Rob Heffernan planning European championship tilt to perfection

All is quiet on the starting blocks. A pistol shot rings out once, then twice, in quick succession. The runner in lane two throws up his arms in despair. That can’t be me, can it?

So time to reset the old stopwatch, dust off the ranking lists, and call around to that friendly neighbour who has access to the BBC red button. Because even if it’s been a strangely casual start to the track and field season, things are about to speed up, or at least heat up.

Without any summer blockbuster like the Olympics or World Championships, this season will feel much more like a sprint than a marathon, and there really is no room for any false starts.

For some big-name athletes the main event may actually be happening this weekend, down in the sunny Bahamas, where the IAAF are staging the first edition of their new World Relays – offering just over €1 million in prize money, and the promise of a sell-out crowd at the Nassau Stadium.

There is no Irish interest, unfortunately, and instead our season gets underway at the Morton Stadium in Santry, with the staging of tomorrow's Athletes Ireland Games. First big steps It mightn't be sunny, nor indeed is there any prize money, but for many Irish athletes this marks the first big step towards the European Athletics Championships, in Zurich, from August 12th-17th: there will be no prize money there either, by the way, and yet Zurich offers that rare chance for honour and glory and a major championship medal that will last a lifetime.

It is a little too early to get excited about any Irish medal prospects, at least outside of Rob Heffernan, who has every intention of picking up in Zurich where he left off in Moscow last summer.

Indeed as World Champion in the 50km walk, Heffernan may well represent our only medal prospect come Zurich, not that race walking becomes a whole lot easier at European level: if anything, the Russian walkers he beat in Moscow last summer have come out even stronger this season, and now aged 36, Heffernan cannot afford to slow down one single second, even in an event that lasts well over three hours.

He’s already declared his intention to keep walking all the way to the Rio Olympics, now just over two years away, and yet Zurich almost certainly offers Heffernan the last chance to win a European medal.

These championships now take place every two years, only without the walks and marathon when they clash with an Olympic year – as they will in 2016, which means the next European Championships for Heffernan won’t be until 2018, at which stage he will be 40.

Heffernan also feels he has a bit of a score to settle with the European Championships, given he finished fourth in both the 20km and 50km events in Barcelona in 2010: whatever regret lingers from that can only be made worse by the fact one of the athletes who finished ahead of him, Italian Alex Schwazer, has since retired following a series of doping allegations. Motivated The bigger deal for Heffernan, perhaps, will be to stay fit and motivated enough to defend his World Championship title in Beijing, next summer, and yet the last thing he will want now is to start feeling like he's past his peak, or indeed any suggestion that his 50km gold medal last summer won't be repeated.

There is certainly more pressure to deliver something in Zurich too, at least compared to Moscow last summer.

Which is why some people might be surprised to hear Heffernan has backed off on his training this week, and has planned a quiet weekend away in a nice hotel and spa in the north of Spain, with his wife Marian, and their four-month old daughter, Regan.

More surprising, perhaps, is the fact he hasn’t raced any 50km walks this season, nor will he, until Zurich, and the Friday morning of August 15th.

He’s only raced three times this season, all over 20km (including a low-key victory last Sunday in Naumburg, Germany), and has only one more race planned between now and the European Championships – and that’s a 3km “sprint” at the Cork City Sports, on July 8th.

So what is Heffernan thinking! Fear not the obvious: this is the calm before the storm, or before things go into “lockdown”, as Heffernan says himself.

Because Heffernan knows exactly what he’s thinking, and after 14 seasons of trial and error, knows exactly what it takes to arrive in Zurich in peak mental and physical condition.

So, after some downtime this weekend, he’ll take himself away from all home comforts, and hide out for five weeks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in southern Spain, logging up the last monstrous block of training, then finishing up at a holding camp in Salzburg, before going on to Zurich.

“This is actually a good time of the year,” says Heffernan. “If you can get to this point, with all the winter training done, then it’s a clean run in, really. Bang, bang, bang, and no going back, no distractions.”

Indeed if everything goes to plan no one will see or hear much more from Heffernan before Zurich, same as they didn’t see or hear much of him before Moscow last summer.

Not many Irish athletes have their season so deliberately planned out like that, nor should they, because only now are they coming under starters orders, their race to Zurich only beginning.

On your marks . . .