The Power of 10

There has been a bit of a lag in updating this due to my birthday last weekend, and a lot of training has taken place between the last update and now. This week was the first week I trained 6 times, having increased from 3 to 4 times last week. In addition, I've filled in and sent off a food diary to a friend who is a personal trainer, to get feedback and suggestions for how I can improve my diet. Nutrition is becoming increasingly important, as the step up in training means that I need to be getting the right fuel so I can recover quicker and train harder. I'm starting to see the training I do as the equivalent of putting money away every month, with the competitions being the chance to cash in. I'm now officially a member of London Heathside athletics club, which means I'm eligible to compete from January in the indoor league, and then from April when the outdoor season starts. I've also signed up to a website called Power of 10, which allows you to track your performance over the course of a season, and ultimately between seasons. We did our last 7x200m endurance session last week, switching to 150m, 300m, 450m, 300m, 150m session, which when done in trainers rather than spikes is pretty brutal. We are still doing the same shorter acceleration sessions on Thursdays, and I'm beginning to feel much more comfortable in these now which is pleasing. Whilst I'm far from technically perfect, I've come on leaps and bounds over the last 3 months, and I hope to continue on this upward trajectory over the next few weeks. The weights sessions are already starting to pay off, as I feel like I'm exploding out of the blocks more, although my legs do feel noticeably more tired if I don't stretch properly. As a result, I'm going to start doing a session of pilates one morning a week, and hopefully try and get one sports massage a month to keep myself in the best shape possible. In spite of the fact that I've upped the training to 6 days a week, I'm still not training at an Olympic level. I've been researching what other athletes do, and they generally train twice a day, 6 days a week. I don't think my body could handle that yet, as it is still adapting to the intensity of training that I'm doing, but I'm hopeful that come April I'll be in a position to step it up. his is the best example I've found so far: http://www.harry-aa-official.com/library/client/documents/Training%20programs/GP%202009%20Block%203.pdf I've also now set myself some intermediate goals, as although Rio is my ultimate target, there are other things I feel I need to aim for in the meantime to build up to that level of performance. As such, this season I'm aiming to set a new personal best and a new club record for London Heathside, whilst hitting the 10.75s mark, which would put me in the 'Target 100' group of UK Athletics. In 2014 there are the Commonwealth Games, which come just a couple of weeks before the European Championships, which a lot of elite athletes prefer to focus on, meaning that the door could open for someone like myself. 2015 is the World Championships in Beijing, before the April - August period of 2016 when the Olympic squad will be finalised. A long way to go between now and then, but I'm genuinely excited at what might lie ahead.