Beth Dobbin talks to Mark Woods about the debilitating condition that has taken her from the international sprinting stage to barely being able to get out bed.

Beth Dobbin is tired. Most despairingly of all, she is tired of being tired. “It's been four years now,” she sighs. “Through that, I’ve had bad spells and worse spells. There have been no good spells.”

You’ll recall the now 32-year-old as the feisty sprinter who bolted onto the scene in the summer of 2018, repeatedly lowering the Scottish 200m record prior to coming seventh at the European Championships in Berlin. In the subsequent summers, she reached the semi-finals of the world championships, the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and shared in a 4x400m relay bronze for Scotland at the 2022 Commonwealths.

The record books show that, just weeks later, she came eighth in the Diamond League final – and then made an abrupt disappearance from the track. What lay behind that is an unfathomably cruel sequence of illnesses and conditions that have rendered her almost completely housebound and confined to bed in her parents’ home near Doncaster for an average of 22 hours each day.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), a debilitating post-viral illness that brings intense and prolonged fatigue, is the diagnosed cause. It has transformed Dobbin from ultra-fit international athlete to a shadow of her former self.

“I haven't had a day in the past four years where I haven't felt violently unwell, more unwell than I'd ever felt before” she reflects. “That's the key thing. It's not like you just feel a bit run down or like you've got a bit of a cold.

“The headaches aren't even like normal headaches. The nausea isn't even like that. It's just a completely new level of illness that I almost don't have the words for, because it's unlike anything I'd experienced prior to getting unwell.”

It is incurable and scientists cannot identify the exact cause. What is suggested, however, is that there may be a link between Covid and glandular fever and the disease. Dobbin, to her huge misfortune, contracted both in quick succession in the winter of 2021 into 2022. Her spring sessions were off her usual pace, raising red flags that saw her undergo medical tests and then take a self-imposed break for one month to recuperate and reset.

“I followed this protocol that British Athletics gave me, and then I started back and again was completely fine,” she recounts. “But all I would notice was that one race, one running session was bad, and the next session was good.

“So me and my coach spaced them out. If I'd normally do two or three a week, we'd just do one every five days. And then, when I opened up the season, I equalled my fastest time ever at the Doha Diamond League, and was really happy with it because it was horrible, blustery conditions.

“But then, five days later, I went to Savona and it's a really quick track. Glorious conditions. Everyone absolutely dropped it, and I ran slower than I had in Doha. And when I was warming up, my legs felt really heavy. I felt really tired and I'd never felt that before.

“A part of me thought: ‘Am I just really nervous?’ Sometimes, when you’re nervous, it’s almost like you can't feel your legs. You feel a bit jelly. And it was like that, but times 1000. After that, I started sitting down with the doctors, being like: ‘Something isn't right. I'm not myself’.”

While investigations continued, Dobbin still qualified for the intense treble of a world championships, Commonwealth Games and European championships in quick succession. An exit in the heats in Eugene was followed by eighth place individually in Birmingham but in a time that was almost a second outside her personal best. The Europeans broke the camel’s back. Dobbin was disqualified for a false start in Munich – an aberration which had simply never happened to her before. Her legs, her body, generated this odd, unfamiliar sensation as if they were out of her control.

Post-season, she took six weeks off but her condition was accelerating. “I was struggling to get out of bed and struggling to stand up,” she reflects. Trying to resume training at her Loughborough base, her limbs felt “tingly”. “And then, within that three weeks, I had a really funny turn at home where I was making dinner one night, and then I thought: ‘Oh my god, I just have to be on the floor, I'm going to collapse’. I had to lie down on my living room floor. I was laid there for ages. I had to ring someone to come and get me.”

ME rapidly robbed Dobbin of most of her energy and, in turn, of the life she had been accustomed to. The Paris 2024 Olympics had been the target, when she would be in her athletic prime and with plenty of championship experience to call upon.

There had been plans to nudge her up to 400m and into a relay squad that would ultimately bring home medals. Very quickly, that was a dream she knew had died. “After about six months, I kind of thought I may potentially not go. I remember feeling really low at six months later because I thought: ‘That's me not going’.”

Additionally, she reveals, there was a second kick in the teeth, from a nervous condition affecting the heart named Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS for short. It may also have been stoked by viruses. “The heart doesn't know when you're upright and when you're not,” she explains. “And it's beating irregularly and not pumping blood around your body.”

It escaped the attention of the specialists she had seen so far. By chance, Dobbin came across a reputable doctor talking about POTS on Instagram and the symptoms outlined, mainly nausea, all seemed to make sense. The issue, at least, could be addressed with available medication.

Yet ME cannot. Her dad Jim, a former Celtic centre-back, and mother Jean have become almost full-time carers for their daughter. “It's been really difficult because I was such an independent person,” says Dobbin. “I moved out at 18 and never moved back. A lot of people go to uni and then they move back for a bit while they get on their feet. I never did that. I threw myself into work so I could still train and make all those things happen.”

Dobbin’s younger sister Faye recently ran the Yorkshire Marathon to raise funds for research into ME. Some of the people she used to compete with, and against, have maintained their support. “'I made a lot of friends on the [British] team, and they do regularly text me and check in on me,” she admits. “Just a little text like: ‘I miss sitting with you at championships and stuff’,  that goes a long way.”

But most days are spent idling now, playing the odd game on her phone or watching the occasional TV show, but often just desperately seeking sleep. “I'm too unwell to feel bored,” she says. “You just want to be left with no stimulus in a dark room, and that's how I feel, unfortunately.”

And the toughest thing of all? Not knowing what lies beyond. This is an unkind disease in which some patients will regain some normality in due course and, for others, none at all. Hope is a luxury which Dobbin concedes she cannot afford.

“What did happen is I'd be: ‘Oh next Christmas, I'll be better’. Or: ‘Next year or next birthday, it won't be like this’. Then it came around and you're devastated because you're still feeling like this.

“So now I take more of the approach of saying I don't know what's going to happen. I would obviously like to get better and like to get my life back. But, I have also mentally prepared myself.”

Beth’s sister Faye is fundraising for ME Research UK at: justgiving.com/page/faye-dobbin-1