World athletics championships Budapest 2023: Australian marathon runner Lisa Weightman’s remarkable longevity

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But as Weightman was cut down repeatedly by lower-leg stress fractures across her teens and twenties, building up to becoming such a durable campaigner appeared thousands of miles beyond the realms of possibility.

That was until she took a seat in the office of Melbourne podiatrist David Walker.

“I remember walking into his office … and explaining the story and he said, ‘Lisa, I’m confident that I’m going to get you running as many kilometres as you want per week. I’m confident of that’, and I just sat there and burst into tears,” Weightman, who suffered eight tibial stress fractures in nine years, told Wide World of Sports.

“It had been such a hard slog and I had been wanting to have this opportunity to demonstrate what I could do and was not really getting that chance.

“He was a big part of it. He helped me with the right footwear and orthotics and that really changed things … so that was a real circuit-breaker.”

Osteitis pubis, a groin-related injury that’s plagued Chris Judd, Joe Daniher, Elliott Yeo and many other past and present AFL footballers, troubled Weightman following the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games.

She then broke her sacrum on Boxing Day of 2013.

But she hasn’t had a major injury for 10 years and is now reaping the rewards.

“If someone had have said to me back then (in her teens and twenties) that I would run in four Olympics and potentially five … I would have been completely shocked, especially given when I was around in my twenties I had so many stress fractures, so I found it really difficult to progress to that next stage,” said Weightman, who’s coached by renowned running guru Dick Telford.

“While all my peers were running track and progressing on the track I was doing really well at cross-country, but I would always miss the track season through picking up another tibial stress fracture. That was a really hard time back then.”

In February’s Osaka Marathon, Weightman became the third-fastest Australian women’s marathon runner in history when she clocked two hours, 23 minutes and 15 seconds (2:23:15) — a time which smashed the Paris Olympics entry standard.

She’s recorded the top two times of her career since turning 43 in January 2022, posting a 2:24:00 in last year’s Berlin Marathon before going even quicker in Osaka.

“Now we’re at the stage where we’ve been experimenting with a bit more load and higher-quality training sessions, as well, and I’ve been able to handle that as an older athlete, which is why I’ve been running PBs (personal bests) recently,” said Weightman, who was piling up 200 kilometres a week during the lead-up to the Budapest major.

“So that’s been pretty exciting, testing the boundaries and still being in one piece and going, ‘OK, I can actually handle this work now, let’s see where this takes me while I can’.”

Sinead Diver and Weightman have both met the Paris 2024 qualifier of 2:26:50 since the qualification window opened on November 1 last year, and Eloise Wellings, Jessica Stenson, Izzi Batt-Doyle, Ellie Pashley and Genevieve Gregson are among those trying to follow suit. Australia will select no more than three male and female marathon runners for Paris 2024.

While Weightman is fast, she explained that having a steady approach was crucial.

“I think the key is you need to celebrate the performances and take the necessary rest and recovery,” she said.

“It’s very easy when you’re in this sport, and any sport really, to achieve a particular goal and then want more straight away because it’s a very addictive process … I think we see that a lot, especially with females particularly in their younger years, and then that leads to injury and then that’s interruption and then you don’t have that consistency.

“So I think the biggest lesson I’ve learnt over my career is that you can take your time and take breaks and you can still come back. You don’t have to race every single race that’s on the calendar.

“I think there’s this desire to be relevant all the time. You don’t need to be constantly racing week after week because there are plenty of races and they come around every year and you need to peak accordingly and recover really well. That’s certainly been the key to me being able to progress in this nice fashion along the way.”

Weightman’s best Olympic result remains what she produced at the 2012 London Games, where she finished 16th in 2:27:32.

“I’ve achieved things that I’m extremely proud of, but there’s a couple of Olympics there that I got sick and I wasn’t quite on my game, so I have disappointments over those things,” Weightman added.

“But following those disappointments we took time off, we focused on some other aspects of our lives and really took that time to go, ‘Is this right for us as a family and do we want to keep in the sport and keep doing what we’re doing and what are we going to change to get a better result?’.

“So having that time out for that recovery and to re-focus gives you that chance to plan and change things and make a concerted effort to do something different to then try to produce a better result.

“And that’s been great in the last couple of years. All my performances have been heading in the right direction.”

After completing the world championship marathon on Saturday afternoon (AEST), Weightman will be looking to “chase a really fast time” late this year.

And becoming the first Australian track and field athlete to feature at a fifth Olympics is a goal she cherishes.

“That would be just a fairytale.”