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| Mockbaaaa |
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| Team GB official photo with our Bald Caps in honour of our bald Team Boss! |
After the disappointment of making the
World Championship team two years ago in Deagu but not being able to
go due to my broken foot – it really did make Moscow that little
bit more special. I did everything I possibly could in order to put
myself on that start-line - albeit, still injured! At the holding
camp in Barcelona, my coach (big Liz) and myself, decided to attempt
to start back jogging again, every second day – as with all the
lack of impact training – my leg had started to feel better. This
however, was a silly decision. After not properly impacting for 6
weeks (apart from 2 track sessions a week) – I really, really
struggled! I managed to do a 3mile jog, two days in a row –
however, when I attempted to do my track sessions – the impact of
jogging had the opposite effect. I was STRUGGLING. Genuinely like a
whale trying to run around the track – my quads felt like they were
triple their normal size! I was scheduled to do 4x 800m but couldn't
break 2.30 for my first effort, yet a few weeks previous to this, I
was running 10 reps in 2.28s! It hit my confidence pretty hard, so
much so, that I was actually dreading going to my first ever World
Championships. After sitting down with my coach, the doctor and the
physio, we decided to take a small step backwards again and revert to
doing all of my training in the pool in order to give myself the
recovery and freshness back into my legs - in time for Moscow!
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| Monaco DL |
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| London DL |
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| Tired and sweaty heading homeeeee |
This was definitely the issue I had
which made me feel very 'heavy' and 'flat' at the London Anniversary
Games and the Monaco Diamond League. For each of these races, I had
trained right through them – but also tried to start incorporating
3mile jogs into my program – which was far too much for my legs to
take at this stage in the season. In a way though, training through
those races definitely helped me to preform better in Moscow after
getting adamant recovery – my legs felt really fresh. It's just a
difficult thing to do and stay positive through, when you know you
should be running much quicker times than the ones you are posting -
purely due to tired legs.
I realise this blog is really, long and
probably relatively boring... but keep on trudging along.. It does
get better... slightly :)
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| Barcelona Holding Camp |
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| Barcelona Beach |
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| Bald Caps... Myself, Jamie Bowie, Kat JT, Bianca, Dwain Chambers |
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| GB ladieeeeez |
UK Athletics managed to get an
'aqua-jogging belt' for me, which was actually a red life jacket –
so I looked like a right pleb, bobbing around the pool for an hour
every day – but I was extremely grateful to even be part of the
team in the first place! My little sister joined in some days to keep
me company but I was ready to kill her by the last day. She may be 8
year old, but she's far from innocent. I overheard her telling my mum
she was going to get a motorbike when she was older – to which my
mum replied, “No chance!” My little sister then hit back with, “
well... i'll just wait till you die, then i'll go out and buy the
biggest motorbike I can find...” - she did have a fair point –
who could stop her.
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| My sis Orla... rascal |
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| Moscow 2013 |
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| Usain at the training track |
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| Stadium |
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| Mo Farah |
Moscow was a different experience
altogether. It's the first place I have ever been where I genuinely
haven’t been able to distinguish a single word or letter! The whole
alphabet is different which makes things extremely difficult trying
to manoeuvre your way through undergrounds and taxi's!
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| One of my favourite pictures from Moscow. |
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| Long huuuuuuur |
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| Water Jump Crisis |
My heat was on the first day of events
and to be honest – I had absolutely zero expectations on myself. I
thought if I could get a season's best time or near my personal best
– I would be happy. I was ranked close to last in my heat with 5
automatic spots and a further 5 fastest losers making it into the
final but knew I had an outside chance of scraping through. These
championships were so different to London last year. The stands were
pretty empty, there wasn't a huge atmosphere or the same media
presence. I was so calm and relaxed compared to London 2012 – where
I genuinely thought I was either going to pass out or start
hysterically crying. In hindsight, Deagu in 2011 was definitely too
early for me and London 2012 probably was too – it was a huge step
up in competition – whereas this year, I feel more confident
competing against these girls week in week out. In 2012, I ran
horribly 9.57 getting kicked out in the heats. In 2013, I have run
two personal best times 9.35, made the final and came 10th
with the top 6 girls being African. Fingers crossed I can build on
this towards Glasgow 2014.
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| Another pretty sweet picture from my heat. |
My heat went off pretty fast and I
managed to keep myself on the back of the front pack. For once in my
life, my barriers and especially the water jump were going really
well. I wasn't concentrating or focusing on them at all – I was
purely focused on making it into that Top 5 position. Hurdling the
water jump is definitely the right thing for me – I feel much more
confident doing it – knowing that my risk of over-stepping it or
slipping is a lot less! I couldn't see my time at the end but I was
told by Phil Jones from the BBC, seconds before my interview that I
had made the final. I still wasn't 100% sure and wanted to be fully
certain before I was excited about it. Running a Pb of 9.35 should
have been enough to make me smile – but I just felt I could of
pushed on a lot more in the middle K - had I realised I was on for a
personal best!
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| Ice bin! |
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| New pink Nike spikes! |
Thankfully, I had 2 days to try and
recover for the final. I wasn’t too sure how my leg would react to
two steeplechases in such a short amount of time – because I have
never raced in close succession before! In the final, I was a bit leg
tired and lost concentration on the middle laps again – before
picking it up over the last 300m. It was (technically – had I not
ran the heats), a personal best time of 9.37 and 10th
place – but I was genuinely disappointed. Eilish (circa 8 weeks ag)
would of punched Eilish (now), quite forcefully in the face had she
heard those comments. After the difficulties of this season, I really
shouldn’t be complaining about coming 10th in the entire
world – but athletes always want more – that is what makes us so
competitive! I honestly feel I have a sub 9.30 in me at the moment
which would move me closer to the top of the European Rankings. I
managed to loose concentration on the second lap after being spiked
(which has ripped my beautiful, brand new, pink Nike spikes –
almost cried), very sharply on the outside of my right ankle. My
ankle then started to feel slightly out of place every time I landed
on that foot which meant I began to change the placement of my foot
whilst I was running. I couldn’t stop focussing on my ankle rather
than the fact I was in the World Championship Final! It's just one of
those strange freak things that happen but maybe the thoughts in my
head were intensified due to the fact I was already carrying an
injury. I didn't mention this in my interview as I didn't want it to
come over as an excuse – as I can assure you won't ever hear an
excuse come out of my mouth!! Excuses definitely don't exist in my
coaches book's! I just wasn't sure how my ankle would be the next day
– but the bruised bone died down within a few days – phew! I do
now have another little scar to add to my growing collection.
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| Mascot... I think it's an owl? |
In the call up, approximately 8 minutes
before we were to go out to the track, they had the Men's 800m final
on the TV. Aman from Ethiopia, came through strong over the last 10m
to take the win – ethiopia's first ever gold medal over an event
shorter than 5000m. You would not believe the hysteria that caused in
my call room – 3 ethiopian woman screaming and shouting like little
girls who had just seen 1Direction – i've never seen anything like
it. These girls were about to run in the World Champs Final in a few
minutes, yet they were all crying, hugging each other, screaming,
hi5-ing – it really was amazing to see how much it means to them.
As a team, one gold medal means so much to everyone. Contrasting to
this, one of the other girls from a European Country sitting on the
call-room floor did one of the loudest farts I have ever heard in my
life and stunk out the entire room within seconds. This World Champs
was one to remember.
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| Red Square with Jess Judd |
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| Red Square |
After my final, I did get a few days to
become a tourist and sight-see around Moscow's Red Square – which
is genuinely unbelievable! It looks like something out of Alice and
Wonderland... bright, colourful, swirly buildings that looked like
they were edible sweeties. Everything is very expensive though –
especially taxi's. In other countries I have travelled too, even
without english you can work your way through things with some poorly
attempted sign-language and smiling – not in russia! Smiling
definitely doesn't get you very far! One of the guys on the team, put
some clothes down to laundry in our hotel, they came back costing him
£62!! £62 for some pants! Unreal... I quickly decided laundry
wasn't for me and washed my entire wardrobe in the sink and bath with
some shampoo I had. Big time.
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| Russian Dolls |
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| Nike strips |
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| Me and Jamie on our way to Nike |
The Crown Plaza hotel we stayed in was,
as you can imagine, pretty nice! At our Team GB holding camp in
Barcelona – the food was very basic and plain.... plain pasta,
plain chicken, plain rice with some melon and plain yoghurt for
desert. My training camp in Kenya offered a better selection! So the
food in Moscow (although it was just normal food) tasted like a 5
Michelin Star Restaurant to us! To be fair, breakfast in the morning
was genuinely amazing - everything you could possibly think of was
there. I decided to be sensible and wait till my race was over before
devouring every single pastry you could imagine. Every morning I
would continually see the American athletes with huge waffles – but
couldn’t work out where they were getting these delicacies from.
Typical me, on our last day in Moscow, to eventually find where the
waffles were being made! Probably a good thing though, otherwise I
would've had maple syrup sweating out of my pores by the end of the
week and turned into a huge pancake and waffle mess.
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| Dai Greene's map to Nike... Beautifully drawn. |
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| Red Square |
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| Laura and myself at Nike |
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| Moscow by night |
With my season still in full swing, I
returned aqua-jogging straight away. Motivation was definitely the
lowest it's been – I did find it difficult getting back into it
again after watching all the other athletes chilling out and taking
it easy for a few days. Ashton Eaton (Olympic and World Champ,
Decathlete, USA) and a few of the other American Athletes were all
playing on the slide in the pool whilst I aqua-jogged for an hour,
round and round, in the smallest part of the pool which happened to
be the deep end. It was approximately 3metres by 3metres! So
depressing – I was tempted to race them to the slide and sack off
my training for the day but... I am a geek and so continued wasting
my life away in the swimming pool. It also didn’t help matters,
swimming through warm patches of water, surrounded by children in the
pool – so suspect – I knew what they were up to! Rascals!
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| Laura, Hannah, Me |
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| Meghan, Sophie, Me |
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| After-party |
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| Hannah, Ashley and myself |
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| First 'Apple' branding shoes i've ever seen... too funny. |
I would also like to take the time to
thank the hundreds of people who sent me messages on Twitter and
Facebook – I really do appreciate them! They were all so lovely –
not one horrible message! (SUCCESS! Definitely an improvement to the
grilling I had after London...). I tried to take the time to reply to
every single one – so I apologise if some slipped through the net!
I would not like to thank o2 for my HUGE phone bill... Absolute
disaster. I definitely need to find a company with lower charges for
being abroad considering i'm away for almost half the year!
Nightmare.
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| Grand Central in Antwerp |
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| Antwerp |
For me, things are still all go! I
raced last night in Antwerp, Belgium over 1500m. It was a last minute
decision – and I mean last minute, as in, midnight the previous
day!! I have trained really hard all this week so didn't have huge
expectations – I just wanted to get a few shorter races in before
my last big race of the season – 3000m Steeplechase at the Brussels
Diamond League. I took the win but in a very slow time after some bad
pace-making. However, I did beat a Kenyan girl who has beaten me over
the steeplechase ALL year – 9.25 runner – so to me, that shows I
should be dipping under that 9.30 barrier in the right race! Antwerp
was definitely.... an experience. We were sharing a prison-like dorm
with 6 other girls. With 2 showers and no towels between us – it
definitely was different from other meets I have been to this year! I
am very grateful to be given the opportunity to race in a smaller
meet though as there are not many races left for this summer season!
A few girls from a small Japanese Team that were over competing, ran
up to me after my race to give me a 'present'. They handed me a small
'Japan Athletics' badge! So, so cute. I felt bad after realising I
didn't have anything to give them in return! But after their coach
saw 'MCCOLGAN' on my bag – he then clocked that perhaps Liz
McColgan, winner at the World Champs in Tokyo 1991, was perhaps a
relative of mine! He literally could not believe it was my mum! After
12 years – it is amazing that my mum still has that sort of impact
on people. To this day, she still receives letters and autograph
cards from people all over the world – but Japan is definitely the
most prominent. I gave one of the little girls my race number and
asked for a picture with the two of them!
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| Japanese girls |
I will make sure I take a very easy
week leading into Brussels Diamond League, in order to give myself
the chance to recover and (hopefully) run fast! I am also pretty
excited to read that Sean Paul is DJ-ing with Usain Bolt at the after
party. Eilish (circa 2005, aged 15) is disgustingly excited about
this – the first ever night club I went too (sneaky little
under-ager) played Sean Paul the entire night – so i'm sure it will
bring back some funny memories. I also wish I was Jamaican, so
hopefully i'll fit right in. I maybe need to sort out my dancing
though – as what I imagine it looks like in my head – is
definitely nowhere near as awful as it looks in real life. Maybe
someone can teach me how to Dutty Wine. I pray i'm not as bad as this....
My season will end after the New York
5th Avenue Mile on the 23rd Sept! I will then
go back to Scotland for a good 3 weeks to catch up with all my family
and friends as I haven’t been home since the end of March!! It will
be nice to chill out for once and not think about cross training or
racing! I had tickets for Kendrick Lamar in Glasgow – who I am
genuinely OBSESSED with – but had to give them up in order to
continue training in Loughborough! That evening in the pool was a
difficult one – but there were 9 Chinese student who joined me
aqua-jogging – so if i've started a craze as big as Tamagotchi's -
i'll be happy. Silver-lining an all.
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| Long hair... Don't care.. |
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| DEAD |
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| Start-line |
