Marta García, the fabulous long-distance runner who is a doctor and studies herself

The good doctor treats the disease; the great doctor treats the patient who has the disease

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Sir William Osler

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Marta García (28) tells me:

–Elite athletes live on the edge of the abyss, you know? We try to endure the maximum loads of volume and intensity, and you have to know how to manage that.

–And do you know how to do it?

And before answering, she shrugs: Marta García graduated in Medicine in 2022.

–Well, I think it is important to understand the body. Sports medicine has something I like: through it, you understand how a machine works at maximum performance, how physiology changes. I am fascinated by all that, and I regret that this figure was lost when it disappeared as a medical specialty a few years ago.

(The official MIR training pathway for sports doctors was suspended from the 2015 calls; professional schools stopped offering these specific studies in 2018).

–And what did you do after graduating? Have you practiced medicine?

–I haven’t gotten into the trenches yet. I haven’t been at a hospital door, nor in emergency. But I have been deepening my knowledge. I have a master’s in Sports Medicine and another in High Performance of Cyclic Sports from UCAM. I have immersed myself in sports sciences, a discipline we didn’t cover in the medical degree. I have learned to see how far a healthy body can go and when you take it to that border where sport stops being healthy.

–But you are an extraordinary long-distance runner. And to be a long-distance runner, you have to push yourself beyond what is bearable…

(Marta García has two European podiums in 5,000 m, the latest being the silver this summer in Birmingham, and this Sunday at 7:10 p.m., she competes in the 5,000 m at the World Ultimate Championships in Budapest, a sort of miniature three-day World Championship, broadcast on Movistar)

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–Beyond the hours I run, I feel good. Day to day, I don’t feel tired, which is a sign that the energy expenditure is not well directed. After all, the key is common sense.

I ask her:

–From your point of view, is elite sport healthy?

–It depends on how you manage your body. Some people are half-injured and keep pushing everything until it leads to an injury that will affect the rest of their life. Common sense applies to everything in life. At work, you might not stop when you should and end up with a heart attack. You can be elite and healthy. And when I have problems, I step back. Health comes first. Without it, you can’t perform.

And she delves into details, into the servitudes of the digestive system, demanded in physical activity. Or into the lumbar injury that sidelined her in spring and affected her performance in May and June.

And she recalls her beginnings as an athlete, in the Palencia of her childhood, when she was three or four years old and started running to follow the steps of Bárbara, her sister, seven years older than her, and she won races and if she fell, she got up.

–That Marta was unstoppable –says Marta García.

As if the current Marta García were not unstoppable…

–Until my high school, athletics was a secondary hobby. My priority was studies. But then I went to study Medicine in Valladolid, and there was Uriel Reguero’s athletics group, and I was inspired: I committed to training six times a week. They guided me in my passion for doing what I liked, while still prioritizing studies. And in 2021, the OAC Europa (On Athletic Club) training group called me. And that’s how I turned professional.

–Why did OAC call you?

–I had been Spanish absolute champion while under 23. They noticed me.

–Was it hard to decide?

–In 2020, with the pandemic, I had finished my contract with a sports brand and my future was heading straight to the hospital. OAC offered me the possibility to make sport my job, and pay for my room and food without asking for money at home. My family is strict. My parents told me: ‘Work at whatever you want, but it has to be something that can be called work.’ Putting Medicine aside scared me, but I have managed to stay connected to it, and now I am fully immersed in the athlete’s life, knowing clearly where my future really lies.

(It’s not bad, that of deepening in what you love knowing that in the end something you also love awaits you, right?).

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