Sophie Raworth on running, Barra-bados, and The Hebridean Way

She smiles. She’s used to it.

“Even my kids ask, ‘what's the news? And ‘what's the weather?’ I know I work in the news, but I don't actually do the weather!” she laughs.

“Well, I shall be on my morning meeting shortly, let me see,” she says, obligingly. “I think the Iran war will be the main story, and the economy, but then I have no idea, which is what happens in my day. I’ll find out soon.”

It’s first thing and as Raworth describes how rolling news means constantly changing headlines and that she can be writing and updating scripts minutes before delivering the headlines, neither of us is aware that a different story is about to break shortly as the BBC sacks Radio Two DJ Scott Mills and the news agenda changes again.

“We research and write the scripts,” says Raworth. “It's not just presenting.
We're all very much involved in the editorial process, and I write a lot of what I read. I'm often changing stuff in the studio before we start if a story breaks really late, going ‘how long have I got?’ It's a really interesting job and I love that it's different every single day. It's fascinating and a massive challenge.”

On TV for more than 30 years, Raworth takes it all in her stride. From major news events such as 9/11, Brexit, Covid, wars, through prime ministers and general elections, the death of the Queen and coronation of King Charles, and fronting events such as the VE Day celebrations and D-Day commemorations, 57-year-old Raworth has seen it all.

When she’s not on screen, she doesn’t let up the pace either, having taken up running at the age of 40, despite thinking she was too old, and she hasn’t stopped since.

“As well as the headlines, people ask me about running when I’m out and about, saying they’d like to but they’re too old - they’re always about ten years younger than me!” she laughs. “I always say ‘you’re never too old. Try it!’”

Her new book, Running On Air, is the story of how she started running and found a new confidence, friendship and resilience to face up to challenges in work and life.

Beginning with the half-marathon Great North Run in 2006, she went on to compete in the London Marathon in 2011 but collapsed two miles from the end. After treatment, she finished, and has now clocked up 20 plus marathons (she’s lost track -“I think I’ve done 22,” she says) and 10 ultramarathons, and run all seven World Marathon Majors including the gruelling 150-mile Marathon des Sables across the Moroccan Sahara. This weekend she will compete again in the London Marathon, this time with 21-year-old eldest daughter Ella who was pushed along in a double buggy with her sister when Raworth first started training.

“I was asked to write the book and didn’t know what it would be about, but I started running marathons 15 years ago and it has become so much part of my identity that it's in every part of my life, so it became about that as well.”

There’s plenty for running fans, but so much more intertwined, as life events are revealed along the way. She looks back at the shy schoolgirl from Surrey who wouldn’t speak in class at 14, through her career at the BBC, marriage to real estate broker Richard Winters and the birth of three now adult children, friendships including with late colleague George Alagiah for whom she fundraised at the Boston Marathon after his cancer diagnosis, the loss of her father who had Parkinson’s and her friendships, many formed through running, always putting one foot in front of other, whatever the weather - or headlines.

What is it Raworth loves so much about running?

“I just really like the peace and quiet,” she laughs. “My life on a day-to-day basis is really busy. I go into work - I'm doing the Six and Ten evening news tonight and I'll be there till 11 o'clock. It's full on, it's writing, people, conversations and stories. Huge world events.
It's last minute and I love that. But there are always people in my ear talking. When I run, I never have anything in my head. I don't listen to music, podcasts, books or anything. I just run and I'm there in the moment and it's very grounding and liberating. It’s the one time it’s like that. You can only really think about each foot, listening to your breath and footsteps. I don’t have anything in my mind after a while. It's very basic and I love it for that.”

When she talks about running, Raworth sounds surprised that she’s even doing it. That she is is down to her husband and long-distance Olympic medallist and Great North Run founder Brendan Foster.

“People see me run and think I've been doing it nonstop since I was 15. I absolutely haven't. I didn't do any exercise at all in my 20s and 30s, nothing. My husband was the one who was the runner, then Brendan asked me to be one of their celebrity runners on the Great North Run when I was on maternity leave after my second child was born. My husband said ‘come on, try it’ and. I thought ‘I need a bit of a challenge’ so I did. I found it incredibly hard but I enjoyed the training.

“I did two Great North Runs then got pregnant again so I stopped completely.”

When someone in her mum’s group did the London Marathon she thought ‘41, you can't start now’ but she did and with the help of a trainer entered the London Marathon in 2011.

“And then I collapsed, and was really annoyed after all my hard work. So I had another go and got into a rhythm and kept thinking, I can actually do this.
I'm not too old, and actually I'm getting faster. How much faster can I get?”

Much faster as it turned out, and at this year’s London Marathon tomorrow she hopes to beat her personal best of 3 hours 30 minutes.

“I just race against myself. I don't need to beat somebody to make myself feel better,” she says.

Even a fractured ankle during the 2024 London Marathon hasn’t put her off. She got the diagnosis in France over the telephone on the day she presented the D-Day Commemorations for the BBC. She shouldn’t have been walking but the military lent her a crutch and she carried on, later using a knee scooter to zip around the newsroom and continuing to present news bulletins and election night coverage.

“I had six months off running, when I didn’t know if I'd be able to run again. It was a pretty nasty fracture, and the surgeon was a bit hmm, probably not a great thing to be doing. Then I sort of started again and it was quite difficult for another six months. I would have done the London Marathon last year but my father fell ill and then died so I pulled out. If I'd done it I would have been quite slow. But, as I have ever since I started, I just chip away at it, just keep going.”

“I discovered over time that actually my ankle was fine, and I ran 20 miles yesterday. I've sort of mended. I'm sure I'd find something else, but I'd be really sad if I couldn't run.”

It’s amazing Raworth has time for training given her schedule, although with children in their early twenties and left home, things are easier now. In the past it was hard to manage.

“It’s hard for everybody. You just do. I'm really glad I did. I remember having Ella in 2004 and I was so in love with my baby I couldn't bear the idea of going back to work and leaving her with anyone so I used to leave her with my mum and dad and my husband.

“There was definitely a point in my life when I thought, ‘oh my God, should I just be quitting and looking after my children?’ I'm so glad I didn't, not just as an example for them, but you juggle and get through and come out the other side, and now I've got lots going on in my life and I'm very glad I've still got my career and my job.”

She puts the mindset she has developed in running marathons to use in her job, finding that when it came to interviewing Boris Johnson she was able to ‘harness the mind’ and pace herself. Her advice with challenges is to ‘break them down into chunks’.

“Also, something I realised I was writing over and over in the book, that everyone from my husband to ballet dancer Steven McRae were saying - and I say it when I run - when you're going up a mountain, don’t look at the top. Look at your feet, keep taking small steps and it will get you there. That's become my approach to everything, whether it's work, a marathon or life. If it seems like a huge challenge, don't think of it in its entirety and don't be freaked out. Just do the work, the training, the research and you're prepared.”

For all the big names Raworth has interviewed, the ones she’s enjoyed most are the ordinary people who have done amazing things.

“I like talking to people who end up with extraordinary lives and situations. At the D-Day Anniversary in 2024 I interviewed a woman called Christian Lamb, who was 105.
She worked in the War Office and plotted the beaches along the Normandy coast for the landings. She was extraordinary, and sitting there in Normandy as she told me about it was moving. Those kinds of stories are fantastic.”

“That's the joy of the job, to witness things you would never be able to do. And I really enjoy talking to people, particularly veterans at D-Day and the Cenotaph. I like enabling people's stories to be heard.

“Or people who achieve or discover things they never imagined they could do, like Rose Harvey, who in lockdown needed something to do and started running, then before she knew it was at the Olympics. I love those stories.”

Raworth practises Harvey’s advice for marathon running, which includes smile at the crowds and count to 20 when struggling, although Rowarth jokes that she’s slower so counts to 40.

Thinking about the story that has stayed with her longest, she decides it’s Covid, during which she ran into work from home, through deserted London streets, posting images on social media.

“Covid stood out because it was an extraordinary period, and it’s the one story I've worked on day in, day out and couldn't escape.
Normally you work intensely then go home and can do something else, but Covid, there was no escape. And it was so shocking to watch so many countries close down and see people fall ill and the impact it was having. That really does stand out.”

Back when she started at the BBC, after studying French and German at the University of Manchester and a postgraduate in broadcast journalism in London, she was referred to as a ‘sexy young blonde’ and ‘a smiling bimbo with a perfect set of teeth’, while on What Not To Wear, Trinny and Susannah used words like ‘carthorse’. How does she deal with attention on her appearance?

“I mean, it's changed now. Then, I didn't like it. I ignored it. And Trinny and Susannah, that was their thing. What on earth possessed me, given what I was like? I just felt I should because they asked. I remember arriving in jeans, no make up, being prodded and poked. It was deeply uncomfortable but they were very funny and I really liked them.

“Now, I don't really care. I feel fine physically and I think that's the difference. Then I was doing no exercise at all. Now I go to the gym and feel I've never been as fast and strong. I feel good in my skin. I don't think about it. I don't wear makeup when I’m not on telly and I walk around in jeans or running kit most of the time. If you feel good physically and strong physically, particularly at this point in my life, it gives you confidence, and the rest just follows.”

She also knows what to wear, with 30 years’ worth of clothes in the wardrobe, all her own as there’s no special budget for her on screen outfits.

“Nobody ever tells me what to wear. My middle child has an eye for fashion and occasionally goes through my wardrobe and digs things out for me. Then people message saying, ‘Oh, my wife loves that one, where did you get it? And I have to reply, well I bought it 25 years ago so I can't help you I'm afraid. Yeah, I've collected a few things along the way. They live in my wardrobe at home and I have a locker crammed full at work.”

As for more reality TV shows, Raworth has done the Strictly for Children in Need and Who Do You Think You Are? but declares them ‘too far out of my comfort zone’.

“I do like the idea of Race Across the World. I'd like to do that with my friend Susie.
We could run it,” she says.

“But I don't really want to live too much on camera. I really like working on live TV and the challenge of it, but I'm not having to reveal much of myself. I'm doing the news. And I'm comfortable with that.”

Running brings her plenty of opportunity to travel anyway and last month saw her in Scotland when she visited Barra with her daughter Ella to take part in an unofficial parkrun on the island.

“We flew in on a tiny plane and it looked like the Caribbean - Barra-bados, as they call it because we were so lucky with the weather. We landed on the beach. It’s absolutely spectacular. We had two nights and ran round the island and did the unofficial parkrun, partly along the beach, and also climbed Heaval, the hill behind Castlebay. The community was lovely too - we ended up at a country music quiz night. So I’ve done it all now,” she laughs.

“And now I’ve seen The Hebridean Way, I’ve got it in my head I want to run that.”

In the meantime, this weekend she’ll be running the London Marathon with her daughter, raising money for Cure Parkinson's.

“I say with her, but she's got 36 years on me, so I think I'll be running behind her! Raworth laughs.

Right now, she’s got a news script to research and write, possibly rewrite, then deliver. Anything could happen. She’d better run.

Sophie Raworth’s first book Running on Air: From BBC Headlines to Finish Lines is available to order from Bloomsbury in Hardback and Audiobook (read by Sophie) now, £20