Mimi Corden-Lloyd: Like Dad, Like Daughter

It’s easy to spot Mimi Corden-Lloyd weaving her way through run commuters, reluctant joggers and a sea of Lime Bikes in London’s Battersea Park. Seemingly immune to the forces of gravity dragging those around her down into the tarmac, she glides across the ground, cutting through the morning crowd like a knife through butter.

When she wraps up her run and we sit down for a conversation, she’s still carrying that post-run buzz with her. Animated and confident, she’s excited to get to talk about her favourite topic, running. 

“If you asked my friends to define me as an athlete, I think they would say that I'm a bit of a volume monster,” laughs Mimi. She doesn’t try to deny her friends’ evaluation.

One of London’s fastest amateur runners, Mimi isn’t someone that likes to pretend they got there without effort, simply ascending the ranks on god-given talent. She’s proud of the grind it took to get where she is, a 77-minute half-marathoner with a 10k time of 34:52, who is a regular at the front of races across the UK capital.

Mimi during her morning run in London’s Battersea Park.

Hard work is the currency Mimi was brought up on. 

“It was really kind of drummed into us that you have to do hard things to get good things from it.”

Mimi comes from an army family, both her dad and her uncle served in the forces, so she spent her childhood moving from country to country, seven in total.

When the family moved back to the UK, her dad, a marathon runner himself, encouraged Mimi to take part in school cross-country races. Immediately, she showed some natural talent, so she joined City of York, with Dave Paver as her coach. She loved the messy, painful, always tough, sometimes elating, sport of cross country. 

“What I liked about it, I think, was the grit,” she explains. “There's nothing like the quiet of racing through fields when all you can hear is breath, feet on the ground and people around you working hard.”

Training and racing were inconsistent due to her dad’s job, but she’d found something she loved, so when she moved to London years later to start her career, running was her foundation.

“London is huge, and when I first came here, I was so overwhelmed  for a long time until I finally felt settled, and it was rejoining the running community that did that.

Mimi learned early: hard work pays off.

Rejoining the running community helped her to settle in London.

Some runners are led by their body, their physical potential pulling their mind along for the ride, others are pushed forward by the power of their mind, their body learning to keep up. Mimi seems to be the latter. She’s a runner who thinks a lot about running. 

“I think most of being good at running is about knowing you can push well past your limit and still succeed, but also being able to talk to yourself nicely,” she explains. “It's less about mantras and more about just telling myself, I know I can do it. And every time I do that, I end up being able to do it.”

That belief was tested when she ran the London Marathon in 2024. Her second marathon, she felt ready for something special and, more than anything, she wanted to carry on a family legacy. 

“It’s always been assumed that I would be good at marathons because it's what my dad did, and his dad before him. My grandfather was killed in action, and while I never knew him, the stories of how he ran are a link that we share that has been incredibly meaningful to me throughout my life.”

After a successful block of training, she knew her body was capable of a breakthrough performance, but that confidence carried her over the edge. 

“I got to about 36 kilometres and collapsed, right in front of my mum, which was hard. I'd stopped about a kilometre earlier and kind of fallen into the side of the embankment, and all I remember is a woman leaning out to me going, ‘Do you want a Percy Pig?’ And I was like, ‘No, we're long past that!’”.

She’d got back up after her legs first gave way and tried to carry on, her vision blurring, her stride faltering, but when she fell the second time, she knew it was over.

The CEP OMNISPEED BOWTECH SHOE supports Mimi during her runs with speed and stability.

When running, Mimi is guided more by her mind than by her body.

Initially Mimi was devastated but looking back she realises it was a pivotal moment in her journey as a runner. She learned that the marathon is a different beast, you can’t redline a race of that distance, it requires patience, control and a healthy respect. But more important than lessons in training and tactics, she learned one about failure.

“Part of pushing yourself is that sometimes you're going to fail, and failure is everywhere. I think if you have a healthy attitude towards that process, then you will do much better at what you want to succeed in.”

It seems like the marathon would be a natural fit for Mimi because it’s all about the grind, but she loves the shorter distances, the sharp, bright pain of a 5K and a 10K. At the start of our conversation, she declared jokingly that she hates the marathon, but like so many runners, it keeps drawing her back. 

“There is a lot of tension between love and hate,” she admits. “It’s a balance between understanding that you can do something that you love, but you don't have to be in love with it all the time.” 

Learning to accept failure is a crucial part of running.

It’s that commitment to doing the work, even when it’s cold and dark and pouring with rain, as it so often is in the UK’s capital, that has got Mimi where she is. She logs two runs a day, almost every day and up to four hard sessions a week, mixing her mileage with cross training and strength work. All that has to squeeze between a high-pressure job working in finance, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I think they balance each other,” Mimi explains. ‘I couldn’t operate with just one focus. Running and work challenge different parts of me, and that balance makes me better at both. The discipline, resilience and work ethic I build in one carries straight into the other.”

There’s a true steeliness to Mimi that comes out when it’s time to focus. She’s smart and funny, always chatting happily to friends and teammates before the workout starts, but once the work begins, her demeanour shifts, and she executes the session with a cool, deliberate precision.

The CORE RUN MERINO BASE LAYER SHIRT LS and the CORE RUN THERMAL HYBRID JACKET on top keep Mimi warm during her sessions.

For Mimi, running also includes cross training and strength work.

In December of this year, she’ll turn that focus to the marathon again. The fear is there, but also the excitement. She admits that it’s the only distance where she feels pressure, in part because of her desire to live up to her family’s expectations, but there’s also the fact that a marathon time has real weight, both in and outside of the running world – everyone knows what it means.  

“I think to run a marathon well is one of the hardest things you'll ever do,” Mimi says. “It is that leap into the unknown. And to do well, you have to jump off that ledge and embrace it. You can't teeter, you have to go all the way.”

Mimi is definitely going all the way. She explains how at the start of the year she promised herself that she’d do all the small things right; strength training, sleep, nutrition, cross training, and it’s clear that once she makes a promise to herself, it’s set in stone.

Dialed in. Locked in. All in. 

The marathon demands everything. Mimi is prepared to give it.

But the most important work will go on inside her head, convincing her body to follow where it leads.

“I think the struggle with the marathon is that the sessions can be quite fun, but you're battling with your body in a way that I think you don't in any other part of this sport. I've certainly had my battles with my body and I know that the marathon will expose every single thing, every single weakness, and every single part of yourself.”

Accepting that running is hard is a big part of the battle for a lot of runners. Mimi has the rare ability to not just accept it but embrace it. 

“I think you’ve got to thrive in pain a little bit.”

As Mimi heads off, ducking into the London underground, she disappears into a swirl of bodies. Unlike this morning, running in the park, she’s carried away by the crowd. But in just a few hours she’ll be back at it, hitting the gym for a double. As soon as she’s in motion, there’ll be no missing her.