Morgan Again | McDonald Primed for Riga Road Running Championships

For 15 years, Morgan McDonald’s career was linear. The scruffy-haired Australian dealt in fast times and eye-catching progress, until he didn’t. Landing in Latvia for the World Athletics Road Running Championships ready and raring, the Olympian recounts a slippery road back to his best. 

McDonald’s track record is close to blemish free, with annual Australian tracksuits masking a luckless run with injury. In the last decade, McDonald has only missed representative teams in two years (2016 and 2022), but the 27-year-old speaks candidly about his recent injury struggles. 

“It’s been really difficult to navigate. I started running when I was eight years old and every year I got better, that was something that I could always feel good about. To lose that, it becomes a lot more challenging. As a professional runner, your whole life is about running, so when you are out for three months it becomes really hard to find ways to fill the day and still be happy,” McDonald said.

The Australian who resides in Boulder, Colorado came unstuck just seven days into 2023 when slipping on ice, fracturing his knee and chances of a comeback season after missing the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon. 

“I couldn’t run for three months and when I looked at the schedule for this year, I saw the World Road Running Championships and thought this will be the best race for me to prepare for this year – even more so than the World Championships,” McDonald said.  

Bouncing out in the heats of the 2023 World Championships in Budapest before punching in a personal best of 7:35.78 over 3000m in Croatia, McDonald bounced back to form and is poised to put his best foot forward in Riga, Latvia where he will contest the Men’s 5km. 

“I looked at the entry list and saw Ethiopia are sending guys like Yomif [Kejelcha] and Aregawi [Berihu], two of the top-five 5000m runners in the world this year, so no one is mucking about. It’s exactly what I want, because a race like this is not really about anything other than competition,” McDonald said. 

“I will have a loose goal to guide me in the race, say top-10 or something to key off during the race, but ultimately I will know if I ran my best and got the everything out of myself.” 

Racing for only the fourth time this year but second time in an Australian uniform, the Tokyo Olympian has only been buoyed by the success of his international training squad headed by Dathan Ritzenhein, which includes the likes of compatriot Oliver Hoare, Yared Nuguse (USA), Geordie Beamish (New Zealand) and Sintayehu Vissa (Italy).  

“On a personal level, seeing people around me that I am friends with achieve amazing things every day, it’s such a good feeling. You are very happy for them because you care about them, but you see how possible it is to achieve the things that you want to achieve when previously it seemed in a different universe. I think that’s one of the greatest things about our team in Boulder,” McDonald said.

“I have a lot of belief. Even in college, I won a bunch of NCAA titles [for Wisconsin] but not until my fifth year. The whole time I believed I was going to win them; I don’t know why but having belief is something that I have always had.” 

Not short of international experience having earned starts at two World Cross Country Championships as a junior (2013, 2015), one World Under 20 Championships (2014), three World Championships (2017, 2019, 2023), one Commonwealth Games (2018), and one Olympic Games (2021) – McDonald declared that his best is yet to come on the eve of an Olympic year. 

“When I made my first senior team in 2017, I was pretty happy just to be there, but my goal every other year has been to make the final and compete – which I haven’t achieved,” McDonald said.

“I still have those exact same goals but it’s just going to take me a bit longer than I wanted to achieve them. I have learned a lot about myself and the sport, and I have progressed in other ways. I have been patient for a long time and I’m excited to see that translate into results.

As soon as I got injured, I was thinking about the Olympics. Everything since then has been framed around doing what I have to do to be ready for the Olympics, because at the end of the day it’s the pinnacle of our sport and it’s what you dream about.” 

For more information about the 2023 World Athletics Road Running Championships, click HERE.   

By Lachlan Moorhouse, Athletics Australia
Posted: 28/9/2023