Hermione Plumptre

I have always been in sport from a very young age. I did athletics as a junior for a period of time mostly multi events before I went into 7 or so years playing Lacrosse for England where I played at Home Internationals. From then Age 21/22, at University I took a small break from serious sport and went to playing netball at university, captaining my 1st team there. After a while, I realised it wasn’t enough for me to just play sport as a hobby, I needed the buzz of big competition back so went back to the track and began my somewhat difficult but rewarding journey. I started hurdling again mostly sprint hurdles where a coach approached me and advised I start looking at 400 meter hurdles, because of my body type and generally I wasn’t fast enough to sprint hurdles.

So I started to train for that and I fell in love with it. It came very naturally to me I enjoyed the intensity of the training and how hard I had to work to get any rewards on the clock. I had a set back in 2015 where I tore a disc in my L4-L5 so couldn’t hurdle for 18 months. As soon as I had recovered fully having spent a year or so away from hurdles I could not wait to be back over them. I’ve moved coaches and houses a fair few times since then worked two or more jobs most of that time to cover costs of an athlete competing and travelling along with day to day costs food etc. This all whilst learning and studying to be a fully qualified PT/ nutrition coach & Level 2 qualified Strength and Conditioning coach, as I realised if I wanted to be a Pro I couldn’t work a 9-5 desk job & I wanted to do something I was very passionate about.

So after a lot of hard work, long hours on the track & in the gym with some amazing support from family and friends, I have this year dropped 4 seconds of my personal best, qualified for British Championships for the second year in a row but this year I Qualified 6th fastest to the Final and am now ranked 10th in the UK for 400 meter hurdles having finished last season in 32nd in the UK.