Nottinghamshire County Champs

This was my first track competition of the season. As always it's nice to get the season off to a good start and is also useful to gain an indication of what sort of shape you are in. Taking into account the weather conditions and my race tactics that i employed, i'm very satisfied with the overall results. I planned to race in these champs while i was away in France. I had a look at the race fixtures and realised i would be ready to race that weekend, having had a few weeks to settle down after altitude training.

First came the 800m on the Saturday afternoon. Leading into the race i wasn't expecting any significant competition and I was just there to test myself to figure out what was in my legs. A few of my sessions prior to the race were suggesting I was in good 1500m shape so i had my hopes set on low 1.50s. I now know that was a bit too ambitious of me, considering the weather conditions on the day. A few people around the track had mentioned that there was a very strong head wind in the home straight due to gale force winds. I obviously chose to ignore this advice and continue with my original plan which was to go out hard and just hang on. I took the first 200m out in 26 seconds before hitting the wind in the home straight which slowed me down to 55 seconds through 400m. The mistake i made was to fight the wind instead of relaxing into it so at this point i was treading water for at least the final 300m. By the time i got to 150m to go not only did the lactic  hit my legs, but i had to compete with the toughest head wind I've ever experienced in my life. This made me feel like i was practically crawling my way to the finish line. With my natural strength i hung on to finish with an average 1.55.

I returned to Mooreways stadium for day 2 of the County champs. The bad news was the wind was still blowing a gale but at least i had yesterday's experience behind me to make sure I didn't make the same mistake. I took the first 400m out in moderate 63 with the home straight head wind holding me back at least a couple of seconds a lap. I went through 800m in 2.06 and 1200m in 3.09 to finish in 3.55. I was a little way off my original target times, but taking into account the weather and the hard week of training i'd just completed, I have to be satisfied. I was pretty happy to walk away from the championships with two county titles and some nice gold medals to go with them.