It is somewhere during her semi-final in the 400 meters of the World Athletics Championships that Lieke Klaver has time and space to think: I really like this. She feels she is running fast, she finds she can muster the patience to get through the second corner at her current pace and then launch herself into the final straight. “I really had fun during my race,” she says afterwards. “That must be form.”
Klaver is comfortably first in her race, she only realizes after the finish how big her lead is over the other athletes. She easily qualifies for the final, which will take place in Budapest’s athletics stadium on Wednesday evening. “I found these past few days very exciting. I had to make it to the final myself,” says Klaver. Last year at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, USA, she finished fourth. But she doesn’t want to talk about medal chances. “I want to run faster than ever. If I finish eighth with that, that’s fine.”
Read also: a portrait of Lieke Klaverthe athlete who was enterprising and fearless from an early age
Loud noises
Cheerful and relaxed, 25-year-old Klaver seems to be experiencing her third major final tournament so far, after the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the World Cup last year. It is a contrast to the state she is in earlier this year. Exactly after winning her first individual medal, silver in the 400 meters at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul last March, Klaver runs into a wall. While the rest of the Dutch team goes to celebrate the successful tournament in the Turkish nightlife, the normally so extroverted and social Klaver only wants to cry and go to bed.
When she breaks again after a week’s leave at the first training for the outdoor season, Klaver realizes: something is very wrong here. She has difficulty with loud noises and has difficulty concentrating or remembering things. She develops anxious thoughts and suffers from palpitations.
Together with her psychologist, Klaver comes to a conclusion: she is overstimulated, after a period of about a year in which she hardly rested. “I prefer to say that I was ill for a while, I think overstimulated is such a big word,” says Klaver. But it’s true: taking a rest has never been one of her strong points. There is a sofa in the middle of her apartment, but she rarely sits on it. She would rather do fun things with her friend and fellow runner Terrence Agard, or meet up with friends, read books, or train hard to dive under 50 seconds in the 400 meters.
Now she can’t and shouldn’t do anything at all. Klaver is out for three weeks, she doesn’t do much other than catch up on sleep, rest and make puzzles. She learns to deal with the mental problems. “Together with my psychologist, I traced where my fear thoughts came from and learned that those thoughts belong to me. Now I know that I have to accept that it gets very dark for a while when I feel bad. Then I can continue afterwards.”
I have to accept that it gets very dark for a while when I feel bad
Klaver also learns to rest. She is now more often on the couch and is “very happy with it”, she says. She brought a number of word searchers to Hungary to find relaxation and peace during the hectic pace of the World Athletics Championships. “I sometimes think: I’m 25 and I’m already doing word searches, my peers probably don’t do that. But little things like that help me.”
In retrospect, Klaver thinks she was lucky: she recognized her symptoms early, and her coaches took her seriously when she said she couldn’t do it anymore. Moreover, it was during a period of the season where there were no important games scheduled. “And I just really enjoy what I do. I think that I was able to resume my training fairly quickly.”
It is also a reason for Klaver to be so open about it now. “I realize that quite a lot of people my age suffer from taking too much on their plate. As if taking a rest is a taboo.” It has helped her to talk about it, says Klaver, and she hopes to encourage others to do the same. “You have to be able to say it when you feel bad. So maybe people recognize the scary thoughts or heart palpitations and think: it’s actually normal.”
noise cancellation
Klaver now feels mentally stronger than ever, and that will also come in handy during this World Cup. On Saturday evening she is part of the mixed relay team in the 400 meters that sees a certain medal, and perhaps a world title, go up in smoke when Femke Bol crashes a few meters before the finish. “I just stuck my head in the sand. What are you talking about?” says Klaver with a smile the day after that great disappointment.
Read also: a report about the evening that Femke Bol (relay with Lieke Klaver, among others) and Sifan Hassan (10,000 meters) both fell and saw a possible world title evaporate
Klaver tells how she had already agreed with herself before that disappointing race to retire on her own afterwards to relax, so that she could focus on her individual races that were still to come. “With headphones on, with music or alone noise cancellation On. That way I could let go of everything and move on. I have no time and no desire for emotions this week.”
However, she regularly pauses to reflect on what she is doing. In a notebook in which she keeps track of her training programs, the best season times and world records on her running numbers, Klaver has written: I’m right in the middle of what I used to look forward to. “I used to be very curious what it would be like to run against the fastest in the world. I think it’s really cool that I do that now. It motivates me to run even faster myself.”
Klaver herself has the feeling that she can go even harder in this tournament. Her semifinal went in 49.87, just six hundredths above her personal best she ran in July. In the end she seemed to hold back a bit because of her big lead. “On the 400 meters you always look for the right speed. I can’t start too fast, because then I’ll be completely empty at the end. But I feel like I’m so close.”
She hopes it will all come together in the final, during the most important competition of the year. Because what she also notices is that she is getting tired. Only this time in a good way. “Then I get some rest, then I get on, and then everything falls into place.”