Reetta Hurskeen the third consecutive 100-meter hurdles Finnish championship warmed up the coach in Lahti’s chilly and rainy evening Marjukka Suihkon mind.
Although the wind blew against the runners at 0.7 meters per second, Hurske clocked the fifth best time of his career, 12.85.
– It’s a good time in this weather. It was expected that Lotta (Harala) challenges. It’s a great thing because it’s immediately visible in fences and immediately adds its own spin to running. Athletes get fired up. Reeta’s run looked really good. “We are on a really good pace with the World Championships in mind,” says Suihko.
For the first time, the silver medalist also broke under 13 seconds, when Lotta Harala ran 12.94 and secured a double victory for Tampere’s Pyrinnö. Jyväskylä Field Athletes Nooralotta Neziri was third with a time of 13.19.
Hurske, 28, has had a lot of fun this year. At the beginning of March, the Tampere native won the European indoor track championship in the 60-meter hurdles in Istanbul. In May, he started his outdoor track season with a bang and ran a new Finnish record of 12.70 already in his third competition.
There were a few slower races in between, but now everything looks good.
– The summer competition season started quite well, so perhaps the pressure was released from the athlete. It requires quite a charge to get its peak performance. When it came right from the beginning of summer, he maybe had to look for a recharge, Suihko reflects.
A tough athlete
Suihko has coached Hursk since the beginning of his career, now for 18 years. He has followed Hurskee’s development from a 10-year-old junior to a professional athlete now in the prime of his career.
Suihko knows his protectors thoroughly. The coach has noted that the European Championship gold, which culminated a great reign, has raised the level of requirements that Hurske has set for himself.
– Reetta is a very demanding athlete. He demands a lot from himself. If, in his own opinion, he does not achieve what he has set as his goal in training, it will show immediately, says Suihko.
According to Suihko, the athlete can take pressure from the fact that the public may also expect tough results from the European champion race after race.
– Of course we have to talk about it and discuss it. You can’t just set records every day, it’s human. I have tried to convince him that no one is a superhuman capable of top performances every week, says Suihko.
Suihko says that the duo’s training routine hasn’t changed much since the EC victory.
– Everything has pretty much remained unchanged. Perhaps what has changed the most is that the athlete gets older and starts to get the most out of himself. All recovery takes its own time, which is sometimes difficult for an athlete to accept. We had to learn that this summer.
Suihko says that recovery must be monitored, for example, after travelling. Recovery is also difficult during the domestic GP series races, for example, when the final is run quite soon after the preliminaries.
– When Reetta was younger, it was a good solution for her to run two runs every hour. We just talked with Reeta that similar 13.20 times can be achieved with several short recoveries, but two hard times are no longer so easy.
The peak of fitness is scheduled for the WC Budapest
Hurske and Suihko withdrew at the beginning of July for a two-week training period.
– There has been a good atmosphere in training. Two weeks of training break was good. We got really good training. Now it starts to look the same in training as before, says Suihko.
The duo’s goal is for Hurske to be in his best shape of the season on the 22nd-24th. August, when the heats, semis and finals of the fast hurdles are run on consecutive days at the World Championships in Budapest.
In the previous two World Championships, Hurske has reached the semi-finals. The last time that was enough for a final place at last summer’s World Championships in Oregon was 12.50. The level of fast fences in Eugene was historically high.
Before leaving for Hungary, Hurske will run at least in the Tampere GP race on August 8. Otherwise, the program consists of training and getting in shape for the main races of the season.
– We are trying to do the tried and tested training and prepare so that he would be in the World Cup. Yes, you need to hit the nail on the head to get to the finals. I bet they run really hard there. I hope that Reetta will be able to do her best this summer at the World Championships. That’s a clear goal. It can’t be said that he won’t go for the finals, but what is required for the finals will be seen there, says Suihko.