CLARK Zoey

General
COVID-19 IMPACT
She said that with the lack of competitions in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the year provided her the opportunity to "reset". "The last few competitive seasons I've been all over the place - I was running at times of year I would never normally be running in. This year [2020] has almost been like a hard reset. Obviously, I would like to have been racing. But this year I felt like I was doing the right sessions at the right time of year. I wasn't having to rush to prepare. I wasn't trying to hold on to my fitness at the end of a long season. Overall, I'm happy to have another year of preparation [for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo]. The delay could be a blessing in disguise and if all goes well I could be in a better position when the Games do go ahead." (athleticsweekly.com, 10 Feb 2021; heraldscotland.com, 04 Sep 2020; eveningexpress.co.uk, 29 Aug 2020; bbc.co.uk, 22 Aug 2020)

OCCUPATION
She spent three years as a full-time athlete after graduating from university in 2017, before taking a job as a graduate chemical engineer at an engineering company based in Aberdeen, Scotland, in September 2020. "For me, I think having an intellectual outlet is really important. I actually found that my breakthrough season in athletics in 2017 was the same year as my last year at university, which seems bizarre - you would think the stress would affect my performances. When I was a full-time athlete, there was a lot of downtime. It gave me too much time to think. If I didn't have a good session, if that's all I had going on, I'd worry about that a lot and waste energy on that. I actually do think that I train better when I've got work during the day. I almost feel like I've got a build-up of energy from doing the work, and when I come to training, I'm just very ready to do the session. I did have a slump towards the end of the summer [2020] and that's where having a job helped because I had something new in my life to focus on and give me some perspective." (athleticsweekly.com, 10 Feb 2021; heraldscotland.com, 06 Feb 2021)