Matt Clay

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Matt Clay

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Matt Clay - Training

(6th December | 13:22)

Hi Everyone

I've been back in full training for 3 months now after an up and down summer which involved a lot of travelling and competing. I attended the World University Games where I picked up a bronze medal in the 50m backstroke.

After the summer meets I took a week off and went for a nice relaxing break to my parents place in Spain, then it was back to hard training. I decided to change things a bit this year, just train hard without much competing for the first couple of months. We started with lots of land work, running and lifting heavy weights, whilst building up the distance every week.

The last couple of weeks I've been to a couple of competitions. One was a great meet in Austria. It was the Austrian Qualification for the European and World short course championships so there was some very fast swimming. It was good fun to get to compete with quality athletes such as Marcus Rogan, the Olympic silver medallist in 100m and 200m backstroke from Athens.

As I wasn't part of a team and was just competing along with other international swimmers, there was a nice relaxed environment and during the evenings we were able to go into the centre of Vienna and have a look around the city and the Christmas markets.

I was a bit race rusty at the first meet I went to but things started to look up in Austria and I could feel the race groove a lot better. I have another meet in Leeds just before Christmas so hopefully I will start to tear things up there before heading out on a training camp to the States.

I will have to do a lot of work on my underwater and turns whilst in the states as we're going to a competition in Longbeach, California which will be short course yards! Michael Phelps and Aaron Piersol are going to be there so competition will be fierce. But it will be great to get away during January and avoid the cold and rain.

Merry Christmas and a happy and successful New Year