Euro Cross team gold medallist and former Inter-Counties champion has been thriving since realising that less might, in fact, be more

Jenny Nesbitt knew something was missing. “I had a bit of a frustrating summer. I was turning up to races and just not performing at an ability I thought I was capable of,” says the Cardiff-based 26-year-old. It was time for a post-season sitdown with her coach Chris Jones.

“I said to him, ‘I feel like what we’ve done over the summer has been great – I’ve run PBs on nearly all of my track sessions – but there’s an element that’s missing’.

“He was quite firm with me and he already knew exactly what the connecting dot was. He said: ‘You’re always working too hard in training. You need to strip it back. We need to look at working a bit more with heart rate zones, lactate and keeping things under control.

“For me, that’s really hard to do but the fact that he was really firm about it made me rethink exactly what I want.”

There was more. 

“He said: ‘If you want to get as far as you can in the sport you’ve got to change these factors and trust me’. So I listened to him, we put in 12 really solid weeks of work and I feel the races I’ve done during the cross country season have reflected that change in training and the approach that we’ve taken over the winter.”

Since that September meeting Nesbitt has shown nothing but progress. There have been second places in the British Athletics Cross Challenge events in Cardiff and Milton Keynes, another runner-up spot in the Euro Cross trials at Liverpool which secured her place on the Great Britain line-up and a 10th place in Dublin which helped win team gold for the senior women’s line-up at the championships themselves. 

That was followed by a run of 3000m indoors in Cardiff in which she clocked a time of 8:44.92 – taking 20 seconds off her PB and moving to ninth on the British all-time list – and then in early January she ran 15:30.32 behind Amelia Quirk in Sheffield to go No.4 on the UK all-time indoor 5000m rankings.

“The biggest turning point was coming back from altitude training at the beginning of October and running really well in Cardiff,” she says. “That’s the first time I’ve come back from altitude and actually run well and not had to put myself in a hole.

“That performance gave me a lot of confidence to just trust the process of what we were doing and believe that it was going to work.

“I think I’ve always lacked the confidence in my own ability and the belief that I’m actually capable of doing something. [I’ve realised] I don’t have to be redlining all the time to actually prove to myself that I’m training hard. For me, that’s been the biggest change.”

All of which makes the excitement about the targets ahead all the greater. Nesbitt wants another taste of the Commonwealth Games, having been a very late call-up to the Wales team for the Gold Coast Games at which she competed in the 10,000m final. 

This time, 5000m is the focus, while she is also hoping to have a little more notice when it comes to being sure of her place. 

“The Commonwealth Games is what I really want to target,” says Nesbitt, who is studying for a masters in sports broadcasting. “I’m originally from Worcester, which is 30 minutes away from the Alexander Stadium, so it is practically a home Games.”

Of that Gold Coast experience four years ago, she adds: “I think I got called up on a Friday and we flew to Australia on the Monday. I had about 48 hours to process it all, pack my stuff and get on a plane to Australia for seven weeks. It was definitely a late call-up but probably the best experience I’ve had in my athletics career so far.

“I learned an awful lot on that trip and I want to go back and be competitive rather than just a number in a race.”