How Gabriela DeBues-Stafford finally returned to form after years of injury setbacks

© Copyright – 2025 – Athletics Illustrated

Scottish novelist and playwright J.M. Barrie wrote in Peter Pan, “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

Canadian middle-distance runner Gabriela DeBues-Stafford has returned to Scotland after nearly believing she could not fly around the track, like she once did.

She has returned to form this spring. By appearances, it may seem as though the return was sudden, but it was not. She did, however, put the icing on the cake of her return with a particularly different training program.

For three years, from 2019 to 2022, DeBues-Stafford captured seven Canadian records in track and a few multiple times, one of which — the 5000 metres — is the North American record, faster than anyone from Canada, Mexico, the US and much of the Caribbean.

Current records

• 1500m – outdoors – 3:56.12 NR – 2019
• 1500m – indoors – 4:00.80 NR – 2020
• Mile (1609m) – outdoors – 4:17.87 NR – 2019
• Mile (1609m) – indoors – 4:00.80 NR – 2020
• 3000m – indoors – 8:33.92 NR – 2022
• 5000m – indoors – 14:31.38 AR/NR – 2022

The 29-year-old’s 800m personal best is a strong 1:58.70. That 1:58.70 qualified athletes for the Olympic Games and World Championships. For example, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games entry standard was 1:59.30. As it turned out, bronze in Paris was taken by Kenyan Mary Moraa in 1:57.42, while gold was won by British runner Keely Hodgkinson in 1:56.72. So, DeBues-Stafford shows an even range from her non-specific event, the 800m, up to the 5000m. In fact, according to the World Athletics points performance rating, her 5000m best is rated as her fastest at 1245 points. Her 1500m best is close at 1237 points.

Injury and moves

At her best, the London, Ontario native lived in Portland, Oregon and ran for the Nike Bowerman Track Club.

In April 2022, DeBues-Stafford announced that she was moving to Victoria, British Columbia. She cited a doping controversy involving former training partner Shelby Houlihan as having a negative effect on training for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Due to developing a stress reaction in her sacrum, she was forced to end her season early. She sat out the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games and the 2022 Eugene World Athletics Championships.

Before Portland, Debues-Stafford trained in Scotland with Laura Muir.

The Toronto University grad, while training in Victoria, continued to deal with sacrum and other issues. Coached by three-time Olympian Hilary Stellingwerff and Trent Stellingwerff, an exercise physiologist, she built her mileage for stretches, keeping some semblance of fitness. But the frustrations with injuries had her contemplating retirement in 2024.

Her husband, Rowan, also helped coach.

Her running resume and the return protocol

DeBues-Stafford had built a solid running resume, having won the 2018 NACAC Championships, finishing fourth in the 3000m at the 2022 World Indoor Championships and sixth during the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships in the 1500m. It was in Tokyo where she grasped for the brass ring and finished fifth in the Olympic final, clocking 3:58.93. She had won the opening heat and finished third in the second heat. It was a great performance that suggested international medals were within reach.

Although much of her training is kept private (ala Strava), she ran base periods with solid aerobic conditioning of between 100 and 140 kilometres per week for four or five-month stretches. But it was a return to 1500m-specific paces and time (to recover) where she saw gains, finally.

Asked about what it was that helped her return to form, she said, “A lot of effort and work has gone into this, so we can’t just point to one thing. However, to focus on one big thing for the sake of brevity, a big change in approach in training we made after January [2025] is that we’ve really prioritized running my goal 1500m paces (63-64s per 400m) and also faster. Making sure I am just getting the rhythm of 4:00 1500m pace again and again, so that rhythm becomes second nature again. I’m touching those paces every single week and slowly building them out.”

Being in poor condition is a matter of perspective. For a world-class middle-distance runner, the nuance of condition is an intimate thing. Being able to run well over typical one-hour efforts does not indicate nearly as much as hitting the split at the 200m, 400m and km marks. At the business end of training, two seconds off, while feeling “on” can be noteworthy. Rounding into form can be a feel thing, and looking at the watch can be merely academic; just confirming the pace, already knowing where oneself is at.

“Like in January, coming off an illness and an Achilles injury where I was in awful shape, we started at just 10x100m in 15-16 seconds, and slowly built out those reps over months. Next week, I did a combination of 100m and 200m reps at goal pace, then just 200s, and then eventually 300s. If I were doing a 1500 session, I was never doing a rep long enough that I couldn’t hold that goal pace of 4:00 during the rep. We still kept the rest relatively short, but the most important thing was nailing the pace,” she added.

Scotland’s magic

Now living back in Scotland, DeBues-Stafford entered the Belfast Irish milers meet at Mary Peters Track on May 10. She won the 3000m distance event in a time of 8:39.35, fewer than six seconds off of her national record. It had been a while since she ran at this level.

Two weeks later, on the 25th of May, DeBues-Stafford won the IFAM Outdoor in Boudewijnstadion Stadium, Brussels, Belgium in 4:03.81. It wasn’t even close. So, to run alone and run just shy of the 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships standard is a great sign. The standard is 4:03.00. She will also need to be top-three at Canadian Track and Field Championships and within the top-30 of the world (limit 3 per nation). She won by nearly five seconds.

The next step in her training was to get to top speed and manage the pace accurately.

“We’ve taken the same approach to top speed, building out strides from 50m to 60m, to 100m, 150m, then 200m, etcetera. Only after being able to hit an all-out 200 at 26.9s did I do my first proper lactic-buffering speed session. So, I only just did my first hard/sub-60 400 last week.”

The joy was palpable in her Instagram post after Belfast, because it has been a long road back.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gabriela DeBues-Stafford (@gabrielastafford)

“After so many years of injury, it just felt very hard to find that 4:00 rhythm and pace (and faster) if we tried to do a session where the reps were too long or the total volume of the session was too high. 

“Basically, focusing on tackling the big picture in very small, manageable steps with incremental increases in difficulty seems to be working really well! All that, or maybe there’s something just magic about me being in Scotland!”

There may be some magic in Scotland, but an athletics coach might point to keeping general fitness with volumes of aerobic running, and then, when finally over the spate of injuries, dealing in the minutiae and focus; carefully meting out the pace, distance and efforts. To eat the elephant, one bite at a time.

The Olympics and the sport of athletics may have started with Ancient Greece, but it was Winston Churchill who wrote, “Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.”

Perhaps it is indeed a magical place. We are about to find out.

DeBues-Stafford has until August 24 to qualify for the 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships. The championships run from September 13 to September 21.