Different puzzles, same goal: How do track & field athletes plan out a world championship season?
The best track and field athletes in Canada will be in Ottawa this weekend with the goal of earning their place at September's World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
In theory, it all seems so simple for athletes: the nationals are in your competition calendar, so just make the travel arrangements, plan your training schedule, and show up in peak shape.
But in practice, it's like spinning plates — Canadians have a multitude of events all over the globe and an incredible amount of logistics that accompany that schedule. Athletics Canada throws coach Richard Parkinson says balancing training and logistics is "like getting a 3,000-piece puzzle and not having all the pieces."
One of the athletes Parkinson works with to piece that puzzle together is two-time world indoor champion, and four-time national champion in women's shot put, Sarah Mitton.
"At the beginning of the year, we sit down and we start with the yearly training plan. Sarah and I work as a team. It's coach-led, athlete-focused, and in Sarah's case — because we've worked so closely together for eight years or nine years now —it's more of a collaboration, more of a team [effort]," Parkinson said.
Parkinson and Mitton begin with the key, major competitions that they want her to have "peak performance or have performance-on-demand at."
"This year, for instance, was the world indoor championships and outdoor world championships. Those are the two big key dates," Parkinson said. "Then we fill in the [next] priorities ...which for Sarah, would be the Diamond League meets."
The planning process for a new season can begin as soon as final major meet from the following year finishes. For Parkinson, that means vacation time also includes a healthy amount of calendars and meet research.
"Last September, I go to the lake and I'm on the dock with the computer and I'm writing the plan around hitting world championships [and] world indoor tour, because those are money [and] income meets for Sarah," he said. "Then we go to world outdoors, but then I've also got to plan the five Diamond League meets."
Navigating a rookie seasonThat's how a veteran approaches the season — a high world ranking helping lock down invitations to key meets, allowing early planning and knowing when they need to be at their competitive best. For rookies, there are no guaranteed spots in Diamond League start lists, and the process to map out a season of competition looks much different.
Canadian sprinter Audrey Leduc signed with Adidas this year, so she's just starting her foray into scheduling a full season of pro meets. That means she's new to the scene and needs to be more flexible when it comes to invites.
One of those invites came just days before she was to leave for her first European trip as a pro, and it was an offer she couldn't refuse.
"[At the] last minute, the Diamond League said 'we have a spot,' maybe…like two days before I was leaving for Europe. They said 'we have a lane' so I was like, 'OK, I'm going to enter the Diamond League,'" she said.
"You need to be adaptable, but you need to also consider that you have big meets coming up like nationals, like world championships … it's a long season so you need to think about which meets you want to do and don't overdo it."
However, 26-year-old from Gatineau, Que., also needs to balance that willingness to race with only accepting meet invites when her body is ready to perform. Leduc said it's a "tricky" balance to strike – she wants to show that she's interested in taking invitations and competing, but can't risk accepting an invite when her body isn't ready to perform at a peak level.
"If the Diamond League is calling, and you're like 'well, where is it, how fast can I get there, and how good am I going to be ready to run?'" Leduc said. "If you're in a block of training and you're in the middle of it, I don't think I will be able to say yes because I might be on load.
"If you're on load and you're going to compete in a Diamond League, and you don't perform well, they might not invite you back."
Canadians face tough travel scheduleTravel time is also a major factor for Canadian athletes, as the bulk of the meets and prize money, are in Europe. When they're overseas, the full team that help athletes maintain their peak condition and recovery, like physiotherapists and massage therapists, stay behind. Leduc has improvised where she can, but it's another hurdle to clear when planning a competition schedule.
"It's a bit difficult [when] you don't have your team ... because you're asking a lot of your body, but you don't have the same treatment that you have back home. But you're expected to perform on the track, so you need to find ways to make your body recover," Leduc said. "I have cups [for cupping therapy] and I have compression boots, I have a lot of stuff that can help me just recover on my own."
Parkinson says some higher-level meets offer access to treatment professionals, but there is a level of unfamiliarity when doing body work on a pro athlete.
"The Diamond League does provide some support staff for physio[therapy], but you don't know them until you get to use them. We're at that stage where we need to find something, because most of the massage and physio people like that do travel for meet to meet with a Diamond League," he said. "So we've got to get more familiar with some of those practitioners. You've had a bad massage, you've had a good massage, right?
"You want to go to that person that you had a good massage with [because] we just don't want to risk having a bad one."
Parkinson recalled that the shoe was on the other foot for some women's shot putters at the Prefontaine Classic this past June.
"The women from Europe come to Oregon — which is even a little bit of an extra step for them because it's not on the East Coast — and they were like, 'oh, boy, the travel is exhausting.' We said, 'yeah, try doing it eight times a year.'
"We kind of chuckled, and they got a sense of what Sarah goes through or any of the other Canadian athletes that go back and forth so many times for these meets," Parkinson said. "That's why we try to connect the meets so that when we go over[seas], you aren't just doing one-offs and coming back, that you go over [and] you've got a few in a row."
Plans not set in stoneParkinson and Mitton recently had a wrinkle added to a planed grouping of overseas meets near world championship time. A meet in Beijing offering dual benefits of high-level competition and good prize money is now up in the air.
"Now I'm finding out just yesterday that they have suspended invitations to all athletes and the meet might be cancelled," Parkinson said. "So what do we do to fill that gap between Zurich and going to Tokyo? That's a big gap...so I talked to Sarah's agent, and I'm scouring...the World Athletics website for sanctioned competitions.
"I'm having to be flexible, and then also the athlete, she has to learn to be flexible [about] where they have to be."
It seems that the only consistent plan for any track and field athlete is planning to be flexible.
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