Merry Christmas Everybody!
I bet anyone could have predicted that I would never manage to write a regular blog! To be fair I've had a pretty stressful few months and I don't know where the time has gone - I can't believe it's December already!
Since I moved out of a shared student house in July, I have moved house FIVE times. Unfortunately, the flat I was supposed to be moving into, had a landlord that didn't know how long his contract with his current tenants was for so that all fell through very last minute! So I hopped from spare room to spare room for a few months and am very grateful to my fellow athletes for putting up with me!
Last month, I eventually moved into a one-bedroom flat just a short walk from the track. It's so good to finally be settling in somewhere and actually unpacking all the boxes!! It's amazing the difference it's had on training as well - I didn't realise just how stressful the constant 'unknown' had been until there was nothing more to worry about.
I started winter training in August, which is incredibly early for me! Previously, I'd had a couple of weeks off at the same time as the start of the new Uni term but after a flat end to the season and no commitments outside of Athletics, I was keen to give myself as much time as possible this year, to really make progress over the winter months. It was always obvious to both me and my coach, John, that my greatest weakness was my strength - or lack of!! A big aim for the winter was to drastically improve my strength and that's been a focus throughout the first few months; I mean I was snatching 45kg and cleaning 65kg - not exactly impressive for a hammer thrower! If you've looked at my videos you'll see that I don't get my knees out of the way of the bar which really impedes the lift. So John and I made a big decision to take power lifting out of my programme and lift everything from blocks and start just above the knee - known as lifting from hang. (I do clean pulls and deadlift from the floor to make up for it.) This immediately made an impact and I could already lift more from hang than I could from the floor - this is counterintuitive because you have more time to accelerate the bar from the floor! My attitude is so much better in the gym now as well - I'm more determined and not as respectful of the weight as I used to be and it's really showing in the improvements I'm making.
I'm also throwing around five times a week too, though I'm aware that my legs are tired from the gym and so the distances will be down a bit. The weather has been amazing and we're still training outside on squad nights, which we've never managed in previous years! I reckon January and February are going to be horrible to make up for it - or maybe the Loughborough rain has fallen elsewhere and contributed to the horrific floods everyone else seems to have. It's like watching the news from a different country! Over the last couple of weeks we've started to switch the focus from lifting back to throwing and the distances are gradually creeping back up again. I have a spreadsheet with all my training marks for each hammer (I'm not OCD at all...) and it's so nice to see a consistent improvement in the 4kg distances - usually progressions are a bit up and down but at the moment it's a nice steady rise! I wonder how long that will last....
I'm properly excited to go home for Christmas and spend some time with my parents and other family and friends. Plus my body is screaming at me to let it rest! Having had a really positive last block of training, this week my distances have dropped off by about 5 metres and I can't wait to have some time off while I'm home. I'll do a little bit of training - I've just ordered some new throwing shoes so I'll try to break them in - but mostly it'll be active rest. Every year we go away with friends for New Year and the name of the game is eat lots and walk lots so I won't lose too much fitness (hopefully!).
So it feels like I'm halfway through my year as an elite athlete, and while it's so much harder than I could ever have imagined, I feel like I'm going into 2014 in a good place. I hope you all have an amazing festive period and I'll be back with more news in the new year!