27.08.2010

Coach diary: Pearson primed for Diamond decider

Sharon Hannan looks ahead to tonight's IAAF Diamond League final in Brussels, Belgium, as hurdles star Sally Pearson continues the countdown to the XIX Commonwealth Games.

Welcome to my world...

Sally, Alana Boyd and I filled in some time on the Thursday in London by going to see a movie. We saw Knight and Day. I found the title hilarious, given that Sal has been watching a whole series of Kath and Kim episodes where Kath Day gets married to Kel (the purveyor of fine meats) Knight, and so she becomes Kath Day-Knight.

The movie was great, lots of action and “bang, bang shoot ‘em up” as my husband Peter calls it. Tom Cruise is seriously good looking, in my middle-aged opinion, but getting a little tubby in his old age.

London posed some frustrating situations for us.  

Firstly, before we even left Cologne, Sal was experiencing tightness in her hammy. We tried desperately in the last two days to organise for the Australian physio to come to London to be on-hand to treat Sal to loosen up the hammy. We found accommodation after a lengthy search, but the idea proved fruitless, as we couldn’t get her on flights that were even remotely affordable. So, the muscle-mate got a real solid workout.

After we first arrived, the wireless internet worked for just a few minutes and then failed. We contacted reception and they indicated they had a technician working on the problem. We actually think they were so overwhelmed by the sheer number of athletes getting on their internet system that they simply shut it down. Access to the internet is crucial for Sally when we arrive at a new hotel. She needs to get straight onto the WADA (World Anti-Doping Authority) website and indicate her room number. Sal puts the hotel name and full address in as soon as she has the details from Maurie Plant, but the room number obviously can’t be entered until she checks in. After an hour I went to reception and still no progress. So I outlined to them the problems facing my athlete if she couldn’t complete her whereabouts details online. They were extremely helpful then and offered to take Sally to their administration office and allow her to use their computer. So... WADA whereabouts completed, Sally happy.

The next frustration was that the athlete information given to us on arrival indicated what time the buses would leave for the competition and that athletes should allow 30 minutes for the trip in case of bad traffic. We decided to leave on the 4:30pm bus for a 5pm arrival. Sal’s heat was at 6.34pm with a 25-minute call room. The problem was that the bus took 54 minutes to get to the stadium!! The warm-up was a little rushed but she didn’t have to leave anything out.

The last problem was that it was raining heavily and the drains backed up and flooded the indoor warm-up area. You can see from the photo the depth of the water. It flowed all the way to the first hurdle, so the warm-up was challenging. Still, the rain stopped before the heats and the floods were swept away by a team of volunteers before the girls were warming up for the final.

Sally and I both met Dame Kelly Holmes in the warm-up area. I had read her autobiography, “Kelly Holmes – Black, White and Gold” on the plane over here and Sally had almost finished her book when we arrived in London. I had met Kelly in 2000 because she trained at my track on the Gold Coast with the rest of the British Olympic team for several weeks leading up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. I asked her if she remembered me and she said yes. I was thrilled and chatted to her about the Olympic Torch photos I have and other things from 2000.  I introduced her to Sally and told her we’d both read her book. Sally and Kelly had a good chat and then we went off to finish the warm-up, with Sal on a real high.

I’ve been to Crystal Palace the past three years now and have seen Linford Christie each time. He’s bringing his squad out to Australia again early next year and told me that the Gold Coast was again under consideration. This year I also met up with Darren Campbell, the silver medallist in the 200m in Sydney.  He’s a great “hugger”. I remember coming out of the Sydney 2000 merchandise shop below ground in the Sydney mall and hearing this Pommie voice call my name. It was Darren and he asked me if I had my camera “wif me”? Somewhat perplexed, I replied that I did and he whipped his silver medal out from inside his shirt and put his arm around me and handed my camera to his friends to take a photo of us. One of my absolute treasures, that photo.

Sally’s results were solid. We were both very happy with the times and the actual performances. Of course she was disappointed not to win, but Priscilla had the most awesome finish I’ve seen in the past three years. Race analysis by our QAS biomechanist Dan Greenwood arrived whilst we were sleeping that night. It showed that Sal had two hurdle clearance PBs over hurdles two and three and equal PBs over one, four and five. She also had run-time PBs between hurdles five and six and between six and seven. Equal PBs were achieved between four and five, seven and eight, eight and nine, and nine and 10. So I watched the BBC video over and over and looked at the data from other races and I’m certain that if she can control her speed in the second half of her race so that she doesn’t get too close to the hurdle and pop up, then 12.4 is in the bag.

It’s interesting to go way back as well and look at last year’s data. We’ve been working on Sal’s flight distance for a couple of years now. We want her to take off closer, keep the lead knee a little more bent and land closer. This will give her faster clearances and allow her to utilise her great ground speed to get faster run times between the hurdles. On looking at the data from her 12.50 Australian record race in 2009, her clearance times have improved across the board.  So.. run times MUST come down!! We’re on a mission!!

We didn’t stay at the athlete hotel after the London meet, as we’d organised to go and stay with Sal’s family for a couple of days of R 'n' R.  She’d had five quality races in eight days, so had earned a few days off. Sal stayed with one of her aunties and I stayed with another. There was a family gathering on the Sunday evening with 20-odd people. Very relaxing. It was also very helpful to be able to watch race footage on a decent sized screen! Sal’s Aunty Janice had recorded all her races for us.

Janice took me to see a very old property listed on the National Heritage register. Knole House was very interesting and it has the oldest deer herd in the UK. They are beautiful animals, with lovely white spots just like Bambi. We also went to a lavender farm and I bought some bickies to take for the get-together the following day. I’m not really a great fan of shortbread, but they were quite nice. Janice and I also went to see Toy Story 3 – we loved it and even got a little teary at the end. I can’t wait to sit down and watch it with my three grandkids over the Christmas holidays.

We flew out on a ridiculously early flight on Monday and had a major hiccup only minutes after leaving for the airport. Sal couldn’t find her passport. We stopped the car on the side of the road and searched everything. No passport. We went back to her Aunt’s house and woke her up to let us in, but no passport there either. We quickly decided that I would head to the airport and give the hire car back so we wouldn’t lose the money on my flight and have to pay an extra day or more for the car, as well losing Sal’s flight. Just as she was getting her gear out of the car I decided to look in my backpack, because I remembered she’d given me her passport on one of our other short trips. Sure enough, there it was. Phewwwww... Gear back in the car and on our way to the airport again!! It was now 5am. We made the flight but without the obligatory refuelling of the hire car. I’m sure we’ll get a fuel surcharge from Avis, but this has happened to me on other occasions and they’re usually not too stiff.

Thursday, August 19

The Zurich Diamond League meet is on this evening and we can’t get it on EuroSport. Frustrating. The one time when we’re home in our apartment and able to watch a Diamond League meet and it’s not on in Germany. However, I have a very funny story for you. I have my Google Toolbar set to translate any German into English and this is the result.

Colourful - "kitchen service" for the sprint star
Euro Sport - Tues Aug 17, 2010

"Shortly after his arrival, the flight from London disappeared Tyson Gay directly into the kitchen of the airport hotels. Really wanted to make the U.S. sprinters on Thursday at the Diamond League meeting in Zurich for the next 100m highlight. But once we went behind the stove with a wooden spoon.

What happened? Why did the top sprinters this time leave his spikes in the corner and the chef's hat coat?"

You can find the full story here.

Wednesday, August 25

You know when an athlete is in god shape when they constantly talk about the next competition. It has been a long break between comps for Sal and she’s getting VERY toey. We leave tomorrow for Brussels, which is the Diamond League final of the women’s 100m hurdles. All points are doubled in the final. The league table in this event is very interesing. Lolo Jones and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep are joint leaders on 14 points, with Sally sitting third on six points. If Lolo or Priscilla win, they win the Diamond trophy and the dollars. If Sally wins, she will be on 14 points as well, but if neither Lolo nor Priscilla place, then Lolo wins the goodies on a countback of number of first places. If Lolo doesn’t place at all (and she hasn’t been racing well the last few meets) and Priscilla places anywhere in the top three, then she wins the goodies. Interesting!!

We didn’t train the day we flew back from London either, so Sal had three full days off. On the Tuesday she was unable to do the scheduled session because her hamstring, which had been niggling/tight, was really quite sore. She did some 80m turnarounds at about 75 per cent just so she could get something done and then saw the physio straight away on the way home. Sal pleaded with her to really get stuck into the hammy and I was quite pleased when she came back to the apatment over an hour later, bruised and battered and very, very satisfied.

Wednesday’s pool session had to be altered because of the weather. Today is August 25; we’ve been in Cologne since July 23 and this is our fourth rain-free day. The temperature has been around 20 to 21 degrees mostly, so very unkind. The pool was seriously cold so we just had to change the recovery times between reps and make it one set instead of two, because it was too cold for a walk-around recovery.

Thursday was hurdles day and the hammy was good, so we went ahead with the session as scheduled. Due to the racing schedule of the previous week, this was the first actual hurdles training session for 15 days. As you can appreciate, hurdles is very technical and when an athlete can’t reproduce in training the same speed and technique as they can in a race situation, you end up with a frustrated athlete. From my point of view, it was a good session though.

We replaced the session programmed for Saturday (speed-endurance) with the session originally planned for Tuesday (speed). The track at the university is closed on weekends (can you believe that !) so we trained at the €50 an hour track, (that’s equivalent to $75 Australian) but again we weren’t approached by anyone from the club. The times were very good so I was happy to leave the sessions for this current week as planned – no changes necessay, no tweaking required.

Sunday is always our day off, although we moved Monday’s pool session forward a day this week. See why later. Sal had a training partner for the first time because our Australian pole vaulter, Amanda Bisk, joined us for the session. She seemed to enjoy it but was surprised how hard it was.

Later in the day we went into the city and and bought a multi-ticket which allowed us to go on the small sightseeing yellow and green train around the city and out to the zoo, getting on and off at any stop, and also go on the skyfox across the river and back, and up and down the Rheine on the ferry to look at the famous landmarks from the water. Both the train and the ferry had English and German commentary. A very relaxing couple of hours, with lots of photos taken. Afterwards we wandered into a cafe to have something to eat and discovered everyhing on the menu was really naughty. So we left on a promise to ourselves we’d come back for one hour after the Continental Cup meet in Croatia and enjoy an hour of treats! Cannot wait. Pastires and tarts and cakes seem to play a very large part in the lives of Germans. Not just in their diet, it’s a real relaxed cafe feel over here. Time seems to revolve around cafes.

On Monday, Sal had been asked to do a shoe tesing session for adidas in Amsterdam. This would involve doing our normal, scheduled session, but in the spikes they are testing for the 2012 Olympics and under the watchful eye of cameras and adidas biomechanists. There was to be a lengthy interview session with Sal after the session to determine her thoughts on the shoes. We were booked to catch the train from the city in the morning, so moved our pool session to the Sunday.

The Amsterdam trip didn’t go ahead though, because of the weather. We’d been watching the forecasts for several days and knew it was all horrible, but assumed the testing was to take place at an indoor track. Sally received an email on her phone when we arrived at the station to advise it was cancelled. It was a pity, because we were looking forward to being in a different environment, something to break up the monotony, and take her mind off the boring task of training.

Tuesday's sprint session was a cracker. 90m, 80m and 70m with 10 minutes between produced hand times of 10.06, 9.06 and 7.88 respectively. Quality. Sal started asking about running a 100m and finding out a time so this is another good sign.

Yesterday was another hurdles session, not usually our routine, but we have to modify training days to fit around competitions.  More frustrations. During the year it’s relatively easy to account for the extra ingredient available to an athlete during racing, which is adrenaline, by moving the hurdles in a foot length during training. The Canadians call it 'cheating' a foot length. When we get to this very high-level speed end of the season, there is already a little adrenaline there, so how do we set up the hurdles to mirror the race as precisely as possible? We moved all five hurdles in just half a foot length instead, and a couple of the reps were gob-smackingly fast. The rest were very fast, but Sal felt sloppy and frustration set in again. 

Some of this is directed at technical aspects, such as arm position, foot position out of the blocks, etc. But some of her concerns surround time. We have been away from home for 38 days and we still have 52 days to go. Most of the racing is centred around July/August. After Brussels she will compete in the Continental Cup in Split, Croatia, then the Australia vs England street meet at the Great North City Games in Newcastle, England, and then the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India. Too many training sessions on the horizon for someone who just loves to race.

Thursday, August 26

Today we leave for Brussels by train, after a poool session. The journey takes just an hour and a half and it will be good to see some countryside. I mentioned in an earlier diary that I hadn’t been to Brussels and I’m looking forward to something new. Sal has mentioned that the warm-up area isn’t good, but the crowds are huge and very knowledgeable. There should be a great deal of hype around the meet and it should definitely be shown live on Eurosport as it’s the Diamond League Final.

I will write again early next week, so stay tuned!

Cheers from Cologne,

Sharon