joe roebuck- swimmer
| DOB: |
5th June 1985 |
| BORN: |
Rotherham |
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Joe Roebuck missed out on funding by an extremely narrow margin, ranked 17th in all of his major events, when he needed to reach 16th in order to be eligible.
Joe made his first senior international meet when he competed at the European Championships 2006.
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january 2008 blog
Over Christmas and New Year I went back home and to continue training, I swam with the City of Sheffield under coach Russ Barber. This was very good of him to allow me to do this as it means that I do not have to stay at Loughborough over Christmas and can stay at home, train in a quality pool (ponds forge) and under good coaching.
My ankle was still sprained but was healing quickly though - I am still mainly just on pull throughout sessions. After Christmas was over I headed back to Loughborough to start my final cycle into the Olympic Trials. I began this cycle with the attitude that this was the culmination of many years work and the end of the cycle ending with the Olympic Trials would be my biggest test to date and what all athletes aim for. I was in a positive frame of mind to start this cycle feeling I always perform better when enjoying my training.
I had two meets this month, one very early on in Swansea and one at Sheffield a few weeks later. I swam up to standard at both meets, though I was unfortunate and got the stomach bug that was going round at the Swansea meet so was unable to compete on the last day of the meet. Luckily it was more or less a 24-hour bug and I was back in the water and it did not inhibit my training.
december 2007 blog
We left early on in the month for the Dutch Open Meet in Eindhoven, unfortunately the day before we were set to fly I twisted my ankle by slipping on the pool steps.
After been recommended by the EIS physiotherapist to have it X-rayed we found that it was not fractured just badly sprained. We had to take this as a positive and I still went out to the meet.
Although I was not able to swim right away I was able to see my physio at the pool everyday and this attention made the recovery period much reduced, rather than letting it heal on its own or having to wait for a physio’s attention on it.
After a week of following my physios advice he thought that although it was still painful and mobility was much restricted I would be able to swim on it.
Therefore I raced on the last day of the meet in the 400m I.M, and went a 4:26 which considering the fact that I’d had to have time out of the water and the still severely swollen and painful ankle, was a positive swim.
november 2007 blog
I am continuing training towards the Olympic Trials but I am gearing myself towards a mini-cycle with a ‘half taper’ for the Dutch open meet in Eindhoven in December. Mid point in this cycle was the BUSA short course Championships in Sheffield.
I was entered for the 100m and 200m Butterfly and the 400m I.M. I Pb’d my 100m Butterfly with a 53. which was a good swim for me on the sprint event coming in 2nd behind Todd Cooper and I comfortably won the 200m Butterfly and 400m I.M for Loughborough. I was also put in the final of the medal relay for the 50m Butterfly because of my speed on the individual sprint.
I had a successful meet even though Loughborough had a disappointing meet as a team loosing to Bath for the first time in seventeen years, this was due to many of our top swimmers been away on training camps and was unfortunately not a reflection of Loughborough’s true strength and depth.
This result will be remedied later in the year at the long course champs when we have out full team back.
This meet showed a progression of my strength and explosive power, this is a positive result and the intended effect of my weights training. I was aiming to reduce my 100m time so that I was able to get out faster on my 200m Butterfly without expending excessive amounts of energy.
october 2007 blog
Now back in Loughborough after my Spain camp, I am continuing to get the important meters done in the pool and am in a full strength and conditioning programme with my EIS coach Barry.
I am finding the weight lifting extremely strenuous as we do an endurance based programme with solid blocks of 10 minutes continuous lifting, alternating between two different lifts.
I am doing four of these sessions a week. This exhaustion is leaving me suffering in the pool but I am still able to train and am enjoying this addition to my training.
I was lucky enough to be invited to the Swimtastic Awards in Stratford this month. This was a great event to be part of as a member of team Kellogg’s and as a GB senior international.
It was fantastic to see how projects were progressing successfully at grassroot level and to see so many young people awarded for their sporting achievements.
september 2007 blog
September is the start of the swimming calendar, the first month back after the summer break.
I began training back at Loughborough for a few weeks, just participating in general fitness training in and out of the water before I went away on a British Swimming camp to Oviedo in Spain.
This camp ran from the 16th – 22nd of September and was under Ian Wright, the head coach of Edinburgh. The camp when completed was a productive week, I swam more distance than I would have at my home programme and early on in the cycle extra distance is not detrimental. I also feel that when training under different coaches you can pick up extra tips and training methods and also other coaches may notice technical points in your strokes that your home coach might not; having got used to seeing your strokes every day.
In addition to this my strength and conditioning coach, Barry Shillabeer, was on the camp and began a weights programme with me out there which we have put into a full time programme upon returning to Loughborough.
After discussions with my coach and Barry we feel that a proper strength and conditioning programme could be advantageous to my swimming, though we are aware that initially the weights programme may well appear to negatively affect my swimming performance until I get used to the programme, but the strength gains by the end of the cycle should well be worth it if the returns are faster swimming in competition.
august 2007 blog
This month held my target meet for the cycle, World University Games 2007, and I had big expectations of myself leading into this major international meet.
After the ASA Nationals had finished I came back to Loughborough for few days before flying out to Bangkok. Once in Bangkok we had a few days to prepare and finalise my taper before the meet began. Unfortunately there was only one coach with the team for this time as the other coaches were not flying out until the meet began, and my own coach, Ian Armiger, was not there as he was at another meet in Paris.
Disappointingly I did not perform up to my and my coaches’ expectations and felt like I failed to deliver the swims that we knew I was capable of. I made the B final of the 200m Butterfly and came fourth and made the A final of the 400m I.M.
This meet was extremely fast, it was the fastest University Games ever and the Games records were broken in nearly every event, men and women’s. However if I had swam my times I would have been up in the top few competitors of this international field and the swims I was on to produce would have done very well.
Due to having had a good problem free cycle it is obvious that mistakes were made in my final preparation and these are easily rectifiable with the help of my coach. The meet was not a loss, I gained a lot from it and a lot of experience. The conditions in Bangkok were similar to what they will be like in Beijing next year and there are few competitions world wide that require the athletes to stay in an athlete village as the meet did which is excellent practice for the Beijing Olympics next year.
I will spend the rest of the summer relaxing and recovering in order to return to training refreshed and with a more focussed mental outlook as I am now dedicated to training with 100% enthusiasm for the Olympic trials next year.
july 2007 blog
This month culminated with the ASA National Championships at Ponds Forge, Sheffield.
I was not aiming to shave and taper for this meet as I have previously stated I was aiming for the World University Games in Bangkok in August. Therefore I began tapering this month with the aim of tapering through the ASA Nationals and pulling out some tough hard races against many competitors that had tapered for this meet.
My taper though this month seemed to be going well, I felt strong, high and fast in the water, and I came to the meet with the attitude of swimming well un-rested.
I was able to have a fairly good week making a tough final on the 200m I.M, where the old British Record was broken by 2 people. I also raced; finalled and pb’d on the 100m Butterfly going a 54sec for the first time.
This was a very positive swim for me as the faster I can go for the 100m the easier and stronger I can get out for the 200m which should help improve my total 200m Butterfly time.
june 2007 blog
During June I have been competing in a few meets to get some race practice before taper time in the summer.
Firstly I flew to France to compete in the French Nationals in St Raphael, on the Cote d’Azur.
My opening race was the 200m Butterfly. I put in quite I strong race and came 3rd in 2.00.05, this was slightly slower than I raced the month earlier at Sheffield and I was a bit disappointed not to go faster but in-between racing I had gone through a lot of intense hard training and it was still one of the fastest races I have done during season and un-tapered.
Therefore still a good result I was just disappointed not to win but the aim of racing in France was to race against unknown, international competitors before I go the World University Games in Bangkok.
From France we flew back to Loughborough and drove up with the team to the Scottish Nationals in Glasgow. I raced among tough competition on the 200m IM and 100m Butterfly. I claimed 2nd place on the 100m butterfly which was a good accomplishment.
I am now back into training with little over a month to go before I to represent Britain at the World University Games in Thailand in August.
may 2007 blog
May saw me getting well into this cycle and really heavy training.
We have made some alterations to this cycle, mainly our weekly distances have increased while still maintaining our intensity level.
We have been hitting around 50k+, athough this is not considered to be that high among many swimmers and coaches. My coach and I believe in training at intensity and specificity to my events is more beneficial than swimming great distances.
I have had two meets this month both in Sheffield. First was the Rotherham meet where I swam the 100m Butterfly and 200m Freestyle. I put in decent races here, though I made quite a few mistakes in regards to my race skills set and pacing,
especially on the 200m Freestyle as this is more of an additional event and not one of my main events. I won both of these events though the level of competition was not high.
The second meet I did was towards the end of the month at the Sheffield Open meet. I raced the 200m Butterfly, one of my main events.
I put a very good race performance in here as I was in extremely heavy training and was racing very tired. I won the race clearly but the time was more important as I clocked in at 1.59.8 which is the fastest that I have ever gone during any part of a cycle and I managed to do this swimming from the front with no one to push me.
This I feel was very pleasing and sets me up to swim very well at the end of this cycle in the summer.
april 2007 blog
April was the start of another training cycle and began with me attending a three day British Swimming camp in Swansea after Easter from the 12th – 14th.
It was quite productive camp for a short period of time, I picked up a few technical tips especially on turn techniques; one of biggest weakness in my swims. I also was able to put in some solid training as I had not had much time off over Easter and was in better shape than many people present on the camp.
April ended with British swimmers racing at the stage 1 meet at Loughborough.
I won the 200m Butterfly here easily with a short course P.B of 1.56.80, nd placed finished way behind in a 2.03. I raced the 200m I.M final closely after, and came 3rd which wasn’t a bad result racing tired. I now look ahead to continuing the cycle through May and competing in a few open meets to check my progress.
march 2007 blog
March was a very good month for me; it finished with me competing at the British Championships in Manchester. Leading into this meet I had not had the best of cycles, I was swimming quite disappointingly throughout January and the start of February which was the beginning of the cycle.
This had not given me much of a base to improve on throughout the cycle and I was unable to win the 200m Butterfly at the BUSA Championships. This was quite disappointing for me but it acted as a wake up call, and since then I was a lot more mentally focussed.
My training improved and I began to hit fast times in test sets and heart rate sets again, the sort of times I know I needed to be hitting in order to but in a strong performance at the British Championships. This paid off and I was able to defend two of my titles as the British Champion from last year on the 200m Butterfly and the 400m I.M. I narrowly missed defending all three of my titles from the year before coming a very close 2nd on the 200m Individual Medley behind Euan Dale, a fellow Loughborough swimmer.
I was second on the 200m I.M with a time of 2.02.1 which beat our GB representatives and would have placed me 13th in the semi-final at the Worlds in Melbourne. My 200 fly time would have placed me 21st with my time of 1.59.3 and my 400m I.M would have put me in 13th place again with a 4.19.9.
I was also strong enough to qualify for the World University Games to be held in Bangkok later in the year which was my main aim for the meet. Attaining these tough qualifying times showed that I was back on track to establishing my self on the world scene. I am now back down to hitting race times that I have been unable to get close to for a year and have the back up of coming of the end of a strong cycle so as I move into this next cycle I am in a very strong position to improve and get on the podium at the World University Games. In addition to qualifying for the World Uni’s the times I have done now put me in strong contention to go the World Short Course later in the year as they take the top two times done in the last year in each event.
I am now looking forward to getting back into training and having a really strong, uninterrupted cycle. I have spoken with my coach and we still feel that there are areas of improvement to be addressed. I felt I was lacking race practice coming into this last meet so over the next cycle we are going to actively seek out meets including French nationals to gain some international race experience before I go to Bangkok in August. I am now in a very positive position to move forward with my swimming over the next 3 months.
february 2007 blog
February forms the toughest month of our training cycle, it contains the maximum weekly distances covered through this cycle.
It also contains every training session and energy system that we work on in the course of a cycle; aerobic 1, aerobic 2, anaerobic threshold, VO2 max, basic speed, lactate tolerance and max heart rate sets.
I am pleased to say that my training times are currently improving weekly and I am making good progress through this cycle. I have also raced this month for the University at the long course BUSA Championships, (British Universities).
I competed well here, my times were equal to what they were this time last year in my preparation to last years British Championships where I won three gold’s and achieved my personal best times.
After last years British Championships, I had an unfortunate run of illness and injury leading up to the long course European Championships in Budapest.
This was unfortunate and led to me not competing nearly as well as I would have hoped, I was regrettably still suffering from tonsillitis while in Budapest and taking my second course of antibiotics.
However I now feel that I am getting back into top form, I have had another straight run at training not interrupted by much illness or injury and am looking forward to competing at the end of March in Manchester, 26th – 1st April. I am racing my main events again, 200m and 400m Individual Medley and 200m Butterfly.
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