My story begins with my daughter, Clair wanting to do
Little Aths. This was a surprise to me…“Why do you want to do that?” I asked.
Funny how life turns out… little was I to know this would become my life too….
So began a journey that would lead to Clair becoming a
Commonwealth Games Bronze medalist and an Olympian.
At a very young age Clair loved running; such was her
desire to run that she eventually plucked up enough courage to head off to the
local Little Athletics centre herself. One Saturday afternoon, knocking at my
door was a volunteer from Little Aths with a handful of trophies. He said “Your
daughter has won almost every event today, she has a great talent and I think
you should find a coach for her.”
From that day on I became involved with Clair’s
running. At the age of 14 she won her first spot on the Victorian cross-country
team. My role as her Father soon developed, I became the taxi driver, confidant
and periodically her coach over her short running career. Clair was not a
stand-out star during her junior years – far from it, running against the likes
of Susie Power (Commonwealth Games), Natalie Harvey (Olympian) and Joanne King
(2 x World triathlon champion). In fact she was 18 years old before she became
a National champion for the first time in the 3000m event.
I was aware even in those early days, that with
distance running it was far better to run in a group situation. My instinct
told me to try and find a female group running at the highest level, so my
search took me to the Tan, where I found what I was looking for, a group of
high achieving girls, including Olympians Kate Anderson and Jacky Perkins.
Clair progressed well in this group, rising through the ranks quickly to win
the national 10,000m senior Championships and competing in many world Cross
Country events, culminating in the 1998 Commonwealth Games and the 2000
Olympics.
As the Sydney Games closed, a period of resting,
analysing and then planning for the next challenge would be the norm. It seemed
like only weeks later when Clair declared that she was going to give up
running.
Being involved with sport all my life; soccer, squash,
golf and then athletics, what was I to do now? I had years of experience
rubbing shoulders with some of the most knowledgeable coaches in Australia, I
felt as though I had a good sporting mind and maybe my journey was just about
to start. My wife Nina encouraged me to give coaching a go.
My first point of call was the local little athletics
centre. I was announced over the loud speaker and soon had five interested
budding middle distance runners and their parents around me. I stated on the
very first day that I would love to be given an opportunity to coach. To this
day I remember a question from one of the parents, “Why are you doing this?” My
reply was simple, “My daughter has just run at the Olympic Games and I would
love to take an athlete on that same journey. I would like to coach at the
highest level, and this time do it my way.” This statement still stands today.
I also realised that experience wasn’t enough and that
I required recognised training plus the need to build a compact philosophy and
then test it.
I attended my first accreditation course with the
Australian Track and Field Coaching Association and started to network with
other coaches. I researched until I felt that I had covered all bases,
confident to coach at a level that I was happy with, and knowing that I would
grow as the athletes developed.
So with that being said: which way would I coach; the
speed approach or the high mileage or a combination of both?
THE PROGRAM
All athletes are different and have
individual needs. I had to make the program easily understood, with a variety
of venues and accurate running paces for each scheduled session. My first task
was to write various workouts under their individual headings. This was
prepared on a spreadsheet as follows:
·
Speed Development
·
Vo2 Max/Anaerobic Power
·
Race specific workouts
·
Threshold running
·
Hill running
·
Intervals
These were all color-coded for training
zones and their perceived efforts (Easy, Comfortable, Uncomfortable, Stressful
and Very Stressful). When GPS wristwatches became available I included the
percentages of max heart rates: in return I had the benefit of accurate
measurement information.
The blueprint looked something like this in the early
stages of my coaching, whether you ran 800m or a few years later 5000m (today I
coach 800m to Marathons):
Monday: Speed development, running technique. Short hills or accelerations
calculated against 400m; this would depend on the phase of the year. Total
training time of 60 minutes for the shorter events. For the 5000m athletes the
philosophy would be the same with more volume.
Tuesday: Vo2max, longer reps with short recoveries
Wednesday: Aerobic recovery runs
Thursday: Anaerobic/power, shorter reps with longer recoveries. This was
designed to tease the nervous system and develop the motor units (train at race
pace or faster in readiness for the weekend)
Friday: Aerobic recovery runs or day off
Saturday: Race simulation or sessions using the energy systems that I felt were
lacking.
Sunday: Long run, 60 minutes or more depending on the event.
This program would be based on a three-week
turn-around, or, as I would say to the athletes, three hard weeks and one easy
week. I found that in the initial stages this worked very well until the group
became older and ran the longer events. I then progressed to a four-week turn-around.
On the easy week I would cut the volume down but the athletes would run at a
slightly higher intensity; in fact the easy week would be a good time to
re-test (time trials). This would enable me to accurately calculate the
athletes’ running paces for the next month’s cycle of training.
The Internet became
my workmate and meant that I could now reach athletes around Australia. I also
attracted other sports looking for fitness; football was one of them. I coached
Callum Ward (Western Bulldogs and now captain of GWS) before he became a
football star; also talented Elliot Kavanagh of Essendon, and Tom Temay, first
year draft for Carlton in 2013. Tom was a great athlete in his own right running
third in the National cross-country in 2008. These athletes helped attract
young hopefuls to the group; it was my (unrealized) hope that if these talented
people didn’t make the grade they would return to athletics.
Mid 2000 saw the
group climb to around 50 strong with many athletes who had become State and
National champions running together four days a week. The group was now heading
in the direction of how I imagined it to be in those early days, my next challenge
was helping one of my young athletes take the ultimate challenge (International competition) “this is the
reason why I started coaching wasn’t it.”
