Keith's story

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.”