In an exclusive new column for Sevenoaks Sports magazine, Kemsing’s very own world record holder and Olympic athlete, Tom Bosworth, joins us to share his thoughts with you each month. From his high-octane training schedule in Australia to his battles with depression and suicide, Tom opens up about the things that matter in life and invites you to get in contact too.
“So it’s all guns blazing for next summers Games in Tokyo. If you don’t know what I do, I’m the guy who claims to walk faster than you can run. I can walk a 5k in 18:28, I have a few world and British records, Commonwealth Games silver medal, Olympic, World and European top eight finishes, so by any ones standards I’m doing alright. I compete in the 20km race walk for TeamGB and hopefully Tokyo will be my second Olympic Games.
I’m currently away training in Brisbane as it’s far too cold to train in the UK right now. I train twice a day most days, averaging around three marathons a week.
But it means I leave my wonderful fiancé Harry and my beautiful daughter Jessica (she’s a black Labrador by the way – not a human, head to my Instagram account and you’ll soon find pictures of them both!).
Recently after a battle with suicide, which I won, (screw you depression!) I’ve learned that training hard, traveling and racing are important to be committed to, but It doesn’t have to be everything I’m about. I’ll tell you more about that little chapter of my life another day. For now here’s where I am eight months out from the Olympic Games.
After an injury full 2019 I’ve come off the back of a World Championships in Doha in October in great spirits as I threw together a few weeks of training and managed to finish 7th in the World. – the first time a British athlete has done that in the 20k!
After two weeks of rest, a few glasses of wine and a chinese takeaway or two, Im now training in Brisbane under the Australian sun, with a couple of friends/rivals, Dane Bird-Smith from Australia and Christopher Linke from Germany. Together they were 3rd and 5th respectively with me in 6th at Rio. So we’re not a bad training group.
That’s the best thing about Athletics, you make friends with people who you’d never have met otherwise. They make being away from home that little bit easier. We’re all in the same boat, very few sponsors, training hard for almost no extrinsic rewards yet all doing it purely to see just what we can achieve. That spurs you on, as when you see your direct rivals are in the same position as you, it motivates you to help them as well as yourself.
Each month I’ll give you a little update on where I’m at on my Olympic journey, and a few more back stories as to how I got to where I am today.
For now you can follow my day to day goings on through social media @TomBosworth on most platforms. Feel free to get in contact with anything you’d like me to cover or questions you may have for me! Any other enquiries drop me an email at thomas.bosworth@olympian.org.
