but I’m so pleased with how it turned out. It was a proper to-the-line moment.”Maja Hitij//Getty ImagesA medal hadn’t exactly felt like a given, either. Donnelly described it as an “optimistic dream” and said the unusual course, which reminded her of cross-country, may have played to her strengths. It was also her first time racing a marathon in a championship setting. Instead of following pacemakers and worrying about splits, Donnelly said she spent much of the race focused on the athletes around her.“I didn’t think about the time,” she told Athletics Weekly. “I was aware of where I was in the pack.”As if winning a historic bronze after an emergency shoe delivery wasn’t enough to have going on, Donnelly is somehow balancing her running career with a part-time PhD at Loughborough University. Her research examines popular imperialism and British culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries.Unfortunately, she has very little time for a proper postrace victory lap, as her thesis is reportedly due in six weeks.“I might give myself tomorrow, then I have a lot of writing to do,” she said. “If my supervisor is reading this, then I'm sorry—I will finish it!”Sean Abrams was the Senior Editor, Growth and Engagement at Men’s Health. He’s a former hip hop dancer who likes long walks on the beach and large glasses of tequila. You can find his previous work at Maxim, Elite Daily, and AskMen.