Now that the Australian Masters Championships has concluded, that is the end of the 2021/22 season. Back in September I set out my aims as:

  • Break NSW M50 Country Championships records for 100m – 400m
  • Break NSW & Australian M50 records from 60m – 400m

With the exception of the 400s I managed to achieve these aims.

So what went well?

  • Consistently turning up at training. I missed very few track sessions when there was not a reason such as injury, work or family commitments.
  • Changing from solo training to joining the LWL squad. Solo training can be hard and the technical eye of Larry and Wayne is helping to tweak me technically. The changes are not radical but are ongoing.
  • Coming back from the Achilles injury and walking the tightrope of getting back to competition without hurting myself again.

What didn’t go so well?

  • I never got back to my pre COVID 2021 lockdown weight. I still consider myself about 5 kg over optimal racing weight. Working from home makes it too easy to slip in an extra snack or meal and the sessions missed tended to be the tempo sessions that would have helped trim down.
  • Achilles injury from December to January. Lost about 6 weeks. Moving from predominantly grass training to synthetic and also using the Nike Superfly Elite 2 shoes in training helped bring me undone. Should have spaced out the changes.
  • Weather. Not much that can be done about this. From Achilles recovery through March most competitions had headwinds and/or rain. Rain in the last 6 or so weeks has also made Adcock near unusable even for tempo training and meant that Mingara warm ups have been all done on the track where I would like to be on grass for most of a warm up. 

What is next?

A week of rest and recovery and push on for another couple of months while the body is going well.