I moved home, changed my training regime and found a new coach because I see change as a good thing – if you do what you've always done then you're going to get what you've always got.

I've thought about that mantra a lot throughout the changes in my programme and it's kept me positive. I could have chosen to go for short term goals and it's likely I would have met them, but the long-term goals are always far more rewarding and sometimes you need to sacrifice those short term aims. I've got 200 days to prepare for the biggest event in my life and while it's nice to win every competition I swim in, I would rather lose every event and win in London 2012.

I've just come back from my training camp in Durban, South Africa, which has been a tough period but fun at the same time. I'm lucky because I've had a long training period with a few days back home in Bath in between – my training started on 19 December when I went out to Rio for two weeks intensive training, including on Christmas day. Rio led almost immediately to another long period of training in Durban, South Africa.

There were 24 of us that attended the training camp with the British Swimming Disability Programme; it provides us all with a great opportunity to train with others in what is normally quite an individual sport. One of my main competitors, Charlotte Henshaw (below), was my training partner throughout the season – we would do a lot of our key sets together, helping our own techniques as well as helping each other to improve.


With swimming, the training cycles are the same every four years and we just treat this cycle, which is leading up to the trials, the same way as any other cycle in to a major competition. The quality of our work doesn't change now that the trials are so close, however our training gets a lot more specific. For example, instead of building up base fitness and core strength we're now focusing on perfecting our swimming techniques, which Charlotte and I worked on together.

A typical day in Durban involved around four hours in the pool, an hour-long weight session plus a couple more hours of physiotherapy and conditioning work. It's by no means easy, it's hard work but I love to compete, and to compete I have to train and that's where my motivation originates from.

The trial events are separated into two events, the first of which is in March, the second in April. Unlike some other sports, trials in swimming are exactly what it says on the tin: if you don't get the qualifying time then you don't get a place in the team.  It's a tough but fair rule and it means that the final team will be of a high performance level which of course is the target.


I'm in a better place right now than I've ever been before. The actual qualifying time I need to attain in the trials is slower than my personal best so I'm in for a good shot if I swim hard. We've just got to hope that ParalympicsGB have enough places for everyone that swims under the qualifying time – fingers crossed!

Liz Johnson, a Paralympic gold and silver medallist, is a BT Ambassador. BT is the official communications services partner of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. To find out more details click here.