BY Jeanette Kwakye

Hello, Akwabaa, Wha Gwan, Ka bọ and Welcome to my new blog for The Voice newspaper.

I greet you all in multi-cultural dialects because I am so privileged to be writing for an audience of such a large diversity.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jeanette Kwakye and I am a Great Britain international athlete whose parents originate from Ghana.

In 2008 I became the only European to make the 100m sprint final at the Beijing Olympics. I finished 6th overall in a race that was dominated by the Jamaicans.

This blog will give you an in-depth insight into my own personal world and the world of athletics!

So: enough of the boring stuff, lets get down to the juicy stuff…

Since the games, I have just been getting down to the hard graft of training for the 2009 Berlin Championships, its been a bit of a bumpy winter, but I look forward to seeing how well I can perform in 2009.

This time of year, sees me prepare for a 4 week training camp in Florida, America… Jealous?? Don’t be. Under the guidance of my coach Michael Afilaka, I would not wish my training regime on my worst enemy.

So as lovely as all that sunshine sounds, I am pretty sure you shall hear my war cries on these shores when I step on that track for my workouts. It is really important that we get this phase of training right, so we are in good early season form to prepare for the national trials which are in July.

I leave in about three weeks, so that leaves plenty of time for me to get some shopping in… or should I wait until I hit the states…hmmmm?

Well, considering the Pound Sterling is pretty weak against the US Dollar at the moment, it looks like multiple trips to Topshop, Oxford Street, maybe in order!

I always find that I buy too much clothes anyway and end up giving them away to my friends who would rather wear my skinny jeans and heels, than my sweat pants and trainers, but they are ALWAYS the first to ring me for gym tips as soon as the sun starts shining. So this year, I have decided to share my gym tips with everyone to make sure you are all in fine fettle for the good old British ’summer’.

So here are a couple to get you going…

1. Set yourself a goal and write it down. Believe you can achieve, no matter how outrageous you may think it is.

2. Constantly update your MP3 player with the latest tunes, it keeps you motivated when the workout gets tough.

I am gonna offer you a tune of the week, which I will be listening to on my iPod during my workout sessions, so I can be like your ‘virtual personal trainer’.

This week: Heads, Shoulderz, Knees and Toez by the K.I.G. Family. That will get you going!

So until next week.

TTYL

(Talk To You Later)

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 12:31 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.