Sophia with her trainer, Jonas Dodoo, preparing for the ITC World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand, Jan 2011
I am now well into my winter training in advance of the Paralympics next year. It would be a real eye opener for anyone from outside the elite sports world to be a fly on the wall at one of my sessions. For a kickoff, as an athlete on the World Class Performance Programme, I have access to the best facilities and coaches available. This includes a team of physios, doctors, dieticians, sports psychologists and what I would call medical innovation, specifically for my disability.
Unsung heroes
The team that I spend the most amount of time with are amazing. My coach from Lee Valley, Jonas Dodoo, oversees the programme to make sure that goals are set and achieved. I then train daily with Steve King for my track work, either in Horsham or Brighton. A couple of days a week I train with an amazing strength and conditioning coach – Adam Kann – at David Lloyd in Brighton. These are the unsung heroes of my performance who are putting in an enormous amount of work to ensure I reach my maximum potential.
First disabled athlete
For all my support team, who are each experts in their field, I am the first disabled person that they have worked with. They have all found it enriching and it has challenged their way of thinking about what is actually possible. The team have told me that working with a disabled athlete, facing very specific challenges, has had a positive impact on the coaching of 'normal' people. I think that they would all admit that they were reluctant and hesitant in the beginning but I hope that I have bought something special, additional, to what they do and to the able bodied athletes I train with.
The reality: learning to walk backwards
My actual training is so different to what people would imagine. A typical track session is spent doing drills to try and train my brain to understand what it actually needs to do to enable me to run. I will normally spend at least two hours a day 'learning' and it will usually take me four or five sessions of a new technique or movement before it is mastered. For example, I have only just learnt to walk backwards without falling. Similarly, I have taken nearly a year to learn to stand on one leg – and I can still only manage this on one side.
Here I'm using my perspex 'arm extender', which helps with my balance on the starting blocks
My limitations are the challenge
I spend very little time actually running. I have an unusual situation where my fitness exceeds my ability, so all the training work focuses on my ability. It is for this reason that I am still able to make significant improvements to my time because there is still so much to be achieved. A gym session for me is also a steep learning curve. I can lift weights in the same way that an able bodied person does, but the more dynamic weights work takes a lot of practice and many basic exercises that play such a vital role in running (such as a lunge) I have yet to achieve. I think this is why my coaches find working with me so exciting. If I can run 100m in 17 seconds unable to move one arm, hop, jump or lunge - imagine how quick I will be once those basic skills are mastered…
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