Enabling excellence: my experience living alongside fellow athletes

Hi, my name is Andrew, and I am currently a student living in one of the University's Sports Bursar flats at Queen Margaret Residences. 

Coming to Uni and living away from home for the first time is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges that any first-year student faces. As an athlete, I believe that having to manage this transition alongside maintaining a healthy lifestyle is borderline impossible on your own.  Fortunately, I was not on my own as in September I moved in with four other lads who were all in the same boat as myself; facing the prospect of taking on full responsibility for their training, sleep and diet for the first time amongst endless opportunities for nights out and takeaways. I think it’s fair to say that even within this arrangement we all initially took a while to settle and get over the inevitable fresher’s week flu, but before long it began to pay dividends.

The boys have all been brilliant. Without their combined influence I’m sure that my running would’ve taken a major hit, and I likely would’ve succumbed to injury through not taking proper care of myself. The beauty of the sports bursars flat is that there is no one telling you to take better care of yourself, but the environment itself of having four other role models living with you makes you want to live better. Maybe only one of the flat is eating well at the beginning, or another one getting to bed early, but these good habits are infectious and eventually, you find yourself taking something from each flatmate: like any good training group, it drives standards.

The experience of living with athletes from many different sports has benefitted me a lot as well. When you spend so much time within one sport you can start to develop quite a fixed perspective on things. For example, within my running group, the consensus was that strength and conditioning training is secondary and even unnecessary to becoming a good runner. Living with two serious rugby players this year and hearing about how much time they spend in the gym and why has opened my eyes a bit though. I’ve incorporated more strength work into my training, even adding some weights, and now have a greater appreciation of the value that it can add to any sporting discipline. The small things that you pick up from one another add up, and I am definitely a better athlete for having had this experience.

Even aside from a training perspective, socially I’d say that my flat gelled straight away. Even though we come from different sporting backgrounds, we share many of the same attitudes and are cut from the same cloth when it comes to personalities. This like-mindedness has made the flat a really enjoyable place to live this year as we have become a close-knit and supportive group. We all take pride in one another’s achievements and enjoy hearing about how training is going, and when it comes to injuries there is always advice to be had as well as words of consolation. I’ve even found being injured a more positive experience here as often you’re not the only one, so you don’t have that horrible feeling of missing out so much.

Reflecting on my time spent here, I can see it within my times and results how much the experience has benefitted me. I have steadily improved over winter, even with the big change of moving away from home. Although this progress has not always been linear – there have been setbacks and plateaus – living in the flat has allowed me to increase my training load and I move into this summer track season much fitter and stronger than I was this time last year. I know that I will miss living here next semester, however, I am grateful for having had the opportunity and experience and I would definitely recommend it to any student-athlete planning to live away from home in the future. If you are serious about your pursuing your sporting ambitions, there really is no better place for you.

Andrew McGill is member of the University Sports Bursary Programme for talented athletes and a recipient of the Accommodation Sports Bursary 2022/23.