WARMING UP NICELY FOR SUMMER!

The temperature may still be single figures out there, but Trackspeed1-UK athletes are warming up nicely for summer.

Their winter training programme, reshaped on previous years, is beginning to show some very positive signs, according to head coach John Powell, as sessions wind down from the intensity of winter toward the speed-based foundations preparing for summer.

Although quiet on the news front, the squad have been working hard at Crystal Palace, with John doubling in his role as chairman of the Crystal Palace Sports Partnership, a stakeholder group fighting to preserve facilities in the long term at the sports centre he has coached at now for over 42 years.

Trackspeed1-UK Head Coach John Powell talks
to the BBC about the future of Crystal Palace
- his coaching base for over four decades.
(To be broadcast BBC London News, April)

Many of the squad will be traveling Stateside at the end of this month to attend their annual warm weather training camp in Clermont, Florida, where athletes are guaranteed top notch facilities in a climate far more reliable and appropriate to sprinting than the UK.

"It's a great facility at the National Training Centre in Clermont," said John, "and together with the excellent climate it always represents a golden opportunity for athletes to focus on themselves as athletes 24/7 while they are there, and really put in some top class sessions that prepare them ideally for the coming summer season."

The squad will compete in two meetings while in Florida, one based at their training venue in Clermont, and the other at the University of Florida track in Gainesville.