Training Tuesday with Australia’s Scott Reardon

Australia’s 100m T42 world champion Scott Reardon provides this week’s Training Tuesday.

The 25-year-old, whose partner is German world long jump T42 champion Vanessa Low, talks us through a typical day as he looks to top the podium at Rio 2016 having won silver four years ago in London.

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Normally I wake up at around 07:00- 07:30. The first thing I do is get on the phone and talk to Vanessa on Facetime. We have a bit of chat before she heads to training or goes and does something – she currently lives and trains in the US.

I’m trying to learn German so I can communicate with Vanessa’s family. I thought I’d better start learning – it’s been difficult, I can tell you - I’m more of a numbers person than a words person. I use a couple of Apps on my phone and a few text books, and obviously I have a teacher in Vanessa if I need one!

I get up and have breakfast – which is muesli every day. I try to eat about two hours before I train, otherwise it has a habit of wanting to come back up during the session!

After breakfast I’ll do a bit of German study and then watch a bit of television to see what’s been happening overnight, then I pack my bag and head off to the track.

I head to training down at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) about 10:00, it’s only a seven minute drive away to the track. I’ll go say hello to Iryna [Dvoskina, Reardon’s coach] then put my leg on and start warm up. It’s about a two hour session depending on the time of year and what we are doing – it could be 200m stuff, or starts or shorter work.

I like doing the shorter stuff – the closer to the competition, it’s always more enjoyable - the rests get longer and the reps get shorter; you’re moving faster and all the work that you’ve been doing over the whole year and the whole season starts to come together.

Running becomes easier as well, it just feels like you are moving so well and so free, and it’s definitely my favourite time of year. I think my favourite session out of everything is definitely doing starts.

Chad [Perris] and Evan [O’Hanlon] are normally around as well, so if we are doing starts Chad and I may do that side by side.

We do the same session sometimes, but we never run together – we try to make sure we have good technical sessions. If you are side by side all the time it can end up turning in to a bit of a competition. It’s all about doing things right.

After the session I might find a piece of shade and die there for a good 20 minutes until I feel like I’m alive again, then I normally go down the ice bath to recover. I try to get my core body temperature back down as that makes me feel a bit better ahead of the afternoon session.

I’ll head home to have lunch – at the moment omelette is flavour of the month – then I normally take a nap to help recover as much as I possibly can.

In the afternoon I often have a physio or massage appointment, then it’s the gym session. A lot of the work is based around stability to make sure that when we run, we are able to extract as much as possible out of our bodies. At the end of the gym session I do some rehab exercises to make sure I’m in tip top condition and not going to get injured again. It’s prehab rather than rehab, really.

Then about 17:30 I head home via a supermarket to buy some food for dinner, come home, cook and eat. It might be steak and veggies – or burgers and burritos, I love a good burger. Mine are pretty heathy, with good quality meat and a full salad.

In the evenings I try and do a little bit of German study, or relax and watch a bit of TV – especially if there is sport on, I’m a big fan of pretty much all sports. My housemate Jarrod [Killey, Australian swimmer] watches a lot of animated comedy, so if he’s got that on in the lounge, I’m normally sitting back watching it as well.

I have a cold shower before I sleep every night – even in the middle of winter when it’s two degrees outside. It’s a routine for me, and it doesn’t wake me up – it helps me sleep, it’s the best thing I ever started doing!

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Sport fans from around the world can now buy their Paralympic tickets for Rio 2016 from authorised ticket resellers (ATRs).

The IPC’s Global ATR is Jet Set Sports, and Rio 2016 tickets and packages can be purchased on the CoSport website.

Residents of Brazil can buy 2016 Paralympics tickets directly from the Rio 2016 website.