Chris jets off to the sun for some quality training

Published 9 Jan 2010 11:00 0 Comments

WHILE Inverclyde shivers, top local athlete Chris Mackay jets off to South Africa on Sunday morning as he looks to consolidate and build his fitness ahead of next summer's 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Chris has been selected to travel to Potchefstroom on the South African Veldt as part of the Scottish Athletics squad, who are taking a small elite squad to this well renowned altitude training venue.

Set at almost 4000ft, 'Potch', as it's commonly referred to, will provide Chris with an ideal base to put in three weeks of quality training. This is particularly relevant at the moment, as Scotland sits under an Arctic freeze which has disrupted everyone's training over the last three weeks.

Selection for Delhi relies on Chris achieving the qualifying standard of 3.41.5seconds, which is just one second quicker than Chris achieved last summer. Hopefully this training opportunity will provide part of the impetus necessary to make this performance gain and create the platform to take Chris to the Commonwealth Games.

Chris, Inverclyde's best hope of an athletics representative in Delhi, will have a number of quality training partners on the trip. Also travelling will be Alistair Hay and Martin Williams, another two of Scotland's best endurance athletes, as well as athletes from a number of other national teams.

Chris's coach, Norrie Hay, commented: "This is a tremendous opportunity for Chris and, hopefully, he will gain maximum benefit during his time there.

"It is a great reward for his performances over the last two years and all the miles he has run in training, necessary to reach this level.

"He has made a number of financial sacrifices to make this trip and had to use his entire holiday allocation to be able to go, but it will all be worth it if he can achieve the qualifying time next summer."

Tweet

This article appeared in Greenock Telegraph 09 Jan 10

Post a comment

Your Comment:

Registered users log in here

Username or email

Password

You must be logged in to post. If you have not registered with us, please do so now.

Registration only takes a few minutes. Registered users do not have to complete word verification once logged in and can also take part in competitions and other registered user only features of the site.

Word Verification:
Enter the text as shown.

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our Sport archives.

Follow @greenocktele