The Start Of It All...
Ok well that’s a good start – I’ve actually enticed someone to venture further than the homepage of my website! I guess it’s a good thing that I’ll probably never know if you ever come back!
There are two main reasons behind my decision to start writing a blog. Firstly, I’ve just taken a big leap of faith in my athletics career and I thought it would be cool to share all the boring behind-the-scenes stuff with anyone who’s interested. Secondly, I’ve been told I’ve got a lot of sitting around recovering to do so I’m attempting to prevent boredom!
I hope I successfully introduced myself on the homepage, so I’m not intending to waste time repeating myself. Instead I thought I might give you the ‘quick’ background of how I wound up sitting here writing this and maybe where I hope to go next. I’m an only child with amazingly supportive parents, so right from the start I was onto a winner. Home is in Central Scotland near Falkirk (of the Falkirk Wheel), but I spent the majority of my school years travelling to Edinburgh. I was first introduced to Athletics at the age of 11, and it soon overtook Dancing, Horse-riding and Gymnastics to become the most important (and time-consuming) thing in my life. I started off as a sprinter and slowly tried each and every event, eventually competing as a pentathlete a few years later. However, my fear of both the hurdles and high jump bar, my inability to achieve a consistent run up in the long jump and the limited number of points you can rack up in either the shot putt or the 800m made it quite painfully (and I mean painfully) obvious that I was in the wrong event. My reasonably quick progress in the shot had led me to try discus, which I quickly favoured.
At the age of 14, I was still attempting to do everything but had been placed in the care of a club throws coach for shot and discus. His only condition was that I tried the hammer too – I duly obliged; it seemed fun and was another event to tick off the list. Despite the fact that I was so unbelievably terrible that first session, I loved it and it became my new favourite event (it might appear that I changed ‘favourite events’ pretty often – that would probably be an accurate deduction!).
So between Christmas 2005 and the summer of 2006, I slowly started to get the hang of the hammer throw. Despite being told that I would never make a hammer thrower by at least two event coaches (I won’t name and shame – one of them has since been incredibly supportive), I started to compete in the Scottish Hammer Grand Prix Series. And so I met perhaps THE most influential figure in my career so far. Mr Alan Bertram M.B.E., Hammer mastermind and former Chief Inspector within the Metropolitan Police.
Alan immediately took me under his wing and arranged for me to compete at the UK U15 Championships, where I won a (very!) surprise bronze medal. Having never been good enough at any previous discipline to even contemplate competing at such a big event, I took that medal and never looked back. I worked with Alan for four years – enough time for him to take a ‘never-going-to-make-it-wannabe’ and turn me into a 56m hammer thrower who had represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Youth Games on the other side of the world in India, and then represented Great Britain at the World Youth Championships in Italy. With his incredible network of contacts, Alan then arranged for me to train with Michael Deyhle in Frankfurt, Germany, during my gap year. At that time, Deyhle was coach to both Kathrin Klass and Betty Heidler among others and I had the most incredible experience training with and learning from the best in the world. Heidler still trains with Deyhle in Frankfurt and has since broken the World Record with an incredible 79.42m.
By the time Alan packed me off to Loughborough University and into the very capable hands of his former student John Pearson, I had represented my country on multiple occasions and held the U20 Scottish Record. Not bad for someone who would never be a hammer thrower. And that is really the essence of Alan Bertram – an incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable man who could turn anybody into somebody if they were prepared to work hard enough. Sadly, Alan passed away this year at the age of 76. His dedication to the hammer continued all the way and I feel so guilty that I didn’t see him more often since coming to Uni. It’s also desperately sad that he wasn’t able to see his unwavering commitment come to fruition at next year’s Commonwealth Games in Scotland, with so many of his athletes capable of being there and performing well.
But I’ve missed a few years – Loughborough years. The best place in the country to be a student-athlete hybrid! I settled in really easily to Loughborough and can never imagine having been somewhere else. John and I work well together and in my fresher year I became a 60m thrower. That summer was the European Junior Championships and my best ranking on paper going into a major event. Unfortunately I had a bit of a nightmare in qualifying and didn’t make it to the final. After that training continued to go well but exams, dissertations and my really smart idea to take on Chair of the Loughborough Students’ Athletics Club in my final year, took its toll on the last two competition seasons and I haven’t replicated the distances of 2011. Having said that I am leaving University with a First Class Degree in Social Psychology and I am still in the sport so I can’t have done too badly!
So now I’ve graduated I have a golden opportunity with the Commonwealth Games just a year away and in my home country. I have a year to get back to being a regular 60m thrower – and then to make myself even better. Can’t be too hard…. (just so you know – so far it’s looking pretty tough!)
So this turned out to be a stupidly long essay and I will be incredibly impressed if I’ve still got your attention! I pinky-promise that I will be more restrained in future but I have just tried to update you on an 8-year career and not just a one-month training block! Hopefully I’ll also be able to add in some more fun anecdotes about training, my squad and my attempt to throw a ball on a chain as far as I can. It would be nice if you stuck around and joined in the journey….