Friday 12 August 2011

World Championship Selection



So a couple of weeks ago we had our National Championships and World Championship Selection Trials in Birmingham. I had been looking forward to the competition for a couple of weeks (since my last race had gone pretty well), and had a couple of decent runs in the heats and semi-finals. I felt like I was ready to run well in the final, and give a good account of myself to try and get selection for the Worlds in the 100m. However, as I got onto the track ready for the final, disaster struck as I got cramp in my hamstring. I couldn’t get rid of it, and so, not wanting to risk injury, I decided not to run. It was a difficult decision to make, not running in my biggest race of the year, in hindsight I feel like it was the right decision to make.

A week later, and feeling much better, I raced at the Aviva London GP in Crystal Palace. Again, I had a pretty solid run, running into a slight headwind, and I was only 0.05 off making the final. In a world-class field like that, I didn’t feel like it was a terrible result.

Two days later was the World Championship selection meeting, and whilst I still had hopes I would get selected in the 100m, I knew that it was more likely that I would just get selected in the 4x100m relay. And that is what happened – so now I am off for three weeks in Korea. Hopefully I will be able to come back with a medal in the relay, which will be a massive positive going into next year.