Gregor Maclean, 22, explains what a day in the life is like in his multiple roles as club manager for Shaftesbury and Barnet Harriers and pole vaulter for Montrose and District Athletic Club and member of the Scottish Commonwealth Games team
My morning
I’m up around 7am to get myself ready for working at 8am. It’s a 15-minute drive to the members club in Loughburgh that I help to manage. When I’m on mornings my responsibilities, after opening up for the cleaners, usually consist of book-keeping, general maintenance, and making sure everyone who is working that day is available for their shifts. If there are any issues with staff then it’s my responsibility to get cover and make sure every hour is covered for.
This is where my “paid” work for the day stops, but that’s only thanks to the support I have from various organisations, including Robert Ritchie Hi-fi in Montrose, supplement and recovery shake supplier Mona Vie and my commercial agent Choice Agency. The help I have from Expro in Aberdeen has also been crucial in allowing me to achieve my ambition of competing at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year. Thanks to them, I can concentrate more on my training and competing in Europe to set myself up well for the season.
My lunch
Lunch for me is pretty basic, but it must have some sort of protein, carbs and fat. Before a big training session, I have scrambled eggs on soy bread and perhaps some ketchup, if flavour is lacking. I have a “bullet-proof” coffee, consisting of filter coffee (self-ground beans) with MCT oil (a source of good fats) and butter – all blended up and drunk with lunch. This is for warming up and vaulting, because my body needs a quick but efficient source of fuel to burn while training.
My afternoon
Afternoons are for training. If I was looking at a big day, I would start with a one-hour extended warm-up. This is mainly because I have to have my entire body and all its systems firing and ready to go. If I’m not warmed up properly then I am prone to getting injured and that’s the last thing I need. I would then move on to pole vaulting itself, in a mainly technical session, to improve my technique.
There are always things that a pole-vaulter can change, as there are multiple aspects from the run-up to clearing the bar that are all crucial to a successful vault. This can go on for two to three hours depending on the aim of the session.
I then move on to speed development, which consists of build-up runs of 10 to 30-metre accelerations, followed by the main part of the running session. This is three sets of four repetitions of 90-150m sprints and take anywhere up to 90 minutes depending on recovery between runs.
After that, I get a 20-minute break to grab some kind of food or food supplement before ending my session with about 90 minutes of weight training.
My evening
My evenings are usually quiet. After I get in from training, I eat a lot of healthy food along with a recovery drink of some kind to add extra calories, protein, carbs and nutrition to my evening meal.
I then spend about an hour relaxing, which could be watching TV, playing guitar, mucking around on my laptop or working on my car. If I don’t have to go and lock up at work I will meet my girlfriend for the evening, and we’ll perhaps go to the cinema or just for a walk. Between work, training and competing, my schedule can be relentless, so it’s important for me to relax while my body recovers from a strenuous day.