Tuesday 15 April 2014

An explosive start

After picking up an injury just days after running a personal best over 60m at Newham, I've been through a few ups and downs over the past 2 months. I had to have extensive physio and a steroid injection to relieve the pain from a trapped nerve in my hip. Being off my feet for a week set me back quite a bit, and I had to work carefully with my coach to ensure that I trained appropriately so as not to aggravate the injury any further. One positive to take from the experience was, however, that it gave me the time and space to start to assimilate some of the information that I've been trying to take on board in the past 6 months or so. It's been a steep learning curve and requires so much focus and dedication to learning every day that it can be quite an exhausting process, especially when balanced with a demanding full time job. I try to constantly educate myself around what's required of an elite athlete, be that in terms of recovery, training, diet, technique; immersing myself has been an intense process but one that i'm really enjoying! Ultimately, though, the physio and my coach managed my rehab really well and I focused on strengthening key areas so that I'm more balanced (both literally and figuratively) and my training has improved as a result. I've been training at full intensity for around 3 weeks now, focusing predominantly on speed work rather than any heavy lifting or overloading myself. In testing, I've been getting quicker every session, and feel as though I'm becoming increasingly competitive within my training group. As a result, I decided to open my season at Mile End in an open meeting last night. I ran a personal best, which I was pleased about, but there were quite a few things that I didn't feel happy about so I'm not getting too excited yet. I'm only really interested in my times coming down, rather than where I come in races, and I know that I can execute my race much better than I did last night, so there should be plenty more to come on that front. Hopefully, by increasing my race experience over the course of this season, and then tailoring my training around what goes well / doesn't go well, I'll be in a vastly improved position come the end of this season. I'm still convinced that the key to my success lies in improving my start, as that gives me the platform to perform for the rest of the race, and increasing my explosiveness in this area is my main priority in the coming weeks. I've got a demanding number of competitions over the next 4 months, with the first big one being the Middlesex County Championships at the end of May, followed by the South of England Championships in July. If anyone fancies coming down to watch just let me know and I'll send over the details, would love to have your support!