Lack of progress frustrating for McCormick
Sep 2 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal
NICK McCormick ran a season's best 3,000m time at Gateshead, but the 27-year-old from Hexham has some soul-searching to do over the winter.
The distance runner is yet to kick on after shooting to prominence in 2005, when he ran the fastest 1,500m time by a Briton for five years. He has since stepped up the distances to 5,000m, but there is no hiding his frustration at his lack of progress.
McCormick ran 7mins 59.07secs in Gateshead’s 3,000m – his fastest time of 2009. But he spent the whole race at the back of the pack, trailing in 11th out of 13 finishers.
“I was not pleased with that at all, it was rubbish,” he said afterwards. “I just don’t know what happened, I didn’t run very well. I’ve had a good season up until now but I missed (last month’s World Championships in) Berlin because I was ill over the Crystal Palace weekend. I missed quite a chunk of training.
“I did some training at altitude training but I was a bit rusty because I haven’t trained for a while. I’m racing in Brussels on Friday, then I’ll probably run at Gateshead (in this month’s athletics “Ashes”) and Regent’s Park. I’m looking forward to getting things going.”
McCormick is back in action in Friday’s Golden League meeting but he admits it is over the winter when the hard work – and tough analysis – needs to be made.
“I’m 27 now and I want to be a lot further on,” he said. “I thought I’d be knocking on the door like Mo (Farah) is. 13.10, 13 minutes is where the world standard’s at (for the 5k) and I’m just not there at the moment. I’ve just got to go back at the end of the season and look at where things have gone wrong, where I can improve. I’ve got to start changing something, I’ve just got to work out what it is.
“I’m definitely running 5k, I just don’t know what it is in my training that I’ve got to work on. I’m doing everything well in training, it’s just not coming through in races at the minute. We’ll see.
“I’ve got to go back to basics a bit. It will take a bit of time but I think I’ll get there.”
NEW heptathlon world champion Jessica Ennis was given a rapturous reception last night as hundreds of people braved pouring rain to welcome her back to her home city.
Ennis, 23, told crowds in the centre of Sheffield she wanted to win more medals for the city where she was born and brought up after winning Britain’s first ever World Championship heptathlon gold in Berlin last month.
