World 50km champion explains why narrowing her focus has helped to bring about major success

As recently as 2021, Carla Molinaro was a ‘jack of all trades’. Now, thanks to a more focused approach to goal-setting, she is a master of one.

The 39-year-old won the IAU World 50km Championship title in 3:18:22 in India in November, leading Great Britain and Northern Ireland to a dominant team gold. Her performance, aided by a month of training in the heat and humidity of Dubai, concluded a successful year that featured podium finishes in the 56km Two Oceans Ultra Marathon and the 56-mile Comrades Marathon in South Africa.

Not long ago there might have been additional challenges thrown into the mix, but in linking up with coach Martin Cox two years ago she has forced herself to stick to a plan rather than be side-tracked by the allure of more unconventional multi-day adventures.

“I mainly started working with him [Martin] because I’ll say yes to everything and I needed someone to rein me in,” explains the Clapham Chasers athlete. “I thought: ‘Actually, if I just focus on one thing maybe I can be really good, instead of trying to do everything’. Half the time I won’t even bother asking him if I can do something because I know it’s stupid, but if I didn’t have a coach ... someone will be like: ‘We’re doing this relay across the world, do you want to come?’ and I’ll be like: ‘Sure!’”

Molinaro, who is based in Cape Town, is a former triathlete and age group winner at the European Duathlon Championships. She switched her focus to running in 2013 after moving to Glasgow to work on the 2014 Commonwealth Games. During that time, and as she prepared to run her first marathon (London, 2014, 2:51:46), she embraced the local cross country scene and trained alongside athletes including Olympic 1500m silver medallist Laura Muir.

Molinari ran her first ultra-marathon – the world-famous Comrades Marathon – in 2016 and made her GB debut at the IAU World 100km Championships in 2018 following a ninth place ‘Gold Medal’ finish at Comrades (the top 10 men and women in the event are awarded a gold medal).

By her own admission she was “still dabbling”, and mid-pandemic (July 2020) she elected for a new adventure; a successful attempt to break the world record from Land’s End to John o' Groats, running 1327km in 12 days, 30 minutes and 14 seconds.

Now a world champion, Molinaro has set her sights on new goals for 2024 and beyond. Two are set in stone, a return to the Two Oceans in April and Comrades in June (she achieved the required qualifying time in India), while one is tentative but provides an element of intrigue akin to that of the challenges she so commonly set herself in the past.

There are also opportunities to represent Great Britain at the 100km World Championships and 50km European Championships in 2024, but Molinaro isn’t committing to them at this stage. Instead, in addition to her documented goals, she is keen to see what is possible over the traditional marathon distance and hopes to line up in Valencia next December.

“It’s quite nice to have a bit of breathing space at the moment, but also to know what’s looming in the distance,” she says. “I’d really like to get the time to be selected for a [Commonwealth Games or European Championships] marathon. I went through my PB time [2:46:05] in the 50km so it’s not really my PB anymore. The only thing is that there are so many good GB marathon girls right now, but I’m like: ‘Why can’t I be one of them?’ I can try.”

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Molinaro has set up her own training group in Cape Town. Her easy runs are done on trails – if possible – and pace is irrelevant. “All I have on my watch is time, so I don’t even know what pace I’m running,” she says. “Unless I’m trying to do a specific paced session, I don’t care what speed I’m going at.”

In addition to running, she commits to three strength and conditioning sessions, two core sessions and one yoga session per week. She also runs an online strength, conditioning and yoga programme (Strength, Conditioning and Yoga for Runners).

Monday: (am) 40min easy; (pm) 30min easy

Tuesday: (am) 50min easy; (pm) 30min easy

Wednesday: 80min moderate run (30sec slower than intended race pace)

Thursday: 4 x 3km at 3:30min/km pace off 4min easy jog. “I remember that session, I couldn’t hit the paces that day, I didn’t know what was wrong. It was just a really bad session, I felt awful. It was probably the only time I had a really bad session like that in the whole training cycle.”

Friday: (am) 40min easy; (pm) 30min easy

Saturday: 80min moderate run

Sunday: (am) 50min easy; (pm) 30min easy

Monday: 3km moderate – 12km race pace – 3km moderate – 6km race pace – 8km moderate (biggest race-specific session)

Favourite session: “4 x 5km with 4min jog recovery. You do it at your target marathon or ultra pace and I think, when you get to the point you can nail that session, you know you’re fit.”

Least favourite session: “Some of the long moderate runs – like three hours moderate – are really hard. You have to concentrate on the pace and it can be a bit of a grind. They’re not easy, they’re not hard, but they take effort.”

» This article first appeared in the December issue of AW magazine, which you can read here