June 2012 Archives

The London Legacy Development Corporation announced a key milestone today for the future of east London with the news it has won planning permission for its legacy masterplan.

It gives the green light to the development of 6,800 homes across five new neighbourhoods in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Meanwhile, with 30 days to go until London 2012 I have got my hands on some photos taken yesterday which show the Olympic Park in great shape ahead of the Games - see below.

Now all we need is the sun to shine...

In his final guest blog for me Jones Lang LaSalle consultant and British Olympic rower Alan Campbell talks about a training setback in which he capsized.

Saturday 9 June

Heart rate is 41 this morning. In the carpool and again the wind is looking strong, but when we arrive it looks just about rowable with the wind due to fade. The first session is a steady paddle in preparation for three high intensity training pieces in the second session. Having had a light second breakfast the wind doesn't look to be fading and the local sailing club is out in force loving the windy conditions. Not good rowing weather, but I don't want to do another ergo (indoor rowing machine) so it's out I go. I manage to cope fine but with 40 metres to go in my last piece, which is a flat out sprint for the line, I hit a big wave with one paddle pushing me onto the other side when I catch the next wave with my other paddle and within an instant I've capsized. Fifty days to go to the start of the Olympic Games and I capsize. It was over a year since I last capsized, but I was being a poser and deserved it. It happens to the best of us, but at least it was only training. I get rescued as the wind is dragging me away from the bank and the bigger boats are struggling with the conditions too. I get back on land to huge cheers and roars of laughter, ego dented. Getting home I tell Jules (my wife) who makes me walk it out in the remaining light of the day at Richmond Park. Bed by 9:30pm.

Sunday 10 June

This morning it's only a single long distance steady state paddle wrapping up by 10am. On the way back in the carpool we decide to drop by Dorney Lake; the venue for the rowing at the Olympics. In my mind by far the best rowing book ever written and sports biography is 'Assault on Lake Casitas' by Brad Alan Lewis. In the book he talks about a recce to the Olympic lake for the LA games in 1984 before competing there. This was our assault on Lake Dorney. It is one of the last times anyone will be able to get access to the lake as there was a triathlon running. We wanted to see the grandstands that are taking shape and marvel at the 90 metre high tower that will dominate each end of the course to mount a moving camera in a zip wire between them. It looked very different to how we'd seen Dorney look before. Having scoped the lay of the land I get home to Jules who's made head way into reducing all the excess clothes and stuff we had accumulated over the years. This then dominated the rest of the afternoon. This is all in preparation to accommodate the 60 kilos of Olympic kit I'm due to pick up in a fortnight's time. There is kit for every eventuality and occasion plus cuddly toys; it's like the conveyor belt from the generation game. A little bit of Chinese cooking to finish off a big week. Bed by 9:30pm.

And so to the following week and I'm off to Munich, for the final World Cup regatta before the Olympics. No two weeks are alike. The last week was quite a unique one with having my place confirmed for the Olympics, lifting some big numbers, capsizing and taking in a recce of the Olympic course. This week will account for just two seconds of my final on 3rd August 2012.

A less desirable element of being an Olympian is regular, unannounced visits from drugs testers, at all hours.

In his latest blog for me, Jones Lang LaSalle consultant Alan Campbell talks about being woken up during a late night visit from testers.

Thursday 7 June

I'm onto the doctor at 6:30am reporting that my heart rate has returned to 42 and throat feels fine. Having listened to my body's subtle signals and rested I've managed to avoid anything more serious. I drive myself to Caversham and as the weather is miserable Bill (my coach) keeps me inside for a controlled ergo with one of the physiologists taking a blood sample to see how much lactic acid I produced. I get a figure of 1.2 which is perfect. Anything under two was all I needed to show I'm in good shape.

A second breakfast of porridge and then Bill and I head to Bisham Abbey for more strength weights. Alex, my strength coach, really pushes me to load up the weights to my limits causing me to fail on a couple of the squat reps, I went down but didn't come back up and the bar crashed onto the safety bars of the squat cage. Pride dented I hit back with a new personal best on the bench pull of 112.5 kilos. Sandwich and two pints of milk in hand I make my way to Wimbledon for 2pm to see Kate my Bowen Technique practitioner. I met Kate at my boat club in 2002 when I helped coach the weekday ladies group, she offered to give Bowen in return for coaching. I've always found it to be a non-evasive alternative to sports massage, the last thing I wanted was someone trying to strip my muscles having just lifted big. I highly recommend it.

I get home crash on the sofa and catch up on some trash TV waiting for Jules, my wife, to get home. She calls on her way back and I can tell that she's tired probably from my snooze alarm so I make the executive decision to go to Fanoos, our local Persian restaurant for the finest challow rice and lamb cutlets. There's no wine but a jug of water. Home and at 9pm I'm again thinking of bed. Starting to drift off I get a rude awakening of a knock at the door. It's the drugs testers at 10pm - a more regular occurence than I would like, but I'm a professional athlete and this is just part of my vocation. Filling out the forms I have to down three pints of water to try and coax my body into peeing again. It's 11:20pm by the time they leave and I'm back in bed.

Friday 8 June

Surprisingly I'm up with the second alarm, heart rate 42. Meeting up with my carpool buddies it's clear on the drive to Caversham that it's going to be too windy today to row on the lake. Driving in the gate we can already see the white horses on the water and a few keen beans on the ergos (ergometers or indoor rowing machines) already. Having spent whole training camps this season just on the ergos, usually at high altitude, the last thing I want it do is spend more time on them but the lake is not rowable. We blast through the two sessions and I pull a big score on the second and the blood scores again are good. I'm home by 2pm and I'm straight to bed. It's 6pm by the time I'm awake again. Tonight is my favourite dish of Jules', "Poor man's Carbonara". It is pasta bacon heaven! By 10pm I'm fast asleep again.

Tuesday 5 June

At 6:37am the alarm has run through four snooze cycles, heart rate 41. Bananas and milk for breakfast today and it's weights at Bisham Abbey again. This morning I'm on the dead lift and having reached 202 kilos the rest is mostly core strengthening. Onto Caversham and I feel like I just have to grind out the next two sessions. I didn't appreciate the added bungee for resistance training in the last session before heading home at 3:30pm where Jules is waiting still enjoying the last of the bank holiday.

Grabbing a cereal bar we head to Richmond Park to feed the ducks and a slow walk. Dinner is a delicious bowl (or two) of creamy chicken pasta finished off with Rice Krispie squares that Jules (my wife) made during the day. By 9:00pm I'm getting into bed.

Wednesday 6 June

My waking heart rate is 49, seven beats up on what it should be and it feels like I've swallowed a golf ball. At 6:30am I'm on the phone to the team doctor and driving myself to see her at Caversham at 7:40am. It isn't serious but I'm sent home to rest up. This is really unfortunate as it was also the official Olympic Team announcement day of the rowing squad held by Windsor Castle. Sitting at home it suddenly dawns on me that I've been selected to represent Great Britain at my third Olympics as I answer calls from journalists present at the announcement. Black tea and plain toast seems to be doing the trick. By the time Jules walks through the door having been at work in the city I've cooked up my once annual food contribution of chicken noodle stir fry. She went back for seconds so I treated it as a huge success and my golf ball has reduced to a pea.

British rower and Jones Lang LaSalle consultant Alan Campbell has written a guest blog for me about how his training has been going for the Olympics.

In the latest entry, Alan, who is sponsored by JLL, talks about an early start for training after the Queen's Jubilee and a slap-up feast with the best athlete he knows - undefeated Paralympian rower Tom Aggar.

Monday 4 June

The alarm runs through its third snooze before I can bring myself to jump out of bed at 6:28am having taken my resting heart rate of 42. Yesterday was my third to last day off before the Olympics yet I feel like I could stay in bed until the start of the Games. The Jubilee celebration and the Thames river pageant I watched on TV are a distant memory. I grab a bowl of cereal and an extra glass of milk as I've got strength weights. I get collected from outside of the house by one of my two carpooling buddies from the men's sculling team for the journey to Bisham Abbey near Marlow, to the English Institute of Sport national training centre. This is also a good opportunity to try and gee each other up for the onslaught of what we're about to put our bodies through. At weights the strength coach has set me up my own individual programme as my coach Bill (Barry) wants to target building up more leg strength. Warming up starts at 7:30am and by 8:00am I'm hurting as the squat bar has another 10 kilos added taking it up to 145 kilos for another five reps. This continues on through bench press, bench pull and leg press with auxiliary exercises in between. By 9:10am I'm chugging down a pint of milk whilst heading to the Redgrave and Pinsent rowing lake at Caversham, just outside Reading. At 10:30am it's on the water for 16km steady pace, working on distance per stroke.

Lunch and it's beef madras which after 90 minutes of rest still continued to repeat on me all the way through the hour - ergo not the best feeling as it was particularly warm in the gym. Still, I pulled a decent split and at 3:45pm I bail on my two carpoolers as I'm heading to the Paralympian single sculler Tom Aggar's house, in Maidenhead, where Jules (my wife) and his wife, Vicky, are cooking up a storm. Having shared the same wedding day, by complete chance, we then discovered we ended up taking our honeymoons at the same resort in St. Lucia last year. We've been great friends ever since.

Having worked our way through a colossal mountain of meat we talk about the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics comparing notes and previous experiences. Tom is by far the greatest athlete I know, he's never been beaten - ever! 8:30pm and bed is calling, so it's home time and by 9:45pm I was fast asleep.

British rower and Jones Lang LaSalle consultant Alan Campbell is a medal hope at the London 2012 Olympics in the men's single sculls competition.

The 29-year-old, who is sponsored by JLL, is currently locked in an intense training schedule with the Games now just 42 days away.

In what little spare time he has been able to find though, Alan kindly agreed to write me a guest blog to give an idea of what it is like to be in training for the Olympic Games.

Here is his first entry:

Olympians are some of the most patient people you'll ever meet. I sometimes don't feel like it as I can get quite frustrated trying to improve the smallest aspect of my sport, but these small aspects add up to produce the personal best performance you can give at the Olympics; that once-in-every-four-years opportunity to produce an outstanding result. Just looking at my own event, the men's single scull, the final race will last around 6 minutes and 40 seconds: 400 seconds in total. During the four years leading up to the race I will have covered over 36,000 km, 800 hours of weight training and 400 hours of cross training. So for each of those 400 seconds in the final race I will have done over 11 hours of training. That's a ratio of 39600:1. Olympians are patient people. Now, there will be a few of you crunching the numbers and over the four years all that training works out at only three hours a day. I'm not going to try and engineer a typical week and try and ham it up for theatrical effect, but just plainly give you my week as it happens. After reading it, tell me if you think I only clock in a three hour day.

Check back in on Monday to find out more about Alan's training.

This is a brilliant video showing how the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London has transformed over the past nine years. Enjoy.