“Champions are not defined on how many times they win, but on how many times they get back up after defeat or failure.” This is a quote that my coach Alan Rubick reminds me of regularly, and I think every athlete can be motivated by it.

Hello NZrun community,

For those of you who don’t know me my name is Brad Mathas and I’m an 800m runner from Whanganui. I have been asked to do a bit of a profile about myself and what I do. Firstly I train 6 days a week 2-3 times a day which is something I started doing in June last year (prior to this it was once a day). I started doing more training because I felt I was ready and because I have high goals for this season and I’m very motivated to achieve them. I’ve been training with my coach Alan for 6 years and I feel we have a unique relationship because I consider him to not only be my coach but a friend, this is something I enjoy most about training under him. As I have gotten older Alan has allowed me to have more and more input into the structure of my training schedule and I think this is a reason why we make such a good team, this is shown through the results we have achieved together. Alan will be the first person to tell you I’m a very stubborn athlete and that if I don’t like something hes definitely going to hear about it, that said though I do train hard and he doesn't let me cut any corners. My schedule is made up of distance runs and multi pace sessions, it’s a fusion of Arthur Lydiard’s training and Seb Coe’s.

Training in a small town like Whanganui can have it’s challenges but at the same time have pluses, the challenges being having to do my distance runs solo and not having any real competition at the club nights. Having said that though I appreciate Alec McNab’s efforts to try and organise pace makers for me because I realise it must be hard to convince one of his athletes to pace me. The pluses of training in Whanganui are that I usually have the track to myself and a big inspiration is watching over me every training session. This inspiration being the statue of Sir Peter Snell, when I’m Lying on the track stuffed and I still have another rep to do I look up at him and dream that one day that will be me so I get back up and do that last rep.

My Review of NZSS 2011: Leading up to the Secondary Schools my training was going great and Alan and I were extremely happy with training times, he said to me that ‘I was in the form of my life’. The races leading up to NZSS were not so good though and this set my confidence back a lot because I knew how well Julian was running, to be honest I had never been so nervous leading up to a race. Coming into the meeting I was the underdog, everyone was expecting Julian to win and this put all of the pressure on him and in some ways I felt sorry for him because I would have hated to have had that much pressure on me. Being the underdog is something I like and I was able to feed off this for motivation to defend my title. I remember the night before the final, Alan and I sat down and did our usual meeting before a big race and discussed tactics. Alan always tells me how he thinks I should run the race but ultimately says the decision is in my hands. The other thing he does is approaches it from the other side and tells me what he thinks my opponents coach will be saying to his athlete on how to beat me. I find this very useful because I have it in my mind what could happen if I’m not in control of the race and using my own tactics.

Warming up before the final I felt sick in the stomach with nerves, but I knew I was ready for what ever happened. I remember saying to Alan ‘I don’t know if I can do this, I’m nervous as hell’. His reply was ‘That means your ready, everything will be fine’. When I went to the line I kept telling myself run your race, run your race...then bang the race was on, I found myself in the lead after the crossing point and this didn’t bother me because it’s where I feel the most comfortable. When we came to the bell I was surprised to see 57 come up because I didn’t think we were running that slow. I remember the thought crossing my mind there is no way the record will be broken off a lap like that, wasn't I wrong. Approaching the 300m I increased the speed and then just went for it, I was confident that if I got a gap that I wouldn’t be caught. Coming down the last 100m it was a bit like climbing stairs and my legs were full of lactic acid. I remember I didn’t even look at the clock until about 5m from the finish because I thought it wasn't going to be a good time. If I have one regret from that race it would be that I slowed up about 25m out, had I have pushed through I could have probably got under 1:50. We learn from mistakes though and I’m not worried about it because that time will come in the second half of the season.

So that’s a bit about me and my training, hope you enjoyed.

Brad