Andrew Mullen learnt to swim in Glasgow at the age of 8 and last year won four gold medals at the IPC Swimming European Championships in Eindhoven. He’s recently made the move from his home town to the British Para-Swimming National Performance Centre in Manchester and as he wants you to follow his journey to the IPC Swimming World Championships in Glasgow.
The first few days after my recent move to the National Performance Centre (NPC) in Manchester were a massive change for me. I was living in a new city, had a new coach, new training partners and it was also my first time moving from home.
My first few days of training went great though and I feel like I fitted into the squad straight away. All of the athletes have been a great help for me, everyone always looks out for the other members of the squad and, although I’m pretty new, they’ve made me feel like I’ve been here for months.
It is a real different environment from the programme I left. The professionalism of the whole team and the drive everyone has to improve on their past performances is a real source of motivation for me. Everyone is striving for a common goal – the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.
Moving away from family and friends was a massive thing for me. I’ve always been so close to them and now I’m living in a different country from them all! Even though that’s been tough, it was one of those decisions where performance has to come to first. In a way it’s just a sacrifice that many athletes have to make in order to reach their full potential.
The decision to move my training to the NPC was something I thought about for quite some time. I think any athlete considering switching programmes will really think of all the pros and cons of a move.
Our sport and our training programmes are such massive parts of our lives, that it really is important that we make the best decision for us on a professional level. I had been extremely fortunate to have been part of a great home programme in Glasgow.
The guys I swam with were all of my childhood friends and we had the bond of not only being best friends but training partners too so leaving those guys was one of the hardest parts of my move. Once I broke the news to them they were all super supportive of me though, they told me they just wanted the best for me and that they’d be behind me 100% all the way to Rio and beyond.
As well as leaving those guys I also had to leave my coach. Andy Jackson had been my coach since I was 11 years old and had really been there through all the ups and downs of my swim career. After all those years working together we really did know each other inside out. Even after being in Manchester for near enough a month, it still feels a bit strange not seeing Andy running up and down poolside!
In the next week or so the British team have a warm-weather training camp in Cyprus. Everyone’s really looking forward to it. It’s always nice to get to swim outdoors in the nice weather; well it’s definitely a change from swimming in sunny Manchester!
Hopefully the sunny weather gives everyone a boost as we have a tough 10 days out there. We are really in the business end of the season and it’s important we get lots of quality work done. Once we get back, we really don’t have long until our home IPC Swimming World Championships in Glasgow so any gains we can make on the camp are a real bonus.
The World Championships are starting to get really close for us, less than 50 days if I’m right?! Everyone on the team is super excited to get racing, me included. For me it’s always an honour to represent GB at any major swim meet but having the worlds in my home city makes the meet even more special. It’s still really surreal for me that, after learning to swim in Tollcross, I now get to represent my country at my second World Championships.
I’ll let you know how Cyprus goes.