LONDON OLYMPICS COUNTDOWN 100 DAYS: Full-time training has helped relax the high jumper's mind as she prepares to return to competition, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

FOR ALL the blithe superficiality about Olympic countdowns there is something inescapable about the lessening of days, these little chimes for the athletes already consumed by London, not just in their every waking hour, but their dreams too, or whatever it is they say in their sleep.

Deirdre Ryan had these next 100 days mapped out more carefully than anything else in her life long before yesterday’s photo shoot with Olympic team sponsors Electric Ireland – because for her these days aren’t just a number.

At 29, she’s preparing for her first Olympics, the first Irish woman to qualify in the high jump, so days like this actually bring some light relief, a brief step out of the bubble she’s been living in since the first day of 2012.

Ryan is actually counting down the next 113 days, as the women’s high jump is late on in the London programme – so she’s got a few more important dates to tick off before then (not forgetting her 30th birthday too, on June 1st).

First up is May 19th, at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai – where Ryan will have her first competition of 2012, and first major test since her breakthrough jump at the World Championships in Daegu last summer, where she cleared 1.95 metres, bang on the A-standard for London, and backed it up with a sixth-place finish in the final.

“It is getting exciting, to start competing,” she says, “and I suppose I’ll be jumping in the deep end, at the Diamond League. I’ll also do the European Clubs, at the end of May, and then the Moscow meeting, on June 11th, although after that there is some room for manoeuvre.

“If I jump well early on there’s the chance of doing some of the other bigger meetings too, to compete against the very best. But in terms of the bigger picture and all the training everything is well planned, right up to when I enter the Olympic village.”

Ryan avoided the indoor season to ensure she put in the best possible winter base, and with the exception of a minor ankle strain, which forced her to miss a couple of weeks training, everything has so far gone to plan: she returned to her German training base in Leverkusen on January 1st, working again with veteran high jump coach Gerd Osenberg, the only real difference being she was able to train full-time.

“It’s just been head down, work really hard, but thankfully it has gone very well. There was nothing radical to change anyway, just get back to basics really, with a good few months of base work, and I feel I’ve had a very good run at it.

“The great thing has been able to train full time, which has helped so much with the recovery, instead of trying to squeeze everything in and get a little stressed out. There is some pressure, but I’ve learnt a lot over the last five or six years.

“Once you prepare as well as you can there is no pressure. Before I’d be worried about missing some training, or maybe cutting a corners, but I’ve done everything I can this year, and you can’t do any more than that.

“It’s my first Olympics, and that still makes it very exciting. Having qualified last year has made a big difference, and with all the support I have now, funding, etc, it’s actually been good fun. Even doing the sponsorship stuff is great fun, a bit of a break from the training. You have to enjoy it at the same time.”

About the only thing Ryan is unsure about is that date at the end of June, at the European Championships in Helsinki, which a lot of Irish athletes are still uncertain about: “It will depend on whether I feel I need the competition, and how the body is responding after competition. I know as well from Daegu last summer that my body was very tired for a good two weeks after, a bit deflated, really, and I wouldn’t like that to happen ahead of London.

“Of course the only goal for the summer is to jump higher, although it’s hard to know now. I’ve never been what they call a training jumper. I always jump best in competition. Having said that I am jumping every bit as high in training, and more consistently. The first few competitions will tell a lot. A big jump early on would be nice.”

That first jump then, now just 30 days away.