Sally McLellan BLOG

Well here i am again in my base camp waiting till thursday when i am travelling off to brussels to run in the next leg of the diamond league.

I have had a very good season this year. i have won 2 our of the 4 competitions that i have competed in and the other two i have place 2nd and 3rd,not bad for someone who is coming back from a back injury that ruled me out of the second half of my season last year.

It has been two weeks since i raced in London. The weather was terrible there it as raining so hard about an hour before i had to run and the rain came streaming into the indoor facility where everyone was warming up, it was an amazing sight. The rain stopped just before it was time for my race thank goodness. There were heat and finals for my event so i was really looking forward to another good hit out. I raced well in heat to win in a time of 12.66 and came 2nd in the final in a time of 12.61. I was really happy that i was able to back up for 8 days with 5 races and still produce quality times like that. somehting that i would not have been able to do last year.

Now it is onto the final of leg of the diamond leage competitions and i very much looking forward to it. I am feeling fit and fast and ready to race.

talk to you after the race
sal.

Well i think that i have had a very good weekend at the office. i achieved goals that werent set until the end of the season with times under 12.6 seconds which is world class hurdling. my first race was in stockholm, there were two heats then the final at 9.19pm. i was in heat 2 in lane 2. I didnt get out of the blocks that well which is usually my strongest part of my race. I then had to play catch up to put myself in a good position to make the final which was top 3 then next two fastest times made it through. I didnt want to get the two fastest times, i wanted to make it through in top 3. i made it, third with a new season best of 12.70. Time for the final i drew lane seven which was the lane i drew last year in the final and came fourth with 12.64. i was very ready to run and very excited to be there. I wasnt sure on where or what time i was going to run all i knew was that i was ready. i walked out into the stadium to a roaring crowd, the sun shining and i was ready. i put my game face on and i focused on getting that start perfect. i came out of the blocks first and lead all the way to the finish line and with a time of 12.57. i couldnt believe it i wasnt shocked about the win becasue i knew that i could achieve that, i was more shocked about how fast it was. I havent run that quickly for over a year since my back problems.

i was then due to fly out to switzerland the next day to race on the sunday in one of my favourite place in the world. my body was very sore and tired from racing in stockholm but i was determined to race and run well becasue i knew i had physio on monday when i got back to my base in cologne. i warmed up and felt quite tight but as i kept pushing thrugh my warm up my body was feeling better. Time to race. i had no idea what to expect in this race i just wanted to win. i crossed the finish line in another time under 12.6 of 12.59. i was more shocked with that time having backed up 48 hours after stockholme i was thrilled and so was my coach.

i am now back in cologne doing a little training before i head to run in london at crystal palace. I won here last year and am hoping i can repeat the feat.

anyway must be off have to refuel my body with some lunch.

Hi Everyone,

Well its almost time again to take off my sweats and put on the spikes to get ready to run fast. I leave for stockholm on thursday afternoon and race friday night. I am feeling very ready to race this time. My body is in really good shape and i am feeing so quick.
My trainig is going really well. It was nice to have two weeks after monaco to get settled in and do some quality training.
It has now been two weeks since i have been away and for the whole time the weather has been horribly cold and raining almost everyday. The faciltity that i am training at has an indoor track and i am so lucky to be able to train on it, although, there is not much air in there and i am feeling myself getting light headed some times.
Anyway ill be able to talk more after my race, so until next time.
sal.

wll i have been over here for exactly a week now and it has flown by. I race in monaco on the 22nd july and raced really well i got third in a time of 12.76. I am really happy with how i raced and all i need to do now is get race fitness and the girls will never catch me. I came out of the blocks first with the fastest reaction time and stayed in front for most of the race it wasnt until about hurdles 6 when they came over the top of me, so that is why i am very happy with my first race back on the scene.

i am now at my base in cologne. The day befoe we arrived the sun was out and the temperature was about 36 degrees the day after when we arrived the clouds came over and the temperature dropped to about 19 degrees and has remained that way since the 23rd, talk about coming over here for the warm weather!!!! anyway i am still having a great time and training is going very well.

anyway bet be off have to go to trainning.

P.s i am trying to put photos up butdes not seem to be working at the moment, i will do my best and keep trying.

talm to you soon.

Well it is that time again when i have to pack my bags and head to the glorious world of international athletics.
My first stop is a place where the rich and famous anchor their million dollar boats and cruise the streets in nothing less than a ferrari. This place i call Monte Carlo. I have been to this place twice before and have broken my australian record also twice.

I have decided to come into this season with a different mental attitude. Now it may seem like this attitude would be easy to come by, but you would be wrong, for an athlete this attitude will have been lost when they have a sniff of succes and realise they want more and more. This attitude that seems hard to come by is called “fun”. I raced on the weekend at a little local club and i decided to practice this new thought process, i ended running a new personal best in the 60m and racing really well in my other events. I havent felt that good since i last raced at a high level competition since the world championships. I spoke to my coach and we both believe that this thought process will be one of my main focuses when i leave for europe tomorrow.

I have also been doing some Promotional events such as going to the titans vs broncos game, i also went to country victoria in gippsland to launch the new Pro race in woodside.  I am the ambassador for this event that will be held on the 18th of december and i will be racing.

anyway I’d  better get back to packing and getting myself ready for tomorrow.

have fun and the next time i will be talking to you will be in monaco.

sally

Well i had my first race last week, it didnt go all that bad even though i didnt place well, the time i ran wasnt that bad.
Here is what went wrong that didnt help my positioning at the competition.
Everything was going well until i actually got to New York. The Night i got there that is when it all started to go bad.

10.30pm i went to sleep on Wednesday night
4.30am Thursday Morning woke up, got up out of bed about 7.30am and went the Gym
9.30am went for a walk around central park then down 5th avenue,
1.30pm went to training,
7pm Had a Nap
8pm woke up and felt worse so decided to go back to sleep, slept quite well until…
330am Friday morning i woke up,
7.15am, got up out of bed had some breakfast, went for a walk around time square
11AM had a 4hour nap thought it would be a good idea then i could go to bed late that night and have a good night sleep, how wrong was I….
3pm woke up was wide awake.
10pm started to get tired. Fell asleep. Woke up an hour later and stayed awake all night
8am Friday morning, got up had some breakfast
9am went back to bed. Slept for 3 hours
12pm got up had a shower
1.30pm caught the bus to go to the track to get ready for my competition.

So that was my trip that i did not have planned. As you can see there was not much sleep happening but a lot of awake time staring st the ceiling in the bedroom.

Considering all this i ran 12.83, placed 8th unfortuantley. I did have the best reaction time out of the blocks than any of the other girls in the race but my blocks slipped so i could not use the power that i had penetrated off the blocks.

while all of this did happen to me i still love New York it is on of my favorite place and i still had a blast and took some photos for you all to see.

I head to Europe in a month and i am sure that i will not have a problem like this again.

till next time
sal

Oh I just cant wait till I get to new york. I am so excited it is going to be my first hurdles race since world championships. In 2 weeks time I will know just what sort of shape i will be in for the season coming up.

Just recently I have been doing some media for the commonwealth games. Two weeks ago I went to Sydney for a television shoot that will feature on the opening credits everyday for the commonwealth games, then just recently I went to Sydney again to do a photo shoot for womens health magazine that feature women in sport and will be in the october issue for the games. While I was in sydney I went to the AXA headquarters in the city to visit the staff and had a chat to them about my training and up and coming competitions, we had a great time.

I will hopefully be visiting the Brisbane head quarters to meet the staff up there soon. I do have some photos from my trips but they seem to be taking a while to down load so I will have to attach them at a later date sorry about that.

until next time have fun.

love sal.

Well it has been a little while since my last blog. I have recently won the queensland athletics feamle athlete of the year, it is called the cathy freeman award. I was really excited to win this award for the second time in a row. It means a lot to me when your own sport can recognise our achievements for what we do.

In about 3 1/2 weks ill be heading off to New York to run my first hurdles race since the wold championships. I am not quite sure how i am feeling about it. I have only just started back at hurdling so i guess my confidence level needs to raise a little higher before i head over but i dont think that i will have any trouble rasing the bar for my first comp.
I absolutley love New York it is one of my favourite places to go and see and now i get to race there for the second time in my career. I have a good feeling about racing. I think becasue i havent been able to race for so long now that my adrenaline is really going to be pumping.

until next time everyone.

have fun
sal

Well I have arrived back from a very relaxing and fun honeymoon in LA and Hawaii. We had an amazing time over there. The weather wasn’t the best but we didn’t mind. Now I am back and ready to train and get back into business. I started training on Tuesday afternoon and I could not believe how sore I was the next day, I have never been so sore after starting back but it was good to get back into a routine again and come back to normal life.
My coach and I sat down again to discuss my European season and we are very happy about it. We have decided to start a little later this year as the Commonwealth Games are so late in the year. I am going to head over to Europe in late July and the one person who is most happy about that is my husband. The reason being is that l will actually be here for his birthday which I haven’t been for about 3 years now. I better make it good for him.
Back to Europe, I’ll be starting off in Monaco one of my favourite places to compete in the world. I’ll keep you posted on where I’ll be after that like I did last year. Before I go to Europe I will be going to New York in eight weeks time to run my first race since the world championships last august. I am so excited that I am jumping out of my skin, not only because it is my first race but also because I absolutely love New York it is one of my favourite cities.
Well since I have been back I have caught up with some AXA people on the Gold Coast at Sea World. It was so much fun. First we watched the dolphin show then I signed some autographs and then my jet lagged hit me. I had to leave early and fell straight to sleep. Earlier in the afternoon I did an interview up on stage in front of a couple hundred AXA people with one of their comedians that they had invited to come, he was a lot of fun which made it easier.
Anyway I will talk to you soon and let you know how my training is going before I go to New York.

here are some phots from the honeymoon

I am now sitting in the qantas lounge waiting to board a flight to sydney to go to LA for my honeymoon, woohoooo i am so excited and i cant believe that i will be going to disneyland this afternoon LA time, That is so weird. They are 18 hours behind us so i will be arriving in LA 1 hour before i leave Australia, i believe that will be good for my jet lag so that i dont go straight to sleep.

anyway better get back to it talk to you later
sally