Rob McHarg receives his Scottish Masters Athlete of the Year award for 2025 from Ian Beattie (photo by Bobby Gavin)
By Katy Barden
‘McHarg, you can run a bit . . . ‘
It was the early 1980s and Rob McHarg, an army man and principal trumpet player with the Gordon Highlanders band, was asked to represent his regiment in a hill race which he duly won.
‘That was it,’ he says. ‘After that they told me, ‘You’re going to run for the army now’, but I never considered myself a runner. I was a typical army lad: I smoked, I drank with the boys. I just ran because I had to.’
As it happened, his band duties took precedence and he only ran for the army a couple of times. The point to note is that he had always been able to run; he just didn’t always choose to.
McHarg, who was named scottishathletics Masters Athlete of the Year in 2025, is a fascinating character who has reinvented himself many times over the decades.
Originally from Kilmarnock, he travelled the world with the army and played the trumpet for royalty; he went to Kneller Hall (Royal Military School of Music) in London before being posted to Inverness (where he joined Inverness Harriers); he left the army in 1991 and moved to London where he joined Thames Valley Police (and initially Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow AC before joining Belgrave Harriers in the late 1990s); he then studied for a law degree, subsequently setting up his own training and risk management company.
Chris keeps winning in the race of life
Objectively, his running was going well during that latter period, but he remembers a disappointing 5k race mid-law degree that convinced him otherwise:
‘I should easily have done it in under 15 minutes and I ran 15-something, and I thought, ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering; I should be beating these people. I can’t train and keep it up at the level I want to, so I might as well not bother.’ With me, it’s all or nothing. So I gave it up.’
‘Nothing’ lasted for around 15 years. Instead of running, his time was filled with golf and clubroom drinking until a harsh realisation hit him at the age of 50 – his dad had dropped dead at 51 and he was turning into him.
A chance meeting with an old friend from Belgrave changed everything; he suggested he start running again.
‘I just thought, ‘Do you know what? It’s probably just what I need’. It was more to get me out of the pub, but I needed something to focus on, I needed something to motivate me, and I needed something to give me purpose.’
Scottish Masters land big medal haul in Madeira
And so it was that just over a decade later, 62-year-old McHarg – fuelled by that same purpose that reignited his running career – celebrated his most successful competitive year to date.
First, he eased himself back into the sport by joining local club Datchet Dashers and within a short space of time started running well again.
His preferred event was cross country and despite knowing nothing about Masters running, he went to his first World Masters Championships in Torun in 2021. Many lessons were learned. He competed in the cross country (where he got disqualified for a bib malfunction), the 10k (because he was already there for the cross country and ‘Why not?’) and the 1500m (because his friend persuaded him to race indoors for the first time).
‘I was just doing the 1500m for the experience,’ he says.
‘I got to the last lap, and I thought, ‘Ach I’m not going to win this’, so I just eased up and all these people went past me. I finished way down the pack and this guy said to me afterwards, ‘I can’t believe you just slowed down’.
‘It made me think, and years later I thought, ‘He was probably right’. It’s strange the different mindsets that people have, because I’ve got that mindset now. I’d kill myself to get to the line first.
‘That’s where I got the hunger for it. I hadn’t even trained for that 1500m, so I started thinking that with a bit of training I could beat those guys.’
In the intervening years he’s trained as hard as his body has allowed. There have been valuable interventions along the way, for example his great friend and rival Andrew Ridley (double world champion and M60 800m world record holder) suggested he change to zero drop shoes and alter his running style. He worked on that throughout 2024 and came into 2025 all guns blazing.
There have also been group training camps at his holiday home in Devon where he’s invited many of his greatest competitors – including Ridley – to come together, share knowledge and push each other to the limit.
Throughout 2025 it paid off, and although McHarg had to overcome injuries at various points throughout the year (he cross-trained throughout which enabled him to return to running fitness much quicker than if he’d stopped completely as he had done in the past) he enjoyed a number of memorable performances that elevated him to the very top of Masters athletics.
His proudest moments, he says, came with victory in the Masters 800m at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava (wearing his Scotland vest) and breaking the long-standing M60 world indoor 1500m record.
Other notable performances throughout an exceptional 12 months include double gold over 800m and 1500m at the Scottish Masters Championships (indoors and out), double gold over 800m and 1500m at the British Masters Championships (indoors and out), European Masters 800m gold (where he defeated Ridley by one second), European Masters 1500m silver (Ridley took gold) and multiple world records.
‘In the (European) 800m my mindset was, ‘I’ve got to take it to him (Ridley), I’m going to run hard, and no matter what happens he isn’t coming past me’,’ he says. ‘I was thinking about Steve Prefontaine then, that we’ve got to be willing to die here. I thought, ‘If I die, I die, but at least I can say I died trying’.’
There is no doubt that McHarg is mentally strong. It goes back to his army days, but it’s a thread that runs throughout his lifetime. He chose to do a law degree just to prove to himself that he could; from someone who claims he was never academic, that says it all.
‘I’ve always said that there are three aspects to running,’ he says. ‘Strong head, strong heart, strong legs, and if you haven’t got all three, I don’t think you’ll make it at the top level.
‘I had two. Well, my best one was the head, but you need all three. My old coach Barry Tilbury said to me, ‘Your biggest strength is you can run through brick walls, but your biggest weakness is that you can run through brick walls and that’s why you get injured, because you’ll keep pushing.’
“I think that’s what makes a difference at that level, it’s that people can physically have all the right attributes, but if they haven’t got the head part, it’s not going to work.’
Injuries have derailed an assault on the 2026 indoor season but McHarg – who was also crowned European Masters Middle Distance Athlete of the Year in 2025 – is back in training and targeting new world records in the 800m and 1500m this summer.
The current 1500m world record (4:20.32) is his own, while Ridley recently destroyed the 800m mark with an outright world record of 2:05.13 at Lee Valley in early March.
Running has given McHarg purpose, while the friendships he’s built and rivalries he’s made – especially over the last decade – have moved the dial on performance.
As was the case when he was 18, he can certainly ‘run a bit’.
‘I hope to be stronger and faster for my challenges this summer,’ he says. ‘Now I have a big target to reach – Andrew’s 800m time was incredible and it’s a great incentive for this year.
‘The camaraderie in the Masters is really good.
‘I’ve always thought that if you win something that’s great, but I want to finish my running career looking back and thinking, ‘Yeah, I was pleased with that time, that was a good one.’ I actually enjoy the process as much as I do the racing; the racing’s the icing on the cake when you can go and test yourself and what your body can do. That’s what I enjoy about it.’
+++
Tags:
Features, Masters Athlete of the Year, Masters athletics, Rob McHarg