Spikes23 Aug 2014


It ain't easy being Queen

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SPIKES spends a day in the life of the world no.2 sprint hurdler and Diamond League leader Queen Harrison.

8.30am – Ignore the alarm clock

Normally my alarm clock goes off around 8.30am, but then I’ll set the snooze button and might not get out of bed until 8.45am [laughs].

I normally have a light breakfast because I don’t like too much food in my stomach before training. I like fruit, so I might have pears and spread either peanut butter and/or coconut sugar over the top to give me an extra energy boost.

10am – Hit the weights room

I’ll then jump in the car and, depending on the day, make my way to either the track or the weight room for 10am training. I have a pretty long commute of around 30mins or so to the track, so I use this time in the car to speak to my mum by phone [hands-free of course]. 

We’ll then start the warm up routine. There are only two girls in the group – myself and Brianna [Rollins] – and the rest are all guys. Needless to say the guys dominate the conversation and we just try and chime in whenever we can.

11am – Track trash talk

At this time of the year [late in the season] we might do a hurdles session followed by some kind of run – whatever my coach Lawrence Johnson cooks up for us. We're a very competitive group but funnily enough the main trash-talking comes from our coach. He’ll say something like 'Spencer said he's going to kick your butt during this run' to one of the other male athletes to get him amped up.

We’ll all then just laugh and try and gang up on coach Johnson! Because of the time it takes for a training session I like to snack during practices. Peanuts and coconuts are my super foods and I make this little concoction with the two of them, add some sugar and turn into a kind of brittle.

Queen Harrison Brianna Rollins

Training partners Harrison and Rollins celebrating a national 1-2 

The training session after cool-down normally finishes at around 1pm – not, though, after we’ve added in some supplementary medicine ball tosses and abs exercises. I’ve gotta look good in those two-piece race uniforms!

1.30pm – Eat

I’ll then grab something to eat – maybe a chicken or roast beef wrap. The rest of my day is kind of boring. If I haven’t got a massage at 2pm I like to go shopping – more often than not to the grocery store. I like wandering around the aisles discovering new spices or foods I can cook with, since cooking new and healthy dishes is my favourite thing to do at the moment.

4pm – Live clean

The grocery store is usually on the opposite side from home [in Anderson, South Carolina], so it is quite a long commute home and I might not get back until around 4.20pm. I’ll then get showered and busy myself around the house. I like cleaning. I always find something to clean.

I like watching Netflix and I’m so sad that I’ve just finished watching the final Netflix season of Drop Dead Diva, which has just ended. I also like watching action and marvel movies.

8pm – Kitchen-Queen

Cooking won’t start until around 8pm and I might not sit down to eat dinner until about 9pm. I’m always thinking of a master plan to help build my brand, so I spend a lot time researching on my computer and sending out emails.

I’m in a long distance relationship, where he is in a totally different time zone than me, so I’ll spend quite a bit of time on the phone and might not get to bed until the early hours of the morning, falling asleep on the phone!

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