“It did seem unrealistic: I was very unfit, I’d had a baby, I was breast feeding. So when I went back into training, there was no talk about aiming to get medals. It was try to get in the best shape I could. I guess it was all about shall we give it one last go? And we thought, yeah, why not?”
Though there are those who suggest that motherhood can provide an invaluable hormonal boost to an athlete and that a carefully timed pregnancy can remove seconds from personal bests. If that is the theory, Pavey suggests it is somewhat undermined by the practical reality. “When I went back, I was so out of shape after nine months of being deconditioned, and I was so tired from not getting any sleep, you know it never occurred to me to think: oh yeah, there’s a real hormonal benefit from having a baby.”
The hormonal boost may not have been there, but the happiness factor was. And however unlikely it may have been, her one last go at doing something on the track turned out to be an absolute, unequivocal triumph. The third place in Glasgow was followed by glorious, blazing victory in the European Championships. It was the first major win of her career, achieved at an age most athletes have long since swapped spikes for slippers.
“Now that really shocked me,” she says of her golden run in Zurich. “I think what surprised me most was the discovery that I was still competitive.”
So surprised was she, indeed, that her celebration of victory was somewhat muted. “I only raised my hands halfway up when I crossed the line because I really couldn’t believe I’d won and I thought it would be so embarrassing if I started celebrating when it turned out I hadn’t won,” she admits.
“You need experience to know how to behave when you’ve won at a major champs and I didn’t have any. I was looking around for the scores. I needed confirmation I’d won. But I couldn’t find the scoreboard. Then people started taking photos of me. I was surrounded by cameras. So I thought, wow I must have won. From there on in, it seemed like a dream, like it was happening to someone else.”
On her lap of honour she sought out the family. Gavin was there with Emily and their five-year-old son Jacob. It was the best group hug of her career. “Jacob had seen me in the Olympics in London and I thought it would be good to be able to say to Emily that she had come to watch me in a big event, even if there was no way she’d ever remember herself,” she says. “Absolutely no way did I think I’d be doing a lap of honour and seeing them there to celebrate. I’d never had a moment like it in my career. But it was so worth waiting for. It just made everything I’d done worthwhile.”
The victory transformed her world. Everywhere she has been subsequently she has met people who tell her that she has inspired them to take up running. When it is pointed out to her by both me and the photographer that she is now a role model for the middle aged everywhere she smiles broadly. “Wow that is so flattering,” she says. She has been invited, too, to do all sorts of things she had never done before; the evening after we meet she is off to switch on the Christmas lights in Tiverton. She had already done the honours earlier in the week in Exeter. “That was special,” she says of the Exeter switch on. “That’s where I went to college, where I met Gav, the Harriers is my club. It was a big honour.”
Yet, for all the acclaim, her priorities remain pretty obvious to anyone who encounters her on the school run, or down the village shop. Earlier in the morning on the day we meet, she and Gavin had been at the local primary school watching Jacob perform in the nativity play. He did, she says, very well, embracing his role as a shepherd with gusto, booming out his lines. Then she dashed back to the house on a beautiful Devon hillside that the couple bought a year or so ago on the assumption she was going to be retired.
It was only here, while feeding Emily before thinking about heading to Tiverton for the lighting-up ceremony, that she realised she had not yet been for a run. “Being a mum is more important to me than anything, so as far as the running goes, if it works out great, if I doesn’t well I can retire happy. But the amazing thing is how it has worked. It just really fits.”
Incredibly, given how hard they worked for her summer of glory, the Paveys have never once paid for childcare. Emily and Jacob come to the track with their parents when they are working. And if one of them is not up to the journey into Exeter, then Jo runs on the treadmill at home. “People say to me, how can you have a husband who’s your coach? Doesn’t that get really difficult? But actually it works really well,” she says of Gavin, who she has been with since they were both teenagers. “If I had another coach, I’d never be able to drop a session at the last moment because one of the kids was ill. You can’t mess someone around like that.
“Sometimes I go to the track two hours later than planned. You can’t expect someone else to work round that. But Gav, well he’s part of the team. He juggles round things with me. We work together to make it right.”
The family will be doing plenty of juggling over the next year or so: to the delight of her growing body of fans, Pavey will run on. That is the plan. “Well, you say plan but there isn’t one really. Suddenly I’m not retiring, that’s as far as the planning has gone. To qualify for the World Champs next summer would be great. Maybe do some road races. Then see where we are for Rio, I’d love to be in the shape to qualify for that. I’m not complacent, I’m really not getting any younger, it’ll be tough. And things are so busy, so much busier than I ever imagined, and with the children too, I haven’t done as much training this winter as I should have done. But hey, I’m enjoying myself. And one thing I do know: I’m a lot fitter than I was this time last year.”
Her enjoyment will only continue at the Sports Personality of the Year next weekend, where, she says, she cannot wait to meet Rory McIlroy, Lewis Hamilton and the other “proper stars”.
There is just one problem with that ceremony: high heels. “Now that has been one change this summer has made: I’ve had to buy myself some shoes for formal events. I’d never worn high heels before in my life. And I’m going to be wearing them at the Sports Personality evening. Wish me luck.”
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