The Australian job – Chris Walker-Hebborn trains on the Gold Coast
Chris Walker-Hebborn is a British swimmer and JBC sponsored athlete who previously competed for Great Britain in the 2012 London Olympics. He is currently at the British Offshore Centre in Australia where he is preparing for his upcoming sports year. 2016 promises a busy few months of competing, especially with the Rio Olympic Games fast approaching. Chris shares his Australian experience exclusively for JBC Nutrition customers.
We have been out here on the Gold Coast in Australia for a six-week training camp, and we are now entering our last week before flying back to the very different, cold and wet UK. I absolutely love this country and I was thrilled to be back. I was lucky enough to spend two years here in 2007-2008 and I’ve previously had the chance to train and study at the Southport School before this trip so it’s not a completely new experience for me.
The reason for having this training camp is to make sure we get an un interrupted block of training under our belts without battling the winter illness' that fly around in Britain during the winter months, especially when training at a potentially cold infested university. The last thing we want this close to competitions is time off due to illness so we try to avoid this situation as much as possible.
Our time here consists of swimming, sleeping, eating and the occasional racing. A typical day usually goes something like this: up at 6:30 for breakfast, training from 8-10, followed by a gym session, after this its time to refuel and nap. Once I'm awake again, it’s usually lunch time then back off to the pool for another two-hour session, followed by dinner and much needed sleep to recover. The days here have been pretty intense and we’re all working very hard to make sure that we’re ready for the coming months.
If we do get a moment to ourselves, we do our very best to go out and explore as it's not every day you make the trip across the world to Australia. On one of our weekends we made the trip to Moreton Island where we got the chance to snorkel in three abandoned ship wrecks and managed to swim with a turtle, sting ray and shark. It has been a fantastic experience and I feel very grateful to be here. But I’m very excited to come home and prepare for the Glasgow British Swimming Championships ahead of the summer Olympic games. I hope it will be a successful year for me and I hope to make Team GB proud.