To see the coffee machine laden build up to Joe’s heat, the actual race and the coffee machine laden post race interview, go HERE and forward to 1h 33min. 

Come on though, who really gives a fuck? Joe won easily, the story of the day was clearly Gaylord Silly, the 800m runner from the Seychelles who is a tree surgeon in his spare time. SPARE TIME? Maybe he should be practising his bastard running. He finished last in 1:54:93 which to be fair to the lad, was a national record. 

He trended on Twitter though, Joe didn’t. He’s got his own blog too so to be honest, there’s only one winner and here he is.

He’s flanked by club mates Lesbian Hilarity and Nancy Ridiculous, the Hogwarts 800m champion who’ll be racing Joe in Heat 3 of the semi-finals tomorrow.

For the full semi-final line up, click BALLS.

I’m sorry if the two guys I’ve given daft names to are part of THIS as it is genuinely brilliant. Keep up the good work.

Here are the times and start lists for the 800m heats this morning. If Joe remembers to turn left then he should easily finish in the top two. Thankfully he’s avoided the dangerous Gaylord Silly who runs in Heat 1.

When I started to write this blog, I didn’t really expect myself and Jimmy to be described as ‘athletic’s answer to Reeves and Mortimer’ by the world’s only weekly athletics magazine. Mainly because this is a deadly serious blog about athletic talent, burning ambition and the very real prospect of Jimmy Watkins deliberately making his band famous to upstage Joe Thomas.

Given that we now have that tag though, we might as well dick about, wear our own t-shirts and continue to rip the piss out of each other and everyone we come into contact with. 

The cover looks like this by the way. This will help you find it quickly in all good newsagents and WHSmith.

I never thought I’d feature in an athletics magazine, my Mum will be so proud. Or she would be if I stopped swearing.

Direct links to the full pages can be found here and here. Y’know, if you’re too cheap to buy the magazine but want to read some of the stuff that isn’t about us.

After Saturday’s blanket coverage in the Welsh press I didn’t even think to look in the Wales On Sunday. Luckily one of our many fans did and they sent me this. It came in a box with a pair of knickers and a letter begging for money. You’re shit out of luck love but cheers for the article.

Monday 5th March. It’s the night before Joe flies out to the World Championships in Turkey so we decided to pay him a little visit at the track to present him with his official Olympic Blog ‘Run faster Joe’ t-shirt. Jimmy hasn’t seen Joe since Joe broke his record so we thought it’d be nice for him to come up and wish him luck. To be honest I also thought it would be good for Jimmy. There’s only so much Special Brew one man can drink. He needed to snap out of it.

It was a simple plan. Nothing could go wrong.

Unless Jimmy showed up shitfaced.

He was well behaved to start with but the signs were there early on. This was going to end badly.

We tried to get a nice photo of the former and current Welsh Indoor 800m record holders together but Jimmy had started to turn by then.

Things went from bad to worse.

I had to step in.

That went badly too.

Eventually, we managed to calm Jimmy down and gave him his medicine. 

Obviously things were still a bit raw after the loss of his record. Maybe I should’ve known that. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve taken him to the track. Maybe it was too soon. Joe understood and didn’t take it personally. He was very good about it to be honest. I think he’s secretly jealous that Jimmy can get boozed up and gets to go to Texas this weekend and play in his band while he has to run around a track and eat sensibly. Joe’s 24. Jimmy was 24 when he ditched athletics for rock ‘n’ roll. In 5 years time we might see Joe at an institute for sport, grabbing his crotch and swearing at rugby players.

I think we can safely saythat Jimmy’s assault on the Olympics is over. My next job is to rebuild his self esteem and make him realise that he’s a rock star. And frankly, that’s loads more fun. At the moment though, he’s a broken man.

All photos and toilet filming by Emyr Rees.

Told you.

We don’t dick about here at Coach Matt Jarrett PR. The Welsh effort worked well on Saturday so we went for the broadsheets on a Sunday. The Sunday Times were game and even though they’ve used a photo from Joe’s audition for Saved By The Bell it’s not a bad article to further our World Domination plan.

If you want a link to this, tough shit, it’s a subscription site and you need to be rich and a bit right wing to access it.

Here at Coach Matt Jarrett PR, we thought Joe’s crazy punk rock image would be of interest to the straight laced idiot press would like their sportsmen and women to be upper class and wear cravats everywhere. Given that Joe didn’t attend boarding school and combs his hair with a combine harvester every morning we figured they’d jump at the chance of interviewing him and getting their readers to point at the page and go ‘look at that weirdo’. We were right. We started low key as a sort of test. We cast the line out to the South Wales Echo. They bit.

They bit so hard that they put a slightly upper class version of the same story in their sister paper The Western Mail. Blimey, this is easy.

If my scanning isn’t up to scratch and you want to read a version of this then HERE IT IS on the walesonline site.

Day 1, the South Wales press. Day 2, The Times.

At the beginning of the blog, Jimmy Watkins was the holder of the Welsh indoor 800m record. A young upstart named Joe Thomas was gunning for his record. 

None of us could predict the impact on the lives of our protagonists when, on the 18th of February 2012, Joe beat Jimmy’s record. Joe was on the road to the indoor World Championships to represent his country, Jimmy was on the road. Delivering letters.

This is the first of a series of short films following the pair’s career arcs in the weeks and months following that life changing afternoon in Birmingham under the watchful eye of coach, guru and blog author, Matt Jarrett.

We’ve made a little film. It’s not quite ready yet. Jimmy was supposed to come to the track and have a session with Joe but was so distraught at his record being beaten and his omission for the World Champs team that he didn’t turn up. This meant that I had to do some running. I had the correct kit but not the correct body shape. I am a natural in front of the camera though.

I believe I was having to explain that Jimmy had let us all down by not showing up. We’d all altered plans to be here. Everyone was disappointed with him but we had a job to do and we were going to damn well do it. Although I back my abilities as a coach I thought I should spend some time observing. Stylishly.

There were other people there but the best clothes they could find only had some kind of university logo. Not ‘Great Britain’. Fucking amateurs.

Joe seemed to take my hints and tips on board. We were pretty relaxed and looked damn sexy. So sexy in fact that Joe’s own father couldn’t even look at us.

I was worried about his choice of energy drink though, I was only reassured when Joe told me that it was simply the first bottle he found in his cupboard and was actually full of the thirst quenching, energy giving De’Longhi machine-made coffee.

Once the caffeine had taken hold, Joe set off proving he could actually fly. I’m unsure whether Olympic rules state that your feet have to make contact with the track at any point. If not, I reckon Joe has a pretty good chance.

After a while, my incessant offers of help and my perceived hole-picking regarding Team Thomas training techniques didn’t go down well. I was told to ‘put my ridiculous shorts where my fucking mouth is’. Fair enough, I’m confident in my ability. Given that I’m better at short distances, usually 5 to 10 yards and Joe specialises in 800m, we settled on a lap of the 200m track. I had the better start.

I kept pace most of the way around but was trailing by a couple of metres coming up to the line. I used a Watkins trick and yelled ‘Shit me, it’s a smooth, crisp cup of De’Longhi coffee’. Joe fell for it and I did him on the line. Get in.

Afterwards Joe was crushed. He couldn’t even stand up to shake my hand, I assumed he was just spent. He’d put a lot of effort into his race.

All in all this was a successful expedition. We got some good film footage, we didn’t have to look after Jimmy and I proved that I’m a world class athlete as well as a world class coach.

Look out for ‘Olympic Blog: The Mini Series’ coming to a blog near you soon.

- Coach Jarrett

All photography by Emyr Rees.

On this blog we tend to focus on people running, arm wrestling and generally doing what the public know them for. We thought it was about time we went behind the curtain, away from the screaming crowds, to these people’s homes, where they relax away from the limelight. We also thought we might be able to get Joe Thomas some free coffee.

As you can see, Joe Thomas kicks back with the beautiful taste and aroma of the finest coffee made with his brand new, ridiculously expensive De’Longhi coffee machine. He now has to finish in the top three of every race ever in order to be able to afford to fuel his habit. This workload is quite frankly impossible to deal with and is affecting Joe’s training, form and indeed, life. What he needs is sponsorship. A box of free coffee every week or so would improve his quality of life, make his schedule realistic and in all probability, result in World and Olympic glory.

Look, he has no shame, he will take time out to pose with any De’Longhi products. He will point, show off his guns and wear his Great Britain vest to demonstrate his world class athlete status.

Come on De’Longhi, make a young man happy.