European Indoor Championships 1500m Final

So here we are at the final.  As I said after the heat I was really looking forward to the race and really felt I could be in with a shout.

I have also said in my racing blogs that when my warm up goes bad in terms of me feeling terrible I seem to run really well.  Today my warm up went fantastic!  Probably the best warm up I have ever done.  Now you don’t then tell yourself oh dear this is not good, you just try and use it as an even better sign! 

Yesterday when the race kicked off I was just a little too far back so I had a clear game plan to get involved and up near the front.  This worked out really well and I was feeling fine through 600m, but then I started to struggle.  I knew I was going backwards and things were starting to be a struggle.  At this point you try even harder but probably tighten up even more!  What’s even worse is I saw the clock at 800 and it was 2.05, very slow.  Maybe subconsciously that made things harder and made me feel worse, but I just couldn’t go any quicker and I felt terrible.  It is so depressing because I really felt on my day that I could have medalled and maybe it was a wasted opportunity, but then looking back I am proud to have made it through.  I have explained in my blog I just didn’t seem to recover from the day before and that really showed.  I have seen the race back on the TV and I look tired, despite having a long interrupted nights sleep.  Once I got dropped everybody else stayed close in the pack, so collectively they moved as one.  Maybe if one or two had also dropped off then I could have collected myself and come home a bit stronger but that wasn’t to be and so the race slipped away.  Crossing the line I was gutted to be honest, but I have been thinking long and hard and probably my peak was in Birmingham and I was holding on for two weeks too long.  That is the challenge of trying to peak at the trails, and run the qualifying time and then be at your best for the champs.  If I hadn’t peaked in Birmingham I wouldn’t have been in the team anyway!  The challenge for me now is to be able to cope with this and move forward and be consistent in the summer.   I look forward to the challenge!