England Indoor Combined Events - A Bronze medal & a slippy shoe..

ENGLAND INDOOR COMBINED EVENTS CHAMPS 2022

 

2022 began with a bang last weekend as we headed to EIS Sheffield for the England indoor combined events champs. 

The last time we were here was in 2020 prior to covid turning the world upside down. 

Over the years this has been the traditional curtain raiser to the indoor season and never fails to deliver some top performances and shock results. I have coached a medallist in these champs every year since 2015 and the pressure was on Harry to deliver this weekend.

Anyone who knows Harry will know things are never straight forward and this weekend was no different. I have coached Harry since September 2014, how that came about is another interesting story that we will talk about in a future post.

Over the years its been somewhat of a roller coaster, with England & GB call ups scattered amongst some injuries, a few no heights and some fantastic performances in the USA at college.

Back to this weekend, you may have seen the videos on tiktok and insta but I will take you through the story you don't see on a highlights reel.

Prior to the champs training has been going really well. The outdoor season had finished early in 2021 due to a nasty elbow injury sustained at the British outdoor champs. We made the decision to start pre winter in September, 3 weeks of fitness and conditioning, before starting winter training in October. We made the decision to leave technical work as late as possible and not get into spikes until 5 weeks before the champs.

As outdoor season is the goal we have only just begun to work on some technical aspects of the events and that was pretty evident across the weekend.

EVENT 1 - 60M - This event has been a struggle in recent years. Although training has got better year on year, the results haven't shown it. This was the case again this weekend, a terrible reaction to the gun led to a bang average 7.27, not a disaster but again not a true reflection of where things are speed wise. Harry came through fit and healthy although a little pissed off and more fired up for long jump.

 

EVENT 2 - LONG JUMP - This is one of the events we haven't done as much work for, we are only 5 weeks into long jump work and have managed to get back to 12 strides. We made the decision to use the 18 stride run up under the thinking of 'lets see what happens'. The running on the runway as well as the jumping was actually some of the best he has ever done. However hitting the board was not something Harry was able to do and a 6.93 off the board was the result. Lets be honest the board isn't some magic springboard but I think its safe to say we left a chunk of points out there.

 

EVENT 3 - SHOT PUT - This one is a bit of a 'meh' event for Harry. He has had some awful shot put comps in the past and one of our goals has been to just sure up this event. He's now not going to bomb out with a 10 or 11m throw and that's a positive. The warm up was bad, really bad, but rather than panicking we figured it out and he came away with 12.48m his 3rd furthest ever and now we can be confident of that 12m+ baseline, we now have to push for 13m to close the gap on the other lads who are smashing this event currently.

 

EVENT 4 - HIGH JUMP - This event over the years has been an absolute nightmare. Harry has the ability to be a 2m+ high jumper but a lot of mixed coaching out in the USA and a lack of confidence has led to a few howlers. We have made big progress over the last year though and now we have a run up that works and last year jumped a pb of 1.98m. Warm up went great, everything looked good. He came in at 1.82 nice and easy, same again at 1.85m. Then came 1.88m and a few timing issues left it to a 3rd attempt clutch clearance to stay alive. After this we thought ok the difficult bit is done lets start again at 1.91m however disaster struck...Attempt 1 and on take off his foot slipped in the shoe, causing the knee to jar and the tendon injury of 2021 to resurface. This wasn't a huge injury but it was going to make jumping extremely difficult. We had a chat and decided he would take the 2nd attempt but any pain on the bend he wasn't to take off. Attempt 2 and 3 resulted in 2 run throughs and unfortunately that was it for high jump. A sore knee a slippy shoe and a loss of points.

 

EVENT 5 - HURDLES - Day 2 and the knee was sore but it wasn't weak or super painful so we were good to go. I love hurdles, Harry loves hurdles and this event at some point is going to produce some crazy results. Today was about being competitive and getting the job done. Harry again got a shocking start (we will fix this) but came through to take it in 8.31secs. Really happy with this and excited for what's to come. More importantly he was moving towards the medals and other than the knee was in one piece.

 

EVENT 6 - POLE VAULT - I bloody hate pole vault. The reason I hate pole vault is all down to Harry and today did nothing to change my mind. If you don't know, back in 2016 Harry was on for the euro junior score before no heighting in vault. In 2019 Harry no heighted in the vault at world student games. I still have PTSD but Harry is over it, he's confident, he's worked hard and he backs himself. He came in at 4.33 his highest ever opener, he knocked it off twice. I was stressed, his parents were stressed, but Harry was cool, he got it on the 3rd attempt, avoiding disaster and went on to get 4.53. Big shout out to his vault coach Mark, they work well together and I have no doubt there are some huge heights to come.

 

EVENT 7 - 1000m - Ok so 6 events down and we have Lewis out in front, from our Harry and Harry Kendall both almost tied on points. We knew at this point a bronze was likely, a silver possible and gold a tiny chance. We came into the weekend looking for 5400 points, a top 3 and a solid performance. All three goals were on. The race plan was to go out at a decent pace, follow Lewis then kick, the legs weren't there on the last lap but we had a go. Harry Kendall ran a stormer and pipped our Harry by a second or two and bronze it was. I have to say the gold and silver could not have gone to two better lads and I cant wait to see these three battle it out in future. 

 

So overall Harry came away with 5399 and a bronze, no pb's but lots of solid results.

 

I hope this blog wasn't too long and boring, but was a useful look behind the highlights reels.

Coach Slaus