04.08.2009

McLellan races towards Berlin

Sharon Hannan continues her exclusive online diary for Athletics Australia as she guides Olympic silver medallist Sally McLellan all the way to the world championships.

Monaco – July 29, 2009. Well, it’s our last sleep in Monaco, but we’re already into the early morning. It’s a few minutes after 2am and I’m hoping to be fast asleep by quarter past.  

The meet started at 7.30pm – Sally raced at 8.50pm and the last event was well after 10pm. Then we caught a bus back to the athlete's hotel for a dinner function that was dead-set five-star. Prince Albert of Monaco was in attendance and walked right past my table. Mitchell Watt said 'g’day'.

But back to the real reason I’m over here – the racing. Sally won the 100m hurdles in an Australian and Oceania record time of 12.50s. She came agonisingly close to 12.49 as the track-side clock showed for several seconds, before it was adjusted to 12.50. I’d like a dollar for every time someone has said 'thought it was a 12.49, what a shame' or similar. The wind was a very slight +0.7. She led from the start and raced her best final three hurdles ever. I know she’s in good shape now for sure. It’s not all just about the times. It’s about head-to-head competition, and tonight she beat the Olympic gold and bronze medallists, the 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medallist and several others who have been performing well recently.

We had four and a half hours' sleep and had to get up, check out and be down at Sally’s hotel for a free breakfast (took some Aussie ingenuity to organise the freebies) and to catch the bus to the airport in Nice. We left our hotel at 7.30am and arrived at our Stockholm hotel just before 6pm. A long day of travel. We generally can’t schedule a training session on travel days, so that can really mess up the week. With London, Monaco and Stockholm all in a seven-day period we have scheduled NO track training, only pool. Next week, when we return to our base in Cologne, there’ll be some hard work to get through to make sure she’s in the best shape possible for the final in Berlin.  

The programming is obviously the hardest part at this time of the year. How many reps, what distance, how many sets, how much rest and recovery? There are lots of external influences to take into account like how much sleep she has had, how sore she is and how tight her muscles are.

My dilemma at the moment is whether to race between Stockholm and Berlin. It’s still 18 days until the heats. We have the option of racing in Cottebuss and/or Dusseldorf on August 8 and 10 respectively. There's lots going around in my head but the answer will be more apparent after tomorrow’s race and Saturday’s travel.

How much fun can you have with data! I’ve mentioned that Jen Manning from the QAS is over here for this week, helping us out with filming and race analysis. For the past three years I’ve kept a file called 'BEST EVER stats' and update it regularly.  At the moment I have the seven best races that we have data for. (We don’t have ANYTHING from Beijing or Europe last year, so no 12.58 or 12.53 or any of the 12.6-something races). The two most important pieces of information are the run time and flight time, and the combination of these are called rhythmic units.

Run time -  the time from touch-down to take-off between each hurdle, plus the run-in to the first and the run-off from the last.

Flight time – the time from take-off to touch-down over each hurdle.

You can get your own rhythmic units with a normal stopwatch; just hit the button on every touch-down. This provides good feedback for a hurdles coach.

As I mentioned above, Sally had her best final three hurdles ever in Monaco. The run times were not her best between any of the last three, but she was very fast over them, so flight time was awesome. If she could put together her best final three run-times and yesterday's flight times she would drop eight hundredths of a second, taking her down to 12.42, which is achievable.

You can have a lot of fun with data. If you take her fastest segments ever (of the seven races we have) and put them together for a hypothetical race, the total is a sensational 12.26. Wow, wouldn’t that be something to see. Jen has suggested we insert the flashdrive into Sally, download the data, and press GO. Haha.

Stockholm – July 29, 2009. Now, back to reality. Everything is expensive in Sweden. Last year I had a scotch and dry at the bar and put it on my credit card. When I got back to Australia and checked my statement it had cost me $16. So water is the drink of choice this year. This morning we went off to the local pool to do a 10 minute session and it cost Sally $42 to get us both in. I hope there are no mayors, aldermen, or shire councillors anywhere in Australia reading this. Mind you, for the money we spent you could stay and use the solarium, sauna or a number of other luxuries. 
The accommodation at the athletes' hotel is €150 per night per person twin-share. That’s $260 for me and $260 for Jen per night for three nights! Thankfully it’s not like that everywhere. In Monaco we managed to find a place for €75 per night for the two of us.  It was very old and very small, but clean. Thank God for the help I get from Athletics Australia, the Queensland Academy of Sport and from the Australian Sports Commission. It would not be possible in any way, shape or form without the funding.

The mood here in Stockholm is good. It’s the last of the BIG competitions before Berlin. Most of the Aussies seem to find their way to a big table together and meals are lengthy affairs with lots of hilarity, especially if the pole vault boys are 'on song, or John Steffensen is there describing his hip problems!

Maurie Plant nearly had apoplexy yesterday when he heard that Scotty Martin missed his flight but he seems to have settled today, back to his normal chatty, smiley self.

By the way, I found out on Tuesday night in Monaco that the coach I mentioned in my last report was John Smith.  A very famous coach indeed, so I’m still chuffed by his remarks.

I’ve been getting emails from lots of people, asking me to pass on their best wishes to Sally. One was from a family of a mum, dad and 10 kids, all following her progress. Amazing! The athletes like to hear from home, especially from kids involved in the sport.

Bye for now, from Shaz in Sweden.
McLellan went on to place fourth in the final of the 100m hurdles in Stockholm in a time of 12.64.