Sally Gunnell's blog by Sally_Gunnell

Well, if this pace keeps up, I might not make it to the Olympics! It’s getting really busy as 2012 fever kicks in. I know I often talk about running around, but I tell you what, it’s hitting a new level as I charge from event to event. I bumped in to Kelly Sotherton the other day for about the third time in a month. She said “What are you up to now? You keep popping up everywhere like Mr Bean!” I’m not sure whether being compared to Mr Bean is a compliment or not. I know I can rely on you readers to warn me of any Bean-like tendencies! The British Olympic Association Ball at Olympia was a huge success. They raised £770k towards the costs of getting athletes to the Games; an incredible sum of money. I’ve never seen so many people at a dinner. It was mind-blowing.

I usually spend a fair bit of these evenings with my old muckers from athletics, chatting away, but it was so vast that I struggled to find them, never mind talk to them. Stephen Fry and Miranda Hart were MC-ing for the evening. They were so rude and so funny that I almost discovered where the expression “I wet myself laughing” came from! I said almost. The highlight of the Ball was Tom Jones. He’s still got it, you know. Everybody surged forward to get a better view of him when he came on and although no knickers were thrown, he certainly whipped the crowd up! Great stuff.

As you know I'd been doing a lot of training for the Great South Run (I'll let you know how it went next week). It was a ten miler and I’d been pretty happy with my training over the summer. I’d got out on to the hills a fair bit and had covered some decent distances. But getting back to road running was a killer.. Oh dear. My calves and shins felt like they’d been beaten with a cricket bat! I’m not feeling quite so pleased with myself now; a summer of running off road doesn’t toughen you up enough for the old bitumen. Just as well I have a very patient hubby who loves me even if I moan.

Talking about agony, I see from Twitter that lots of athletes are back off their end-of-summer breaks. Tweet summary: most athletes are in post-holiday pain! I remember this early autumn period. I’d let myself go during my holiday, so when I got back to training I’d usually be lugging a fair bit of extra weight around. Not much fun, I can tell you, but I got over it and they will too. This is such a critical period for them. If they’re all as focused as World Champion hurdler Dai Greene, I have no concerns about their preparation. He’s right on it. If you could win gold for attention to detail, effort and sheer determination, he would already have won. Definitely no trace of Mr Bean in him!