After her unforgettable Olympic year, the 800m runner is about to embark on a new adventure in Edinburgh, spearheading a new and highly ambitious performance project.

The life-changing experiences are coming thick and fast for Phoebe Gill. This time last year, the teenager was still digesting her appearance at the Paris Olympics and the end of a whirlwind summer in which she had become the senior British 800m champion and European under-18 record-holder. 

Now, after a rather quieter sporting time – due not just to her recovery from a fibula stress fracture, but also a strong focus on her A levels – she is preparing for another landmark event. University beckons and the St Albans athlete is venturing north, to Scotland, to further her education both on and off the track. 

She has become the first major signing for the University of Edinburgh’s ambitious Global Endurance Project, being led by renowned coach and 1988 Olympic 3000m steeplechase bronze medallist Mark Rowland. If the January arrival of the man who headed up Nike’s Oregon Track Club Elite project and coached in the US for 14 years, then spent another two years as Athletics Canada’s West Hub Endurance Coach, wasn’t a big enough statement of intent then landing a young talent such as Gill, who was not short of options, speaks volumes about what the project is trying to achieve. 

Already, what Rowland describes a “spine” to the elite squad starting to form. Canadian two-time Olympian Gabriella DeBues-Stafford (as well as her husband and coach Rowan) is working with him, while medical student and newly-crowned British 1500m champion Sarah Calvert is in place, too. Now Gill will join them. 

“[Edinburgh] offer a lot,” says the 18-year-old, who will be studying Biochemistry, explaining her decision. “I was [choosing] between all the running universities – like Loughborough and Birmingham – but when I went up to visit Edinburgh, I just fell in love with the city. Mark is obviously such a phenomenal coach and I'm really looking forward to working with him.

“I'm also really interested to see how their proposal of a new middle-distance squad works out. And I want to be a part of that. I think it will be a really exciting time to go up there.

“I was very impressed [by Mark]. He's obviously got such a history behind him and, being an Olympian himself, I can see that he's someone that I would trust my training in. He showed me the plans that he had for the group and it's something that I believe in. I'm very excited to start having a relationship with him.”

This move doesn’t mean that Gill is about to cut ties with her long-time coach Deborah Steer. In the same way that Rowland keeps in close dialogue with Calvert’s coach, Luke Gunn, this will be a collaborative approach. 

“They already have an agreement about keeping in contact,” says Gill. “Deborah’s flying up to Edinburgh and seeing everything that's going on and I think she's very excited for the relationship to start off. I am excited to see the dynamic between the two of them and how they can work together to better my training. When I come back home, I can train with my club again and then, when I go up there, I'll be with Mark.”

And what can she expect in her new surroundings? A strong accent on elite performance, but also a firm focus on taking care of the individual. 

“You create the environment that enables athletes to challenge for medal-winning performances at major championships, and then the vision is to cultivate talented individuals or self confident, self-reliant individuals who are able to make critical decisions on and off the track,” says Rowland. “You need routine. I think most athletes want routine and structure.”

There is so much more to the university experience than sport, however, and Rowland will be taking academic schedules into account to find the best training solutions. There are plenty of moving parts to establishing not just the group, but how he best helps the athletes in terms of strength and conditioning, massage, recovery and all the added extras that can help with performance. 

“It's going to be a bespoke program, and it's going to vary for each individual, but there will be structure around it, and there will be expectations, roles and responsibilities that I wish for people to adhere to,” he says. “If they're good enough, they’ll do that anyway.”

Mindful that there is a lot to take in and deal with at university, particularly in the early stages, the university have also brought in Eilidh Doyle, a former Edinburgh student – not to mention heavily decorated international athlete – as Global Ambassador of Sport to help mentor this next generation in their journey. She will be on hand to listen, share her own experiences and help. 

“Coming to university, you want your life to be as easy as possible,” she says. “My problem [at uni] was that I went in not preparing for it to be difficult. I totally underestimated everything and tried to do it myself. I wasn't organised and there were nights when I’d finish classes and thought: ‘I can't be bothered trying to get to Meadowbank Stadium to get a session. It's fine, I'll miss this one’. And then all of a sudden that missed one becomes a couple more, a couple more, and then you're trying to chase sessions because you’re not in the shape that you should be. And then it just kind of unravelled a little bit. 

“After that first year I managed to get myself more organised but I remember coming home and people saying to me: ‘Oh, but everybody struggles in their first year of university. Everybody finds it really difficult’. And I was like: ‘Well, nobody told me!’.

“If you've got someone to turn to – if there's a group, there's a coach, there's somebody there for you, that makes a big difference, because you're like: ‘I'm part of something’.”

She adds: “[I want to be] somebody who the athletes can just chat to, because I’m somebody who's been there and experienced it. Perhaps somebody that they can find slightly easier to talk to, because they might not want to let Mark down. 

“Even just somebody to talk to and can help work out how things can be easier. Hopefully I can just give a little bit of insight and be somebody who can be a bridge sometimes between the athlete and the performance team.”

Doyle has already made a difference. 

“Part of the reason that I chose Edinburgh is because I met with the team, and it's very similar to the support system that I have at home,” says Gill. “It's something that I want to emulate going up to university. I trust them all and they've been so, so helpful and supportive with the transition. 

“We all had dinner [in Edinburgh] together, and I was very grateful that they had an ex-pro athlete so to talk to about not only the training side, but also the mental side of being an athlete. I think that's something that's very important in an athlete set-up.”

There will be no rush for Gill to hit the ground running. Now fully recovered from her injury, she could have been back on the track this summer but hers will be a gradual return to full training after that eventful year. 

“It's such a hard thing to go to university,” she says. “It's a massive change, and I just wanted that to be my focus point, rather than to also have to deal with the stresses that come with racing at the same time. It was definitely a good decision.

“The culture of Scotland is something that I've always loved, and I think I’ll really enjoy the course up there. There are more aspects than just the running side of it. I'm just very excited to start the journey up there.”