Jackson ready to take the next heel-to-toe step in promising career
JOHANNA Jackson is used to the solitary life of being a long-distance walker - although she's got company as she prepares for this month's European Athletics Championship.
MOUNTAIN AIR: Race walker Jo Jackson is altitude training ahead of this month's European Athletics Championships (Getty Images)
Jackson has been joined at UK Athletics altitude training camp, in the rarefied air of the Pyrenees, by training partner Tom Bosworth and she believes the company will be a good thing as she aims to take the next strictly regimented heel-to-toe step in her career.
Jackson dominates race walking in the UK. She won last month's Aviva UK Championship by nearly three minutes and her time would also have secured her bronze in the men's race.
Earlier this year she carved a massive 30 seconds off her own national 20km race walk record and she was the first athlete to be selected for England's Commonwealth Games team in Delhi later this year.
"It's good to have another walker with me and we really help each other along," she said.
"This is my first time training at altitude and it was hard at first because it is very different to anything I have done before. But I adjusted over time and now I am really glad I am doing it.
"It is something I had thought about doing for the past two seasons but I never actually got around to doing it and hopefully this won't be the last time I'm here."
With their swaying hips and waddling style, race walkers are used to being smirked at, even by their fellow athletes.
But Jackson - who still has an ambition to swap from race walking to marathon running in future years - doesn't care, while a bronze medal at the IAAF Race Walking Challenge in Italy earlier this season underlines her seriousness.
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