Back from the training
Posted on the 30.10.2011 by Michel Brent
Last Thursday, the 4x400m group which has been in Iceland with Alain Hubert for a special psychological training came back in Belgium. According to the athletes, it was a quite difficult but also a very profitable experience.
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The idea was simple : Jacques Borlée wanted to find a special occasion (exercice) to render the ties between the members of the 4x400 m belgian team harder and stronger.
Nine months before the London Olympic Games, the trainer considers that -in that discipline at least- the Belgian athletes will have to play a master role in the competition. So the idea was simple : ask the belgian explorer Alain Hubert to accompany the team in Iceland and to organize on the icelandic plateau a trek to cross it together.
In such an adventure and due to the fact that the weather over there is changing all the time -and changing rather rapidly-, nobody ever knows what the field conditions will be. The first night of the trek, that was it : as soon as the team has been dropped on the ice, the athletes had to weather a heavy storm. The next day, too much wind and too much snow accumulation. Result : Alain Hubert took the decision to keep the team inside the tents for the all day.
The next day -day 3-, the weather was ok again. So, happy to be able to move ahead for the first time, the athletes start to ski so rapidly that Alain had to calm them down. At night everyone was wet. At the end of the day 4, the wind was so furious that 6 or 7 people were barely enough to pitch the tents.
Nevertheless the difficult circumstances of that raid, everyone seems to be quite happy with that original experience. The group is stronger than ever and who knows, some of the belgian athletes, being waiting for the baton on the london track in few months time, will remember that one day, they gave eachother their word to give everything they have to go as fast as they can.
The 4x400m group back from Iceland
© Belga
