The time has come. After a time of changes and uncertainty and one in which I have improved both mentally and physically, the decisive part of the season is here- the main competition starting on July 14 at the World Championships in London.
The season began, as I said a few weeks ago, with a few complications. My absence in Rio 2016, coupled with not achieving the results I wanted for several years in a row, meant that the first months of the season were an uphill struggle. This situation made me take the difficult decision to put the brakes on to stop and analyse the situation. Consequently, I made a series of decisions both personal and related to my team, with the sole aim of regaining my motivation and finding the right path again.
In order to carry out these changes the first thing that I had to be clear about was my objective. After much analysis and advice from different people around me, it was clear to me that my goal was the Tokyo 2020 Games.
But being such an immense goal, I had to plan a roadmap to lead me to that goal. This roadmap to my success was crucial. One of the things that was clear to me after failing to make it to Rio was the need to change my approach. In the past, the only objective I had was to make it to the Games at any cost. I put my whole life and being into achieving this, which put me under incredible pressure and eventually became something of a nightmare for me. This approach was wrong. To achieve an objective of such magnitude and therefore, to fulfil my dream, it is essential, at least as far as I am concerned, to have something more in life to fight for. It is so important to have other personal and professional goals, apart from your performance on the track, to take away some of this self-imposed pressure.
The plan was as follows –to have a clear goal – Tokyo 2020 – but without losing sight of the need to build that dream from the ground up, from the very beginning. So the strategy was to get rid of everything that had generated stress and excessive pressure, and in its place, start building again with the cornerstone being confidence and enjoyment of the work. To do this, we trained in San Javier and then ended the season with a month of extreme concentration and hard graft in order to prepare for the World Championships in CAR in Madrid that we had to eliminate at all costs, and start building, from the base of trust, the enjoyment of the road and the work. Therefore, this season we trained in San Javier, ending the season with a month when we focused on preparing the World Championship in the CAR of Madrid. Come September, we expected to see real changes in my performance.
Surprisingly, the results were soon to be seen. There was a radical change in me, both physically and mentally, and this, based on a major change in my training routine, led to me achieving, in a matter of weeks, my minimum time and with this, my classification for the World Championship.
After achieving this classification, we established a new short-term goal- to achieve the best possible time at the World Cup and, above all, to regain my passion for competing.
With this goal I start on my journey to Madrid, the final lap to the World Cup. I´d like to thank everyone who has accompanied me on this path. This is the beginning of something impressive. Thank you for being there at my side while I have been running after my dream.