The dance begins. Now is the time to enjoy myself. Time to swap long, exhausting training sessions for shorter, high-quality training sessions and competitions. The moment of truth has arrived- time to compete.
It has been a rather difficult season in every sense, perhaps the most difficult of my sporting career. Not making it to Rio 2016, preceded by some very hard months in which, for different reasons, my performance was well below what was expected, meant that mentally I went into a downward spiral and lost control of the first few months of the new season. This loss of control, in addition to its psychological and physical consequences, resulted in a catastrophic winter season.
At the end of the winter season, and after reflecting on what happened, I made the decision that it was time to make some changes. I started by changing my residence, returning to the family home, and then went on to change coaches. These changes made me rethink my objectives for the season. From that moment on I decided to start enjoying athletics again and to get back in good shape and try to make it to the World Championship.
The weeks passed, and I began to feel better by leaps and bounds. A change in the way I trained as well as a different approach to my workouts, coupled with a diet that made me lose about ten kilos, meant that when May arrived I felt better than I could ever have imagined, achieving personal bests in training at different distances, Improving my speed and strength and psychologically feeling one hundred percent better.
With this radical change, last Sunday 14th, I faced my competitive debut in this year’s outdoor season, at the international fair of L’Hospitalet, in Catalonia. I knew I was ready for a big competition, however a few things could affect the outcome – the long journey, the lack of a competitive pacemaker and my planning ( I had aimed at getting to peak fitness in mid-July for the World Championships).
The result of the competition was worse than expected. The strong wind against me, together with a few errors at the staring block in both the 100 m and 200 m races, meant that my times were below what I was aiming for.
Even so, the speed I obtained, especially in the 200 meters, confirmed definitively my presence in the World Championship that summer, to be held in July in London, being my third appearance in the World Championships.
From now on there are a few weeks during which I will have to improve certain aspects of my performance, especially at the starting block, with the aim of being able to compete against the top athletes in the world, for the fifth time in a row. As well as this, I will be taking part in several competitions – Alicante, Paris and Burgos among others. For all of this I have to thank my team and my sponsors. In a few week´ time I´ll travel to Madrid with the objective of putting in some intensive training sessions with my new coach.
The moment of truth has arrived. Time to enjoy myself.