Derval in knots ahead of northern exposure
What they did not reveal was the fact that she was going through a period of recuperation after a calf muscle injury threatened her participation in next month’s world indoor championships in Doha.
Yesterday she was focused on this weekend’s Irish national indoor championships at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast when she revealed the logic behind the ropes.
“Training-wise, things went really well through December,” she said. “But I had a pain in my achilles that I could run through and I ran on it for about three weeks. I got an ultrasound scan on it which showed up that I had a perfectly functioning achilles – that’s what the radiographer told me – so I kept running on it.
“Around Christmas I still had a lot of pain in it and I went for an MRI scan the first week of January. The fact that the ultrasound scan showed up negative almost depressed me because I was in so much pain and this guy was telling me my achilles was perfect.
“The same guy did the MRI scan and said ‘you could not have been running on this’ but I said I did it because I thought I was perfect.
“The tear was all I did so I am lucky. It is a distance runner’s injury so I have no idea how I did it. Because of that it is easier for me to sprint. I can’t jog a lap but I can sprint.
“I had a tear in my calf that was pulling on my achilles so I ended up taking 21 days with absolutely no running and then it completely healed.
“I did not really run in January. I was in the gym six days a week. I hurdled flat out from the blocks last night for the first time so Sunday’s race is going to come too quick for me because I have literally not hurdled since last September. The plan was to hurdle in January.
“I went to Portugal and my weights coach, Mark McCabe, came along with Sean (Cahill) my coach and because the two of them were there together they kept making up all those things – like I ran in ropes most of the time. Every time the girls were doing a running session I did exactly the same session but in ropes– so I trained really hard for all of January.”
She is confident the injury won’t affect her participation in the world indoor championships in mid-March.
“I would have thought tearing my groin last summer was a negative thing but then I came out and ran a personal best six weeks to the day I tore it,” she said. “It is very hard for me to know what will happen. I am lucky because I have Mark. He just adapts to things.”
The Odyssey Arena is something of a happy hunting ground for the Cork star. In 2006 she beat the world silver medallist before going on to win the world title in Moscow.
This time however she insisted she will be happy to get through the race in one piece and put down a marker.
“At the moment’s the only problem is my rhythm,” she said. “Right now I feel I could run an awesome 60m at the weekend but my coaches just won’t let me.
“All my strength tests are way superior to what they were last year and they are way better than what they were before the world championships in Berlin. The only thing I found difficult last night was the hurdling. I’ll be rusty as hell on Sunday.
“So long as I run my quickest races of the year in Doha and Barcelona then everything else in irrelevant. When I get into a final I just run like hell. I think no one can beat me when I get into a final. I look around me and I think ‘Oh my God, none of you are that good.’”
