After the roaring success of last year's blog, I decided to take a bit of a break until the new year with the intention of enjoying another indoor season. I say enjoy, perhaps I should remember exactly how previous seasons have gone. I'm not sure why I thought 2018 would be any different, especially as November's pulled calf soon became December's pulled calf and I missed the opening 'Christmas Classic' as a result. Worse was to come. You'd think I'd be safe walking through town with my girls over the Christmas break, but no, I even managed to pull my calf again doing that, I blame Christmas shopping and the fact that it was keeping me from drinking. So as you can imagine, I was a little down going into the new year, down but determined to compete in the Welsh Masters Indoor Champs which were to be spread across the two Cardiff Met Grand Prix Open Meetings on the 14th January and 4th February.
Sadly the wheels were barely back on when I received the terrible news about our dear friend John Howe who died suddenly whilst on holiday over the new year. I use the phrase "our dear friend" because it seemed like the whole of British Athletics knew and loved John, such was his popularity. Mind you he was quite mischievous, as many will remember, so it was with tears in our eyes, at the indoor meeting, that we marked his passing. It was rather poignant that I was first up in the Pole Vault as that was usually John's prerogative. The competition actually went well, lifting my spirits some what and I finished 1st with 2.70m. I was also entered in the 200m and the long jump in addition to the vault and as you can probably work out, there wasn't a lot of training in my legs, they were probably more malted than anything. The long jump went my way, I managed to get three of the four jumps on the board and recorded 4.40m as a best - if you can call it that. That left the 200m. This was not going to be pretty, such niceties as endurance and speed were currently absent from my being, so I could see where this was going. I got a decent start but found myself adrift of the mixed age group field going down the back straight, so I "kicked" - nothing happened, so I "kicked hard" and slowed down coming off the final bend, and, oh, who's this waiting for me? Hello bear, is that your fridge.........
It took me at least a week to recover from that. Whilst things could have gone better, I was actually doing better than at the same time last year, which probably just underlines how bad things were in 2017. The vault was 5cm up at 2.70m and the 200m was over 1.3 seconds faster with 29.46, and 4.40m was 12cm further in the long jump.
A couple of weeks went by and I managed to put some training together without incurring further injuries. Even did some speed work and a hurdle session. Hurdles you say? Why hurdles? Well dipstick here entered the Indoor Pentathlon to be held in Lee Valley on the 25th February. I love multi's so this was to be the high point of my winter, a chance to meet up with my fellow loony friends who do multi-events, hence the extra work. In the mean time, I was also preparing for day 2 of the Welsh Masters Indoors, and also one eye on the BMAF champs in March.
The second day of the Masters arrived, and not being satisfied with just doing that I entered the vault in the Open Meeting as well as it was early. Having kidded myself I was fit, I spent the week prior to the event decorating my late mother's house ready to rent it out. This job became all consuming as one thing lead to another, like having to get it re-wired because some of the wiring had been done with lawn mower cable(!??!). Needless to say, 10 hours of decorating is not the recommended preparation for athletics, and it showed. The vault was a real struggle and I only got my opening height of 2.60m, my spring had sprung and my arms were aching before I even started. The 60m was next, God knows how I won that in 8.55, must have been down hill or something. My final event was the high jump, though I could tell there wasn't going to be much "high-ing" going on. True enough, came in at 1.25, got 1.30 and that was that.
The Welsh Masters over, and I'd pocketed 5 golds despite the trials and tribulations I set upon myself. So thus inspired, I stepped up the training and got ready for the Pentathlon. That's were things reverted to type. Thursday before the event, I was vaulting in Cardiff and going quite well, landing on the bed and clearing bars, when I managed to pull my right calf. It was bad enough to make me limp, so I had to withdraw from the weekend's championship at the last minute. I'd been picked for the English Masters Indoor Inter-Area Challenge to do the long jump for Wales, which gave me just 10 days to recover. I strapped the calf up tightly, iced it fervently, massaged it vigorously and anaesthetised it frequently using single malts. The main one consumed was actually English from the new Cotswolds Distillery. I may have mentioned this before, it's really quite good, flowery and toffee-ish. Quite drinkable especially if you like caramel and vanilla.
Anyway I made the start line on the 4th March with said calf duly encased and set about the long jump. The opener was OK at 4.28m, then I followed it with 4.35m, but the calf was complaining by now. Round 3 saw the return of the curse of the no-jump but it looked a bit longer. Final round and as I came down the runway I could feel the calf giving out, but we made it to the board, sank, and took off, got more height that expected and failed to land early ending up way down the pit! Unfortunately, the flag went red, but the officials measured it for me anyway at 5.05m - darn those big toes. Not sure where that came from, but if I could only fluke one again next week at the BMAF Champs.
The week was spent with the calf even more heavily strapped, with more vigorous massages and a fair share of single malts, well a couple just to be sure, but I couldn't risk training. I went down to London for the BMAF Indoor Champs fully expecting to have to drop out before even starting. Still, it all held together through the warm up, so we made it to the start line of the 60m. The shock was obviously too much. I lost concentration, the gun went, I discussed my next move, then decided to follow everyone else down the track. Surprisingly, it was a season's best of 8.53 by two hundredths, and no sign of trouble from the calf.
I had a couple of hours to the long jump, so I was fairly fresh when it came round. Even so I only risked one run through in the warm up, but it was spot on. The competition went well, six jumps on the board, but no fluked results. I did improve my season's best three times to 4.53m, but was annoyingly 4th again. Amazingly the calf had held, so I could come back for day 2 and do the pole vault.
I rocked up on the Sunday a couple of hours early and got steadily warmed up early, but despite this caution, I struggled to plant the pole with any great control, only making one clearance onto the bed with the practise bar. So, when the competition started, I came in at 2.50m, and failed to get anywhere near the bar on my first vault despite it feeling fairly good. Turned out the uprights were set 60cm too far back so they let me go again and I nailed it proper like! As it was their mistake, I'd officially only had one vault, though my legs begged to differ. 2.60m was cleared easily somehow on the first attempt, which was pleasing, definitely put that one in my diary. This was getting serious now, I was joint leader with Richard Phelan. Back to reality and I had 2.70m off, getting it nicely on the second attempt thanks to a well timed squirm, but that dropped me to second on count back. I opted for 2.80m as my next height, but Richard passed. First attempt and I almost broke my neck when I tangled with the bar and nearly exited sideways when the bar refused to let go of the upright. Second attempt was half decent, but still not close. Then I got my act together and actually got over 2.80m with the help of super glue holding the bar on. The next height got the better of the pair of us, neither of us really threatened it so I finished up winning with another season's best of 2.80m, which also put me top of the M55 Pole Vault UK rankings.
Celebrations all round once again, this time I had to open one of my favourites, Highland Park Dark Origins. I knocked back three or four of those smooth, heathery, sherry lashed beauties whilst watching Wales thrash the Italians 38-14 in the 6 Nations. It doesn't get much better than that!
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