21.08.2009

McLellan's fight to the finish an inspiration to all

Super coach Sharon Hannan reveals the hidden story behind Sally McLellan's world championships preparation.

I didn’t mention in my reports over the past two weeks that things haven’t been altogether rosy with Sal’s preparation.

On Tuesday night (August 4) she was having physio after training, which she has every Tuesday, and when she went to get off the table she experienced lower back pain. 

A mild spasm. The physios taped her back up to keep it stable during the night and re-assessed in the morning. The verdict was no training for Wednesday and she had further treatment during the day. On Thursday she did a pool session of four repetitions of six seconds and they were up there with her best, which is 23 'strides' on one arm. 

On Friday the physios and team doctor suggested we do the gym session as planned, but to keep it light; upper body only, no legs. They wanted her to do a track warm-up at the indoor track beside the gym and then four easy run-throughs first. 

(Physiotherapist) Liz Molloy came with us and all went well until the fourth run-through, when she experienced back pain on push-off. As we walked towards the place where we’d left our bags, her back seized. Liz got her onto the floor and that’s basically where she stayed for more than 30 minutes. There was extreme pain when she attempted to roll onto her side and also when Liz attempted to roll her. We eventually got her up and managed to get her to a place we could get a vehicle near and Nathan Sims and the doc came to pick her up.

Diagnosis – acute lower back pain, with referral through the right hamstring.

The two weeks since have been really tough for Sal. We had to apply for an emergency TUE for some strong medication to settle the back down. It was Friday night and the IAAF gave us a verbal okay and we sent all the paperwork through. The actual certificate didn’t arrive until a week later!

Within a couple of hours she was walking gingerly and made it down to dinner. After sitting for about an hour and a half through dinner there was a great deal of stiffness, necessitating a very slow walk back to the lifts and to her room. The doc gave her a sleeping pill to get her through the night and on Saturday she only had a little dry-needling.  

There was more treatment on Sunday and on Monday she did a pool session in the morning and the doc came to keep an eye on her.  She did four reps of six seconds again and one of them was a PB of 24.

In the afternoon we went to the track with Liz and she did a warm-up, some walking A-skips, some easy alternate leg drills and then one run-through. 

All went well and then we walked to the pool, Liz still in tow. I wanted her to do just one rep of 12 seconds. She did a PB of 43 and three-quarters. It may sound petty, to count three-quarters of a stride, but when you’ve done thousands of 12-second reps in the pool, you know the difference between 43 and 43-and-three-quarter strides.

We count only one arm so really it’s 87-and-a-half strides. Another PB, two in one day. Sal wanted to do more, so I gave her five minutes recovery and said she could do one more six-second rep. She equalled the morning’s PB of 24. A very good day indeed.

Tuesday, August 11 was our travel day to Berlin. (Team leader) Eric Hollingsworth offered to fly her, but we thought that with the travel to and from the airports and the sitting around and the flight itself, she was probably better off on the bus. Three of the five medical staff were also on our bus, and we were to have two stops. All went well.

Sal’s major concern was the missed training. On Wednesday, August 12, she really wanted to do a hurdles session but we wanted to see her get through some straight-line running first. This was extremely frustrating for her, as it was now six days until she raced. She did a hurdles warm-up and then one five-strider over the middle of the hurdles but pulled up a little sore/tight in the hammy. I took the hurdles off the track and just got her to do run-throughs for the rest of the session. She survived physically (no further pain), but mentally she was struggling. She needed to know her body could hurdle – I needed to know her body could complete, and recover from, straight-line running. There was a battle in her head, a battle in my head, but at the end of the day, the decision had to be made. Run-throughs only.

We’d had the Flame launch earlier in the day and Steve Hooker had come out and told the media about his injury. Sal had a long chat to me after we got back to the hotel and she was quite distressed. The quandary - should she go public about the injury? Could she race with any confidence at all in just six days' time? All the time more and more reports were coming out all over the world, ranking her somewhere in the top three and many of them ranking her the gold medal favourite. What if she didn’t perform? She didn’t want to come out AFTER the event and say she was injured. When was I going to let her hurdle?

I showed her my proposed sessions for the next day through to race day. We tossed around a few ideas, changed a couple of things and agreed that was the best possible scenario. We went along the hallway to Eric Hollingsworth and Craig Hilliard's room and had a long chat with them. They gave us lots of valuable advice and some of their thought processes were the same and some entirely different, from ours and from each others. Food for thought.  

We then went and had a sit-down meeting with the doc and Liz and I presented the sessions we’d come up with. The plan was to do two hurdles sessions the next day. Start at lunchtime, warm up and do two starts over one hurdle. Then we planned to come back to the hotel for close to two hours and go back later in the afternoon and hurdle again. Friday was to be just pool, three eight-second reps and then a competition warm-up on Saturday to finish off her preparation. The doc and Liz had some concerns so we agreed to have a plan B up our sleeves if anything went astray at the first session.  

Thursday, August 13 – We went to the track at lunchtime to train in the heat of the day. We changed her warm-up routine to include some easy A-skips first, then a couple of the 'olden days bummies' where the heel is flicked to the butt but there’s no hip flexion, just to make sure the hamstrings were really warm. Then she did a couple of normal bummies and then she started her hurdle drills. After the drills we got her to do three run-throughs before she did her three five-striders. All went well, so she went ahead and did the two starts over one hurdle. The first was a little rusty but the next one was good. No pain!

Sal was relatively happy with the session and we went back to the hotel and rested. In the evening she went through the same warm-up routine as earlier in the day and again, no back or hamstring pain. Then she did two reps over on hurdle, one over two hurdles and one over three hurdles. Sal said she felt a little tight in the hammy as she was slowing after the first three reps but didn’t feel it at all after the rep over three hurdles. Definitely good news.

We had decided earlier in the day that she would have an ice bath after the second session. She walked and jogged two laps and then had a chat to Stan Garland, the physio on duty. He got her up on the table and did a bit of triggering in her glute and she was squealing like a stuck pig. Stan didn’t care about the squealing because there was virtually no one at the track at that stage. There certainly weren’t any Aussies. Stan said the piriformis was 'gripping' the nerve and when he released it, there was no tightness or pain at all in the hammy. Eureka!

Off to the ice bath and more squealing. It was VERY, VERY cold. Sal generally does five straight minutes in the ice bath, but she was struggling to get through five separate minutes. She found the hot shower and warmed down just a little in between the last couple.

I think that’s most of what I left out in previous reports. I’m sure you’d all agree it wasn’t the best preparation but we can all be proud of what Sal achieved.

Thanks for your interest.

Shaz in Berlin.