Nice couple runs…i’ve been enjoying and becoming energized from your progress
Thanks guys 
Looking forward to my next indoor, only 1 round of each event so no room for mistakes. But it will be interesting to see how I do in the 200m, this time last year I was running 21.45-21.65 indoor, so I’m using this as a marker to compare to last year more than actually going out expecting to get a PB.
Today I was competing at the Birmingham Games, unlike previous years where it’s held over 2 days with the 60m and 200m on separate days, it was over 1 day this year. This gave me the opportunity to do both events as it was just one of each rather than the usual heats, semis and final.
I wasn’t feeling particularly ready to compete this morning as I couldn’t get to sleep last night, but it didn’t seem to affect my performance too much.
I won my heat of the 60m in a new PB of 6.97, and then a couple of hours later also won my heat of the 200m in 21.50. Which although not a PB, was faster than all but 1 of my indoor 200m races last year which were all 21.61+. So as far as I’m concerned today was a success.
Now to forget about indoors and get back to preparing for the outdoor season.
I’ll get the videos posted up once I have them.
Still managing to remain consistent over 60m which is good, but I really need to get that initial period of acceleration sorted. The guy on my left in lane 2 leaves me for dead over the first 5 strides![b]
Video of my 60m: (lane 3)[/b]
Not updated here for a while, training has been going well for the most part.
Picked up a slight calf strain last week though, so although I’m still able to do some basic training and light drills I’m not able to properly sprint at the moment.
Very frustrating as I was supposed to be doing a 60m/100m indoor this weekend and then my first outdoor on the 30th March. But I’m just going to ignore those and concentrate on being fit for my first league match on the 19th April now.
Monday 5th May - Open ‘Graded?’
My outdoor season is well under way now, my season opener was an open at Cheltenham, which was a bit of a let down really. It was advertised as being ‘Graded’ i.e. proper lane seeding based on PB etc. But it ended up just being randomly drawn, so that was a bit of a let down. The conditions weren’t ideal either, with gusty tail winds for the last 50m of the home straight, and a massive headwind for the first 60m of the bend during the 200m.
I ran 10.83 +2.7, and 21.81 +3.7, but my legs held up okay, and the calf/achilies tightness I’ve been suffering from since my calf strain earlier in the season seems to be subsiding now.
Saturday 10th May - British League Match 1
I think ‘apocalyptic’ is the best word to describe this competition, the wind was terrible, measuring above 4m/s headwind at points, although in reality it was much stronger than that due to the position of the wind indicator. There were also frequent rain/hail storms throughout the day.
I ran 11.18 -2.7 in the 100m, and then 22.77 in the 200m (winning time was 22.25). As I mentioned earlier, the questionable readings from the wind indicator struck again, and despite gale force winds, it only registered -0.3!! And as you can tell by the times, it definitely was not only -0.3!
Saturday 17th May - Southern League Match 2
I missed the first Southern League match as I wanted to give my calf some extra recovery time, but yesterdays conditions were the best I’ve had so far this year. Lovely and warm, with a nice breeze. Again, the winds were up and down all day, with speeds ranging from below 1m/s tailwind, to nearly 3m/s tailwind. I was up against some strong competition in both my events in the form of Kieran Showler-Davis, who I came 2nd to in both events.
I clocked 10.67 in the 100m unfortunately with a +2.6 wind, the race before mine was just about legal I think. Kieran came 1st with 10.47.
In the 200m I was back up against my rival from Basingstoke, and fighting into a bit of a headwind at the start of the bend, I managed to cross the line in 21.52 +1.7. He won with 21.35, and had I worked a bit harder off the bend I like to think I could have been a bit closer across the line, unfortunately ifs and buts don’t count for anything in track and field, so we’ll see what happens at the next match!
[b]The conditions I had for my British League match… (the wind blew all the lane markers against the fence!)
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Me (right) and Kieran (left) at the start of the 200m…
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[b]About 20-30m into the 200m, still working against the wind at this point…
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Those are nice times coming off injury. Seeming ready to PB in the 100m, hopefully you can find some good conditions on a day you’re also feeling good.
Nicely done, you’re definately in 10.80 shape and the times will only decrease from there on. When should your peak be?
My Achilles have been a bit worse this week, still trying to stretch them regularly to relieve the tightness. I think it may just be a result of my extra bodyweight combined with the extra strength/speed I’m putting through my ankles.
I have however bought some new sprint spikes for training, as the ones I’ve been using are 2-3 years old and the plastic base plate is a lot more flexible than it used to be, so I wonder if that could have been a contributing factor?
My aim is to peak mid-late July, the period overlapping the UK Outdoor Championships. However I’m yet to run a legal 100m qualifying time of <10.80, or to get under the new lower 200m qualifying time of <21.40 (my PB is 21.39). The championships are on the 27th-29th June, and the qualification runs up until the 22nd June.
So ideally I’d want to peak in June, so I could qualify and then run at a competitive level at the championships.
Certainly possible as the new ones, with decreased foot flex will increase the force going into achilles. Last summer I had a pretty fast steeplechaser develop an achilles issue after getting new spikes; it away through the winter.
Saturday 7th June - British League Match 2
I really wasn’t looking forward to this one, as we were forcast gale force winds and the worst hale storm for 175 years! In the end though, we had clear blue skies and about 24 degrees! Still a bit of wind though which wasn’t helping with the sprints.
I ran 10.91 into a -0.7 headwind to come 4th, and then later in the afternoon ran 21.88 into a -2.3 headwind to come 3rd. The highlight of the day though was breaking the club 4x100m record in 41.40, which put us joint 1st in point with Baingstoke (who won the previous match), our 4x400m team then stormed round to another victory and the overall match win!
Monday 9th June - Großes Siegburger Pfingstsportfest. Siegburg, GER
This is a competition I did last year as well in quite poor conditions. This year was a much better day though, with minimal winds which made a change compared to the rest of this season. I was still feeling slightly fatigued after running 3 events only 2 days before, but I ran a wind legal PB of 10.83 +0.5 in the 100m. And then ran a SB 200m time of 21.53 +0.1
This still leaves me without the qualification standards for the UK Champs this year, but I can a least say I’m in better overall form than I was last year. I’m doing an open at Watford this Wednesday (18th) for just the 200m, and then I have a league match on Saturday. So I have a couple more opportunities to qualify before the deadline on the 22nd.
Saturday 5th July - British League Match 3
I had an overnight stay on Friday night at a local hotel with the rest of the team for this one. And having driving up to Derby through very overcast and rainy conditions, I wasn’t expecting anything to come out of Saturday’s competition.
However by 3pm when my 100m was due to start, the sun was out and the wind was just starting to die down a bit. I ran 10.84 -0.2 in the 100m, and then an outdoor SB of 21.51 0.0 in the 200m. The wind gauge didn’t appear to be working for my race, or the one after it. But there was certainly still a slight headwind on the home straight.
My calves cramped slightly during a practice relay changeover after the 200m, so I had to sit out the practice and just spend the next 20 minutes stretching. I was fine for the race itself, but they are feeling a little sore from the cramping, luckily I’ve got a physio/massage appointment booked for Wednesday anyway so I’ll just have a light recovery session tomorrow at training. I’ve then got another Southern League match on Saturday 12th, so hopefully I’ll be back to full fitness for that.
Got a bit sloppy with keeping this stuff up to date as the season progressed this year, nothing spectacular happened after my last update though so there’s not a huge amount to catch up on.
I have however been told that the issues I was/am having with my Achilles feeling tight are actually down to tight calves, so I’m trying to work on that over the winter.
One big change in my training though was the introduction of a proper weights/strength training over this winter period. A gym/S&C facility near me called The Athlete Centre has signed me up to their ‘Athlete Academy’, so I’m now getting properly planned out gym sessions at least twice a week as well as my 3 track sessions.
The strength sessions I’m doing can be anything from Olympic lifts, to box jump or a core circuit. So it’s a pretty comprehensive programme!
That’s about it for now, I’ll be back with more updates once I’ve got some indoor runs under my belt.
I had some achilles issues a couple years ago and regular gastrocnemius stretching was immensely beneficial for me; soleus stretching didn’t have the same effect. I hope yours clears up soon.
One recommendation I’ll pass along is to make sure your track coach approves the weights program if s/he hasn’t already! Sometimes S&C people write up these great looking programs that cause issues for higher level athletes. Sometimes the weights programs are stand-alone and aren’t built around training and the combination of volume/intensity results in injury.
Looking forward to hearing about your 2015 season.
Hopefully the calf tightness clears up before outdoors start because I definitely felt it was holding me back last season.
On the subject of the gym though, as a very athlete/sport focused facility, they designed my gym schedule to fit in around my track work.
They said that the most important part for them is to make sure the gym sessions integrate with my track sessions, as there is plenty of time to ramp up the intensity as time goes on.
And so far they seem to have achieved that, I haven’t yet had a track session where I’ve had to hold back from being too stiff or achey etc.
Hey DavidG, when do you plan to run your first indoor race? I’m curious to see how it’s gonna work out for you this indoor season with your new weight lifting program. I myself have been introduced to proper weight lifting this season (no major olympic lifts though) and it’s going pretty well, feel more explosive and solid on the track compared to previous seasons
I’ll be doing 60m and 200m at the Birmingham Games on the 7th & 8th Feb 2015. Then after that hopefully the UK Indoor Championships the following week, and then one or two opens over 60m in theweeks after that.
I want to leave it as long as possible before I start competing to get as much uninterrupted training time as possible before I have to start lowering the training loads before the competitions. Equally, I want to then get maybe 3 or 4 competitions in within a 4-6 week window so once they are done I can put my focus back on training until outdoors start.
I’m interested to see what/if any changes are noticeable after this initial period of adding the weights into my schedule.
I was away in Portugal from 15th - 29th March on a training trip. I’d missed about 4 weeks of track work prior to this due to an ankle problem which now seems to be on the mend, so it was good to catch up on what I’d missed! 2 sessions a day for 2 weeks straight, one in the morning around 8am, and the next around 3pm, each lasting roughly 2 hours.
Here’s a few pictures and videos from the trip, not all training related!
All pictures/videos were taken on my Oneplus One…
