Asda Athletes

I am now in to my Autumn building phase. Consequently I’m running lot’s of miles and doing strength work in the form of hills and core to build endurance and strength for the the tough cross country season! It’s hard and painful work but worth it as good results in the cross country season will set me up well for a great track and a chance of making the Great Britain squad for the European Junior championships! There are also some big cross country races I hope to do well – first race 13th of October in the Winchester Hampshire league – looking for a good start!!! :)

This is the video from the asda active fun day in July , enjoy :)

Photo above is myself handing olympic games maker baton to Richard Huntley, baker at the store, who himself is an international martial arts competitor and olympic torch bearer.

Last saturday I was in my local Asda Weymouth store,doing bag packing to raise funds for my training, travelling and competition expenses. I bag packed for local customers answering their questions about me and my sport, raising £111.13 in all!! :D Along side this I was supporting the tickled pink campaign in Asda. I dressed up in my commutnity life champion Sandy’s olympic volunteering and game makers stuff to publicise it as she was auctioning alot her olympic momentoes for tickled pink!
Also did alot of publicity photos for asda and had a great day! :D thanks to my mum and sister for helping bag pack!

In the first weekend of September I was running for Team Dorset in the Southern Athletics League division 2 final fixture. I ran the 2000metre steeple chase aiming to run 5.53 to go 2nd on the UK rankings as my training had been going great! However I had no one near my standard in the race so went for it running on my own from the start. I was on sub 6minute pace with a chance of running 5.53 with 2 laps to go but at that point the officials mucked up and sounded the bell a lap early so when I came up to the actual final lap I didn’t get told a time and continued to run despite the officials trying to stop me, spoiling my chances to run a quick enough time coming home in 6minute 3seconds which although still a very fast time was disappointing and very frustrating. After that I then ran a 53.1 second 400metre relay leg, a PB ,and our team came second. Team Dorset also came second in the fixture to keep us in Divison 2 ! :)

The following day I ran for my second claim club Poole A.C in the South West Athletics League. Firstly, I ran the 400metre hurdles I was on the shoulder of the leader coming off the final bend but kicked off the bend too hard and fast and the hurdle was in front before I realised so I ploughed in to it and went head over heals, I picked myself up and jogged in still in 2nd place in a time of 64 seconds but would have run sub 60seconds if I hadn’t smashed the hurdle! I then competed in the 800metre just missing out on the dip on the line in a tactical race to finish 2nd in 1.57. Finishing off with a 4×100metre relay . And Poole avoided relegation by the skins of their teeth to stay in division 1. It was a fun weekend with strong results :) sad that track season is over :(I had a week break after the competitions and now in to hard Winter training!

Above is a picture of me with my diamond league vest.

I competed in the under 20 invitational 3000metre race at the Birmigham leg of the diamond league towards the end of August. It was a fantastic experience warming up in such a high level environment next to the likes of MO Farah and Greg Rutherford , the latter asked if it was okay to use the lane I was in!!! ‘Of course!’ came my reply.. After warming up I went to the cool room, the length of time spent in the cool room was far longer than I had ever experienced before and the crowd was the biggest I had performed in front of too, capacity 20,000. Unfortunately tactically I placed myself at the back which with a regularly changing pace was not a good place to be and although I didn’t have my best race I still had a solid run finishing 11th. I took alot away from the experience such as delaying with the cool room which will serve me well in the future . After racing I got to watch the rest of the days action inlcuding Robbie Grabarz, Tyson Gay and other inspirational Olympic heros :)great day!