Olympian Sally McLellan is used to clearing hurdles, that’s why she’s fully recovered from a hamstring injury and racing towards Beijing.

At just 21, Sally McLellan is already the 100m hurdles national record holder, a six-time national champion and has reached the semi-final at a World Championships. What more could one ask for? Well, if you're McLellan, a berth in an Olympic final and a shot at medal. Neither seems out of reach for the Queenslander, who, after bouncing back from a hamstring injury earlier this season, is in top form and ready to take on all comers in Beijing. Here, she gives Inside Sport a look at how she plans to reach the podium.

Over The Barriers

“Hurdles is totally different to just sprinting. You have to be able to come out of the blocks straight up instead of driving for longer, because a hurdle is right there. Every hurdles training session is technical. We don't allocate specific days just to work on my technique.”

Tower Of Power

“For strength, I do two gym sessions a week, and a plyometrics session after my Friday gym. They're total body training sessions. Currently in my plyometrics work I'm learning to stiffen up my ankles to make me more powerful off the ground.”

Competition Phase

“At the moment I'm doing a lot of base training work. Closer to competition I'll continue doing sessions every day, but the sessions will reduce. For example, Mondays won't be reps of 400m, it might be reps of 150m with a lot of rest in between so I can run them faster. Instead of being 200m, the sprint sessions will go down to 80m or 90m sprints. Even the time in the pool gets shorter and more intense.

“I'll probably start tapering down a month before the Olympics and do really fast training sessions. I won't be doing as much in training because I'll be competing a lot - it evens out.”

Hamstring Woes

“At the Queensland State Championships, I was running a 100m; I came out really fast and about halfway into the race I pulled up and couldn't run any further. My hamstrings were quite sore before the race, but I decided to run anyway. I started back training a week after the injury, doing some jogging and run throughs, and lengthening it out. It recovered really quickly and I'm way ahead of schedule compared to where I have been in past seasons - probably because I didn't get to compete much in the Australian season, so I haven't really tapered down at all since the last World Championships. I haven't lost any fitness, so I'm going to Europe to compete in the Oslo and Berlin Golden League meets.”

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