<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about me is that I\u2019m very resilient,\u201d says Nicole Yeargin. That\u2019s just as well. The 25-year-old\u2019s resilience and ambition have been driving forces in her career to date, fuelling track-inspired moves from high school in Maryland, to college in Ohio, then the University of Southern California (USC) and most recently to Texas, where she has linked up with coach Boogie Johnson and a group of athletes including Dalilah Muhammad, the former Olympic 400m hurdles champion and world record-holder.<\/p>\n
Both attributes also helped her to pick herself up after a disappointing disqualification for a lane infringement in the Olympic 400m heats in Tokyo. \u201cOnce something happens, it\u2019s happened. I can shed a tear, but after that, why would I keep myself down?\u201d she says. \u201cI had two goals [in Tokyo] \u2013 the 400m and the [4x400m] relays. The 400m was done, but we still had the relay. It really didn\u2019t affect me that much. I made a simple mistake that I won\u2019t make again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeargin began to realise her athletics potential at Ursuline College, Ohio. She played soccer, her preferred high school sport, but she had started to break school track records and was winning regional meets. She switched to Kent State where she knew the standard was higher, but experienced a harsh reality check when she got \u201cdusted\u201d in the 200m at the NCAA Regionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was doing well in the Midwest, but I think I realised at that point that I had a lot of work to do,\u201d says the Pitreavie AAC athlete who was born in Maryland by competes for Great Britain and Scotland thanks to her Scottish mother. \u201cEver since that year I was ready to go, I was on it, and I remember thinking that the rest of the team just wasn\u2019t. I was taking the sport seriously and it was time for me to find a group of ladies that felt the same way, so I transferred to (the 400m group) USC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeargin\u2019s moves have been calculated and decisive, leaving little room for emotion or sentiment. Every school she went to, every year that passed, training got more intense. Her continual strive for improvement led her to the USC elite programme post-Tokyo alongside athletes such as Michael Norman, Rai Benjamin and Kendall Ellis, but it wasn\u2019t the right fit.<\/p>\n
She spoke to a former team-mate who had already moved out to Texas and figured that, if it worked for her, then it was worth a shot.<\/p>\n
She called coach Johnson, then packed up a rental car and drove out three days later. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say I\u2019m much happier in the sense that I wasn\u2019t happy with the group in LA, but it\u2019s everything that comes with it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in a group with Dalilah and some of the older girls, you grow off them and see how they do it. Whatever Boogie says, you do. You have to commit 100 per cent to the group. There are no off days, there is no, \u2018I\u2019m tired\u2019. I\u2019m not going to lie, the workouts are very, very tough and they will test your mental strength, but they\u2019ve made me better.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoogie is very dedicated. He\u2019d literally sleep at the track if he could, and I love that about him. He\u2019s hard on us, but at the end of the day it\u2019s out of love. He knows that I can run a 49, even a 48 one day, so he\u2019s not going to let up on me if I\u2019m feeling down or having a bad day because he has high expectations. He knows what I can accomplish, and I feel like this is where I belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicole Yeargin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Favourite session: <\/strong>\u201cI like 200m repeats in around 35 seconds \u2013 like 14-16 x 200m off equal rest. I can push myself over short distances.\u201d<\/p>\n Least favourite session: <\/strong>\u201cThe worst workout for me was definitely when we had one mile \u2013 1km \u2013 600m \u2013 400m \u2013 200m. I\u2019m pretty sure that was my second day. I improved the second time we did it, but the 1ks just knock me out every time, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Typical training week <\/strong><\/p>\n Yeargin \u2013 who is ranked third on the Scottish all-time list for 400m (50.96) \u2013 isn\u2019t told the details of her workout until she\u2019s on the line. Her warm-up is consistently an hour and a half, and the group typically has a Sunday off.<\/p>\n \u201cWe start with a run around the track, then we do hurdle walkovers, sprint drills, a dynamic warm-up, hurdle skips, acceleration runs and strides, then we get on our spikes, and we have more accelerations,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do short stuff first \u2013 60s, 80s, 90s in our spikes, or coming out of blocks. That\u2019s usually how we start, then we get to the workout, and we usually have repeats, like repeat 300s, repeat 400s, repeat 200s, definitely a higher volume than you\u2019d think, and if we don\u2019t have that we\u2019ll have a long, hard rep, like 500m. So that\u2019s our two different days, repeats or over-distance, breaking it down to 500m, 200m, 150m \u2013 just really hard.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just had to go with it. I feel stronger, I feel a lot fitter than I was before. I\u2019m doing more volume. I think I ran two 500s last year and this year I\u2019ve done three 500s in one session. I\u2019ve done 3 x 1km with 90 second rest between them, and that was just the beginning of the workout. We still had 200s and 80s after that.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just trusting the process right now. I\u2019ve hit 51-mid many times in every race I\u2019ve run so far so I can\u2019t knock the training. I\u2019m clearly fit and I\u2019m running consistently and I\u2019m ready to get into the 50-points for sure. I know that\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb <\/b><\/span>This article first appeared in the July 2022 issue of AW magazine which you can buy here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n