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Hoy the Hammer with Lexie

After a great winter of training with the Hammer, unfortunately lockdown put pay to any early season competition - the plan was to open her season at the Spenborough Open Meeting, but the plans disappeared. 

The training & hard work continued though when training could resume & Lexie continued to work hard with Nick to improve her technique & power with her throws. She even featured in a couple of EA Webinars on how her technique had changed and improved. 


So, we did eventually get to some competition & Lexie started her season with a guest place at Morpeth's Inter Club match on the 8th August. It was a fantastic performance with a great series of throws & she was sitting at just over 39m when there was a financial reward offered if she could hit 40m - it was close, with her final throw being 39.84m. A huge improvement on her previous job of 23.40m - she was delighted.

But this is Lexie and she always wants to improve.  Her next Hammer outing was at the first NE Covid meeting on the 23rd August and she improved her on by 1cm to 39.85m.


There was still more to come though, and we negotiated another place for her to compete at the Run Jump Throw event in Doncaster on the 20th September. It was a lovely warm day, if a little windy but off she went to compete whilst I was officiating on the long jump. I couldn't really see much of her throwing, other than her very impressive warm up throw. She was ecstatic when she'd finished as she'd hit a new pb of 42.05m, a throw which would see her finish 3rd in the UK for U15G Hammer. That was my officials expenses gone for the event and we might have had a celebratory Costa at Wetherby on the way home.


Lexie's next competition was the following week at the England Throws Camp Invitational event at Moulton College in Northamptonshire.  I think the pressure got to her a bit as she didn't throw well & struggled to keep her balance in the very windy conditions.  Luckily,  she had some help from Garry Herrington to calm her down a bit & she finished off throwing 36.22m, but she learned a lot from the experience and frustration of the day. 

It's fair to say that there had been a huge change in her performances despite limited opportunities to train and compete - if you'd have asked any of us to guess her end of season pb, I don't think anybody would have said anything over 40m, but she worked hard with Nick & achieved something really special. 

Training over the winter has been disrupted again due to lockdown,  but we'll see what 2021 brings for Lexie with the Hammer. 


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