After New Year celebrations in Seville Dobrynska now looks to World Indoor Champs

Olympic Heptathlon champion Natalia Dobrynska stopped her training in Portugal for a few days to celebrate the New Year and is now back in Kiev for the final stage of her preparations for the World Indoor Championships in Doha.

“Dear All,

“First of all, Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to all of you! For me, this was the first New Year I celebrated in warm climate, without our usual frost and snow. I was staying for my training camp in Portugal, 2,5km away from the IAAF accredited training centre in San Antonio. But for the New Year we decided to have a break for several days and went to Seville in Spain, which is actually not so far away. The town was just great. It was my first time to have long walks there, and I loved it. Some parts of Seville are really ancient; it has even 16-century buildings. We were not lazy with my husband and took time to learn more about the history of the town. I always loved to discover something new. This time it was amazing.

“For the last night of 2009 we went to a restaurant, and then decided to go out to the main square and see how local people celebrate the New Year. It was nice, but to be honest not as grandiose as I expected. For us in Ukraine the New Year is the main and most celebrated holiday, while for Spain maybe it is not. I liked it a lot in Seville, but it can not be compared with what is happening in Kiev on New Year’s eve. These are just two different things.

“I remember a couple of years ago I went to celebrate the New Year in our central street, Kreschatik. At some point I got tired of sitting at home and eating and decided to see what people were actually doing outside. This felt like a fairy tale! There were lots of people everywhere, everybody smiling, drinking champagne, wishing you all the best. People brought out their food to the parapets and were offering it to everyone passing-by. There were endless fireworks, songs, firecrackers… What to say, we can make the celebration unforgettable. Even now, when I came back from Portugal, there are still lots of firecrackers everywhere, and all the offices are closed till January, 11. In fact, this is a small problem – I have some business to be done, but everybody is away on holiday.

“Returning to Portugal, of course, I had plenty of things to do there apart from celebration. Mainly we were working on speed and strength. I started my training for the indoor season too late to do the load work now. So I tried to compensate this in the gym and doing speed and technical work in the stadium. Actually I hardly ever put on my spikes. Although the work was quite hard, I felt great, and almost everything could be done in my trainers.

“The new thing I introduced in my training was biking. As I said, we lived 2,5 km away from the training centre, and every day I made this distance by bike. Of course later we rented a car, but it was great fun for me to do some biking before the main training. To ride a bike by the side of the ocean, in a pine forest – how nice it was… Now I really came to appreciate what professional cyclists are doing. I could never imagine it was this hard! People say heptathlon is hard, but for me cycling is just unbelievable.

“Another great thing about Portugal is their training facilities. They had a modern track, indoor stadium, the gym – everything I could dream of! I think these were the perfect conditions for any athlete. I can not even imagine what the athletes from my country could have achieved if we had such facilities. We can only pray that some day the IAAF or someone else would pay attention and we also would get the centre like the one in Portugal.

“Still, I’m now back in Kiev, and in the final stage of my preparation for the World Indoors. I don’t want to speed up my training, so I’m not sure if I’ll be in time for any other competitions before Doha. Maybe, if everything goes well, I’ll do some more events, but I’m not sure. Let everything be as it is, and enjoy the moment.

“Happy holidays,
Natalia