Athletics Northern Ireland

Standing Still

2011-12-23T02:42:00.000-08:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog, and to be honest time has flown by. It seems only yesterday I was waiting for the news to come through regarding selection for the Commonwealth Games. 2010 had been somewhat a breakthrough year for me, finally it seemed I had lived up to a small amount of own expectations.

The initial breakthrough was the Triple A’s 10km in Bristol where I placed 2^nd to Andrew Vernon in a huge pb of 29.14 and if that wasn’t enough 10 days later I ran a 1500m pb of 3.45, although, with all breakthroughs it came with a price, my new enthusiasm and confidence lead me to train harder, faster and as a result my body broke down. Only a few weeks later I had visions of breaking 14 minutes for 5000m, and instead I was forced to withdraw after only 5 laps of the race.

After some treatment, and a down period I was able to think clearly again, I trained as normal and relaxed again. This lead to several more appearances at both 5000m and 1500m, although I might not have gotten the result I wanted over 5000m, I certainly exceeded my own ambitions over the shorter distance. This lead to a call up for Northern Ireland at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, which myself and my family were all super excited for.

It’s now been over a year since the Commonwealth games took place, I missed an opportunity to compete there due to several reasons. Even though it was over a year ago, I still struggled with bad memories from then as recent as September/October this year. Running is a very physically and mentally demanding sport, and between August 2010-November 2011, I’ve had an emotional roller coaster journey. One that has seen myself, family and friends go through a lot. I personally dropped out of uni, quit running, re enrolled in university, took up running again, dropped out of uni, went back to uni, quit running, took up running again. Changed coach several times, and yet each time I made changes to my life I found myself right back in the same positions over and over again.

Faced with the same difficulties that running throws at us, and each time being given the same challenges that runners meet. I was searching for reasons why things weren’t going well, I seen physios, sports psychologists, doctors, nurses, spoke with coaches, and spoke with family. All I wanted was a reason why things weren’t progressing, why my times in 2010 were faster than my times in 2011, why my body and head gave up on me a month before the commonwealth games in 2010, but nobody was going to be able to provide the answers I wanted. I wanted there to be one reason, an infection, an injury, but neither were the cause.

The truth is, my times were slower because I hadn’t done the work required, I hadn’t made the sacrifices that runners must, and I didn’t deserve my times to improve. I was trapped in this bubble of anger, a year long huff were I refused to accept the past and let go. Instead to be honest I resented running, I blamed running for my unhappiness after the commonwealth games, after watching Ireland win under 23 gold medals in Portugal European Cross country. As without running in my life I wouldn’t have had to feel guilty for missing the games, I wouldn’t have felt jealous of the guys who won the gold medals, and maybe I would never have dropped out of university. That was definitely a hard time in my life, but nobody was to blame but myself.

There were underlying injury and health problems that prevented me from preparing well for the commonwealth games. I beat myself up about this pretty bad, I think it hurt more because my dad made such a big effort to fly out there to Delhi, that was heart breaking. After though only I could pick myself up again to train for my last U23 at the European Cross Country, but I did the opposite and made very little effort. Then the championships came and went, yet I felt hard done by, for not making the team.

It’s only recently throughout it all that I’ve realised the issue wasn’t the illness or injuries, because at the time they couldn’t be controlled, the issue was how I dealt with these problems, I chose to huff and lay still, rather than pull myself out of bed and crack on. Unfortunately for a very long time I forgot to make the most of the good days, I forgot how to utilise these in a professional way. Illness and injuries will come and go, and we may be forced to miss things we didn’t want to. My problem was missing the days were there wasn’t and problems, and missing those important days when I should have got things done. Days were I was blessed with full health, and I chose to huff and resent running.

It doesn’t take a physio, doctor, psychologist or family member to explain this to you, this comes from the inside, for some reason I was baffled and still thought I was acting professionally, even if someone had argued the obvious to me, I was still under the impression I was doing everything I could to make things better.

On a positive note I’ve now came through it all, having passed my coursework and exams in London this month, I now feel I’m starting to get things back together. It has taken a lot of effort and time, not just from me, all my support team. I have to be thankful for everyone who has impacted upon my life in various ways, not just with regards to athletics.

I plan a small race over Christmas at the Greencastle 5 mile road race, it will be good to race again with a clear head. I hope things continue to progress well into the New Year, and hopefully with some hard work, and good luck I’ll get some great results.

It’s always good to end a piece of work with a quote, so here goes…

“No matter what you do with your life, there will always be barriers, in a job, a sport, or even if you simply watch television all day. Jobs have a boss or employees you might not see eye to eye with, sports have challenges that could take years to master, and even a television remote can run out of batteries. We must learn to accept when things don’t go as planned, life is easy when things go the way we expected, but life is hard when things blow up in front of us. Success comes to those with patience and those with the ability to adapt. Then no situation will cause you to stay still”

Stephen Scullion (North Belfast Harriers)

My Commonwealth Youth Games (Matthew Martin)

2011-09-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

The Commonwealth Youth Games had been one of my big targets for 2011 along with EYOF. My season up to the commonwealth youth games had not been all that great. My throw wasn’t coming together as I had hoped it would and this meant I wasn’t hitting the distances that I wanted to be achieving. The only competition I finished with a slight smile on my face was the EYOF where I threw 62.72m. This was good as it gave me a lift and helped me to focus on the CYG in September.

September came around quickly and before I knew it I was meeting up with the rest of the team at the Mary Peters Track and then taking a coach down to Dublin to catch a plane to the Isle of Man. I found out that the reason for flying from Dublin was that the planes from Belfast could not accommodate everyone and would take about three planes to get us all over! We arrived in the “Isle of Man”. Before, I had thought that the weather could not get much worse than Northern Ireland... but I soon realised It could. The wind was blowing and the rain just didn’t stop.

The seaside town of Douglas was great; all the teams were allocated to different B&Bs along the sea front. All the athletes from different countries where great to talk and mix with and most spoke English.

The opening ceremony was excellent considering the size of the Isle of Man. I thought they did a great job . Lots of dancing and a well put together show.

I was not throwing until Sunday so had three days free. It was great to be able to go and watch all the rest of the team compete in there different sports. I must also add that we had a GREAT team leader for the athletics team... Elaine McCaffrey! She did a great job and sorry to her if we caused her any stress!

Before I knew it Sunday came and I was focusing for my event at 12pm that day. The weather was the worst I had seen in a long time. The wind was very strong and was against us in the javelin. The rain did not help and staying warm was hard. It was a straight final. In the final there were some high class throwers.

A South African with a PB of 83m and some Australians with PBs in the 70s along with a good few of 60m throwers. This did not bother me as I knew that if I could just hit one right then I could be up there competing for a medal. In my 3rd round throw I had a reasonable throw which was out around 60m but unfortunately my feet fell out the side of the runway making it a foul throw. In the end I finished 7th. The winner was from South Africa with a throw of 81m!

When my event was over it meant that I could just enjoy the rest of the trip. It was the last day and the closing ceremony took place. It was a very chilled out ceremony and was great to watch with fire dancing and other entertainment. After this it was disco time which was great but with a bad choice of music towards the end!

We headed home on the Monday , taking a plane back to Dublin and a bus back to the Mary Peters Track.

Overall it was a great experience even thought my throwing did not please me. The javelin is an event I love and am really aiming for a future in it. I have learnt a great deal over the last year and now know what needs addressed in order to see big improvement over the next few years. Hopefully, this will lead to Glasgow in 2014! I look forward to the winter ahead and to representing Northern Ireland in years to come!

Matthew Martin

Orla Smyth wins Gold at World Transplant Games

2011-06-20T04:29:00.000-07:00

World Transplant Games- Orla Smyth competing for GB team won Gold in the 10K and a Silver team medal.

After nine hours travelling we finally made it to Gothenburg on Friday 17, to be greeted by pretty much the same weather as home. Tho was secretly pleased as figured the rainy wet weather would suit us more than those from foreign climates!

After getting registered and checked in the nerves started as my first big race and the one I was most worried about was quickly approaching. So I had a very early night, slept like a baby and was up at 6 the next morning and felt surprisingly calm. I knew that I had worked hard all year at the dub and track an well there was nothing more I could do now.

Decky sent me a poem that morning and the last words went " sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can", so with that in mind I headed off to the stadium. My hopes of weather advantage were snookered by a blue sky and 20 degree heat but as I lined up at the start with all the other competitors, I knew what i had to do.

The race started with about 50m on the track and the out through a park around a loop then back in to the track to finish. It wasn't a bad course, few hills but nothing too bad. I started well and there was a pack of about 5 of us together for the first half km, after this I started to pull away and from this stage I was leading the race, not something I'm used too! I found it difficult to judge the pace and too often kept looking behind me, which slowed me up.

That said, I led the race to the end and strided home into the track to the cheering crowds to finish first lady over all age categories. I felt absolutely exhausted but absolutely thrilled too. Not a pb but a gold medal and that's certainly the order i would have taken before the start! Time came in at 14mins which was a bit slow tho my garmin friends informed me it was a "long" 3k!!

An American girl came in second and an Irish girl third. The UK womens team also got a silver in the team event. So my first day in the world games and two medals, defo a success!! I can't explain how amazing the atmosphere here is, with 51 countries represented the colours are fantastic! The day finished off with meeting Prince Daniel of Sweden who presented me with my medal. He has had a kidney transplant too. So few days rest before taking on the track on Wednesday with the 1500 and 400 then. I'll keep u posted on progress

Orla (World Champ!!)

Pacing the Belfast Marathon with Peter and Jim

2011-05-13T09:35:00.001-07:00

Months had passed, loads of meetings attended, photos posed for and finally the big day was nearly there. By big day I don’t mean a wedding, Christmas or even a birthday. Instead we’re talking about May Day - Belfast Marathon Day.

Today it wasn’t about racing and achieving our own personal bests. Instead it was about helping runners of varying experience and ability to meet their time goal of running 26.2 miles in less than 4.5 hours.

Training commenced back in January with plenty of miles being put into the ‘bank’ including the obligatory LSR (long slow and steady run). These runs are critical in the success of any ‘marathon’ runner, no matter what their goal time is. Sunday morning runs with my fellow Ballymena Runners club mates are an early affair, sometimes starting at 6.30am. So early, that on occasions we meet people just coming back from a night out on the town – the look of disbelief on their faces is priceless. Fortunately the other 4.5 hour pacer, Jim Moore is also a member of Ballymena Runners and is one of my regular training partners. These runs provided the opportunity to practice running several miles at the required pace of just over 10 minute miles (10 minute 18secs per mile to be precise).

Marathon morning was great fun and the traditional send off at 7am was organised from the City of The Seven Towers. When you are running a marathon, especially your first, the nerves can be overpowering and it always feels strange as a pacer to be so relaxed. In fact Jim came out of the local shop that morning with a daily newspaper. Whilst he caught up on the success of United our fellow club mates were anxiously waiting the start of the race.

Nevertheless having paced the same time group in 2010 we knew that people were relying on us. A visit to the expo with my family on the Sunday provided more proof of this as we realised that nearly three times the number of runners had signed up to run with the 4.30 pacers compared to the sub 3, sub 3.30, sub 3.45 and sub 4 timings. Our task to run the distance at an even pace was definitely our primary goal that morning.

My pre race ritual was a fairly standard affair and included the obligatory last minute toilet stop(s), making sure the GPS watch was fully charged and attached the pacing balloons to my race vest. Disaster struck – the last of the helium had been used and the 4.5 hour pacing balloons would have to suffice with our own hot air – thankfully Jim is in no short supply of that. Although the amount of people speaking in ‘Mickey Mouse’ high pitch voices near the start line did raise our suspicions.

Whilst making our way to the start line a runner whom we had helped last year said hello and we soon discovered that he was hooked and back to break sub 3.30 this time!!

Standing at the 4.30 hour pen in a sea of runners was fantastic and the sense of excitement was building. 9 am and the move to cross the start line commenced and to a chorus of Championchip timing beeps – we were off!! The first few miles of the course takes in the east of the city and is relatively flat. Even though the temperature was low on the start line, it was already rising under the cloudless blue skies. The sight of thousands of runners making their way past Central Station is fantastic and further evidence of the growing success of this city marathon. By the first relay changeover point we had already made friends with many runners from clubs such as Plymouth Harriers and also with many locals making their marathon debut.

Our message to our group at this stage was simple – keep this nice steady pace, take on plenty of fluids and stay in the shade where possible. Through the city centre and onwards to our first climb on the course. The Falls Road. This section of the route was well lined with support and the music outside the Leisure Centre provided great entertainment. This area of the course which progresses its way to the second relay point at Springfield and beyond is one of my favourites. The reason why? The support is fantastic and the ‘craic’ is great – offers of everything ranging from a soda bap to something a bit stronger come from some of the wise cracking bystanders. With the 10 mile marker behind us, Jim and myself do a quick stock take after the relay point. Many of the 4.5 hour group are still in sight, either in front or just behind us.

The initial enthusiasm is still on everyone’s faces but there is also that look of concentration going on. Before approaching the only significant climb on the course up the Antrim Road, we advise our group that we intend to maintain a steady pace on the climb and if anything perhaps slow it down by a few seconds per mile. More importantly was our advice not to begin the descent down the Whitewell Road at break neck speed as although tempting it may be, from many a Belfast Marathon runners experience it can come back to bite you, normally at around mile 20!!

The support on the Antrim Road is superb and the welcome aid stations are well spaced out up this gruelling climb of approximately 2 miles. Following on from the descent onto the Shore Road, it was time for relay point number 3 at Gideon’s Green. Jim and I couldn’t help but be amazed that the stream of marathon runners and relay runners had not ‘thinned’ out. Sometimes during a marathon it can be a lonely place but not in Belfast this year, the crowds on and off the course were really strong even at this furthest point away from the city centre. A few of the original group had dropped back slightly and some progressed further ahead onto the Loughshore path. Thankfully the wind came from slightly behind us and didn’t hinder progress too much. A few marathon runners who had perhaps struggled in the heat were to be found walking along parts of this path and were encouraged by us to join our group and keep progressing to the finish line.

At Duncrue the 20 mile marker is there and for many marathon novices they are venturing into unknown territory since many training plans only recommend training up to 20 or maybe 22 miles before race day. It was time to bring out the secret weapons.

The extra large container of magic jelly beans provided by my lovely wife were brought out at this stage. All of a sudden the number of people in the group seemed to increase as we passed them around to those runners we could identify were running the full 26.2 miles. Two fellow club mates Robin Alexander and Stephen Brown had been running with us and a few of our group who felt strong enough to push on from this point attached themselves to Robin and Stephen who brought several across the line including Jo Greenwood on her first marathon attempt at 4 hours 26 minutes. Great running by both Ballymena Runners, especially since they had raced London Marathon a couple of weeks earlier. Luckily Jim and I had decided to keep a few of the sweets. This enabled us to share some with the remarkable Conor from Going The Distance as he was making his way towards the finish with marathon veteran Michael Jenkins from Up and Running.

Along the Lagan towpath we warned runners of the approaching Mount Everest (the wee footbridge beside the Gasworks entrance). This always provides evidence of how the body has coped with the mammoth effort to that point. The loop in the Ormeau Park gives some respite from the unbelievable heat and it’s clear that a good number of those starting out with us are well on their way to breaking the sub 4.30 barrier. Despite the soaring temperatures a couple of people really stand out at this point – Bryan Martin and the ‘Guy in the Green top’. Words of encouragement come from us at this point such as ‘Dig Deep’, ‘you are looking strong’ (blatant fib!!) along with my favourite ‘you haven’t run 24 miles to stop now’. The crowds outside the pubs on the Ormeau Rd. climb encourage with shouts of ‘not long to go now’, ‘you’re nearly there’, ‘only another couple of hundred yards to go!!..’. Jim and I know all of these statements to be slightly inaccurate but play along anyway. The Ravenhill Road reminded me on Race Day of the Champs Elysees, only instead of being full of French waiters there were lines of runners family and friends cheering, screaming and really motivating them towards the embankment. For some within the group the emotions are too much to hold in and the tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones began spilling down their cheeks. The embankment came into sight and the loudspeakers announcing the runner’s names crossing the line could be heard. The knowledge that they had made it was apparent on everyone’s faces. We told anyone in our group to ‘empty the tank’ at this point. Just go for it and sprint for the line. Jim and I stopped at the gates for around 20 seconds to cheer everyone up the finishing strait. We then made our way along towards the finish line and crossed it together, although Jim did just dip slightly ahead for the bragging rights.

Our chip time 4.29.31 – job done.

We may never meet any of our pacing group again but to be allowed to share in their own personal battles and journey along 26.2 miles is a great privilege. One which we both value greatly. I’ll leave you with my favourite line of the day from a spectator at mile 18.

‘Keep going, you can still win it!!’. Absolute classic.

A final word of thanks to the pacer sponsors Asics and to Claire O’Reilly, Stephen Pearson and everyone else including Athletics NI involved in making the 2011 Belfast City Marathon such a memorable event.

Peter Fleming and Jim Moore, Ballymena Runners.

BBC Spaces & Places: Michael McKillop

2011-05-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Insights from a world-class athlete (by Chris Kane)
Recently I had the opportunity to have lunch with gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete Michael McKillop, where I learnt a great deal about what it takes to truly be on top of your game. It struck me that achievements of this nature could provide the ONE Workplace team with some insights as we continue on our journey towards becoming world-class.

The London Olympics is fast approaching and heavily in the spotlight, particularly with the ticket application deadline which passed at the end of April. But there are two games taking place in 2012. The Paralympics takes place between the 29 August and 9 September at the same venues.

Meeting Michael McKillop and learning a bit about the Paralympics was one of those truly eye-opening opportunities. To speak to someone who holds a Paralympic gold medal and has a number of world records to his name was inspirational. I listened, with admiration, as he explained about the amount of training he puts in and the sheer hard work and determination necessary. Yet he has done this for many years while facing his other personal challenge - Michael has a mild form of cerebral palsy.
In learning about the challenges of reaching the highest echelons of world sport, I was curious about how Paralympians get the support they need. In the case of this young man from Belfast, his principal support comes from Paralympics Ireland and the Irish Sports Council. Without assistance, both financial and otherwise, athletes would find it virtually impossible to make any progress.
In the end though it's down to the individual to deliver the goods on the day! Michael shared a very interesting story about how his dad, his coach, helped him to overcome the mental challenges of competing on the world stage. At the age of 18 Michael made it to the final of the 800m in Beijing 2008. He had to run in front of a crowd of 91,000 people in the Bird's Nest arena -the size of which he had never seen before. A daunting task for anyone, made especially difficult as the rules demanded that Paralympians could not take their carers/support team with them during the final pre-race period. Michael explained that this was a big challenge for him, but his Dad helped him conquer his misgivings and when giving Michael some parting shots of advice he put a small piece of paper into his running spikes. "Open this note when you finish the race," it said.

History tells us that Michael went out and blew his competition away, completing a world record beating race in a time just under 2 minutes (1.59.39). As he approached the podium to receive gold he took out the note from his dad. It read: "You've won!"

From that day on Michael has never looked back. He exudes charm, good humour and confidence. He faces up to the challenges of his disability and is a role model to us all, showing what can be achieved if you put your mind to it, have the right support, and most of all believe that great things happen when we work together as a team.

Marathon is Taking Veteran Tommy Hughes to the Top of the World

2011-04-29T03:42:00.001-07:00

Tommy Hughes knows what it takes to be among the best in the world at marathon running. In 1992 the Co. Derry man ran his personal best of 2.13.59 in the Marrakesh Marathon and later in the year represented Ireland at the Barcelona Olympics. Eight months ago, at age 50, Hughes defied his age and ran 2.29.14 in winning the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham. When the Veterans World Rankings are finalised later this month, there’s a good chance that run could put Hughes at the top of the world in the over-50 category.

His half marathon time of 70.28, achieved at the Peterborough Half Marathon in October 2010, should also be among the world’s best.

Now 51, Hughes is looking forward to competing in the Belfast City Marathon on Bank Holiday Monday. It’s a race Hughes has won twice – in 1988 and 1998 – and he says his training has gone well and he’s ready to put his best foot forward. Hughes says,

‘The Belfast Marathon is home. I know most of the runners in the race and I get a lot of good support around the course. It’s hilly but at the same time it seems to suit me because I was surprised to run 2.28 there three years ago [at age 48, when he finished sixth overall]. Training has been going okay. I’ve had problems with my left Achilles tendon but it hasn’t stopped me too much. I’m happy enough with my form.’

Hughes, a member of North Belfast Harriers, has been living in England for the last three years and also runs for Leicester Coritanian Athletics Club. An electrician, there is more work for him in England but he says that, ‘my home is Northern Ireland.’ Hughes has also run for Annadale Striders, Belfast Olympic, and Sparta in Derry.

And this year’s Belfast City Marathon will be for him a family affair. His brothers John and Damian, who both live in Northern Ireland, will be joining him on the course as they attempt the distance for the first time.

Hughes was a fulltime athlete between 1983 and 1992. After the 1992 Olympics, he began working again and did not run another marathon until Belfast in 2008. Moving into the veterans’ ranks has supplied him with a fresh wave of motivation and renewed his love of running.

In striving for his goal of reaching the top of the world rankings, Hughes subjects himself to a training regimen that would rival that of many top senior athletes. Indeed, Hughes says he may be training harder now than he did when he was a senior athlete. He says,

‘I’m actually probably doing more than I did when I was younger. I’m working in Leicester so in the time I have after work I can train away. I usually do ten mile in the evening time and 8 in the morning. And I mix it on a Tuesday and Thursday with speed work with the boys from Leicester. And a long run on the Sunday. I’ve been up there at about 120 miles a week, but that’s what I need to do. I’ll not do that all the year round, but you need to get miles in the legs, so I’d say about 6 weeks at 120.’

Hughes says he is not sure how many marathons he has run, but he knows that it is more than 50. Most of those came during his time as a senior athlete. He would sometimes run up to five marathons a year – bucking the conventional wisdom that says that elites should race at most two marathons per year. For example, in 1988 Hughes ran five marathons and won three of them: Belfast, Marrakesh and Melbourne. He says, ‘Even then they were saying only run two a year. The way I looked at it, you have to get used to the distance. If you want to be good at it, you have to be able to handle it.’

Hughes says that from the time he started running he was captivated by the marathon and has ‘always considered myself a marathon runner, that’s what keeps me going: the magic of the marathon.’

His very first marathon was the first Belfast Marathon in 1982. He had only taken up running the autumn prior to that race, because ‘I had just got married and was getting fed well and putting on a lot of weight.’ His initial motivation was moving from the reserves to the senior team in his Gaelic football club.

So off training of four miles a day three times per week, Hughes got around the Belfast Marathon course in 3.01.20. That spurred him on to train harder and try to break the three-hour barrier, which he did in just a few months time in a marathon in Letterkenny, where he recorded a dramatic improvement, clocking 2.35. Hughes describes his first marathon in Belfast this way:

‘I was going pretty well till 20 mile. I always remember a comment I heard when I was running by a group of people. One shouted, “who do you think you are, Alberto Salazar?” I realised at 20 mile I was not Alberto Salazar! I learnt the hard way. But I didn’t know any better. So I just decided after that to train a bit harder.’

His first victory in Belfast came six years after that experience. Hughes said he had built up a lead three-quarters of the way through the race, but he began to tire and his Sparta teammate John McDowell closed the gap. Hughes held on to win by four seconds, 2.19.00 to 2.19.04. Hughes says his second victory in Belfast, coming in 1998 at age 38, was more of a surprise:

‘Coming up to 1998 I decided to have another go because it had been ten years of a time span. I trained January to May and then at the start of the race we were told that the course would be rerouted because of a bomb scare. It was a bit longer than normal distance, and I won it in 2.23. I was surprised that no younger people came along and gave any competition on the day. After that I concentrated on work again, and left athletics until three years ago. 2008 was another ten year span and that brought me back to Belfast. I was now 48 and I ran sixth in the race and ran 2.28.35 and then after that I left it for another couple of years, turned 50, and decided to come back in that age category to achieve as much as I could.’

Hughes says that he has pondered why there is no longer the same depth in quality in marathon running in Ireland and the UK. No man from Northern Ireland has broken 2.20 in the marathon since 1995. He says,

‘Way back when I stared the marathon our generation trained a lot harder than the generation now. They are distracted by a lot more things than we were. There are a few young people coming through but not as many as the days when I was running. There were more people around the same standard, and they brought each other on. Today there are only one or two, and the rest are in it for the fun of it.’

But it’s clear that while running is fun for Hughes, a competitive fire still burns in him. Hughes says he continues to relish the challenge of the marathon: ‘The marathon is just a very, very tough event and there’s so many f actors in getting it right and getting it wrong. That adds a mystique about it. You have to try and get it right every time.’

And he says that when ‘you get it right’ the rewards are incalculable. He says he has had two days during his long career that stand out in that regard: winning Marrakesh in 1988 and Dublin in 1991. Hughes describes those races this way:

‘The win in Marrakesh came out of the blue for me. I didn’t expect it. I went not expecting anything and ended up beating men like Mike Gratton, who had won London in 1983. He was a bit of a hero for me. So to end up winning really made my year. Then the other was the Dublin Marathon when I won it, the year before the Olympics in 1991. In that race, everything went absolutely perfect for me. I could do no wrong. Everything clicked totally on the day. Every part of the race felt so comfortable. When I decided I wanted to do something I just done it, within reason. I think about 18 mile there was a group of us, Jerry Kiernan and John Griffin, all the top Irish boys. But I decided let’s see what everybody’s got, put on a surge, and nobody came with me. I moved away and kept going. I ran 2.14.46 I think it was, feeling good the whole way through. There’s not many times you can say that about a marathon!’

By Gladys Ganiel

First Lady of the Belfast Marathon: Sue Boreham on the Sport Then and Now

2011-04-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sue Boreham was the first woman across the line in the inaugural Belfast Marathon in 1982. It was an impressive performance by the then 23-year-old, who was running in her first marathon and had taken up the sport only two years previously.

Boreham will be participating in the 30th running of the event this Bank Holiday Monday. Now a mother of adult children and a Physical Education teacher at Forthill Integrated College, Boreham will run as part of a relay team of athletes who completed the first Belfast Marathon. She says that winning that first race remains her fondest memory from athletics.

‘I had a feeling of euphoria at finishing it. I just really enjoyed it. It was an absolutely wonderful experience simply because all of your friends and all of your family were along the route. It was good for friends and family because the course then was two loops and they could watch you run by twice. I wasn’t even thinking I was going to finish it! But the support kept you going.’

Boreham, running for Tailte Athletic Club in Belfast, completed the course on that cool, windy day in 3.11.26, more than eight minutes ahead of second place finisher Brigid McCabe from Mullingar (3.31.29). She says that a mystery runner who joined her for the final minutes of the marathon helped her along the way:

‘I was amazed during the race because around 18 miles people started to say I was the first lady, and I was thinking, where is everybody else? I shouldn’t be in the lead. But at 22, 23 miles I was beginning to flag. I don’t know who it was, but a male runner slowed himself down and sat on my shoulder and said I could finish. He just said I could do it, and he was really great, and ran with me the rest of the way. I didn’t know his name. Unfortunately he ran off at the end of the race and I couldn’t get his name.’

Boreham remembers that the day was especially satisfying because her coach, Malcolm Brown, also coached the men’s winner, Greg Hannon.

Discovering a Love of the Long Distance

Originally from Drumbeg, Boreham says she took up athletics when she began dating English decathlete Colin Boreham, now her husband, who represented Great Britain in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. She had built solid athletic foundations as a youngster, competing in squash and hockey. When asked why she took up long distance running, Boreham laughs and says:

‘I wasn’t fast enough for anything else! I seemed to be able to outrun most other people, but there seemed to be no fast twitch muscle fibres there. Having been involved in team sport I found marathon running totally different. But I think what I did like was the hard part, the physical challenge of it all. I loved that feeling that I could run and run and run. And I really liked the feeling of fitness that I got.’

Boreham says that when she heard that Belfast would be staging a marathon, she was excited and there was no question that she would take part. She says,

‘The first Belfast Marathon was part of the new running craze that was going around the world. And at that time, [during the Troubles], it seemed that nothing good ever really happened in Belfast. So it seemed like a good thing to get involved in. And it was a challenge. It was part of something worldwide and something Northern Ireland could be contributing to worldwide in a good way, which was quite motivating.’

Boreham was second in the second Belfast Marathon in 1983, improving her time to 3.00.06 as Roma McConville of Newry took top honours in 2.58.07. Boreham remembers her disappointment at narrowly missing dipping under the three-hour barrier on that day.

She says that she tried the method of carbohydrate loading that was widely practiced in those days – depleting the body of carbohydrates by going on a hard run and fasting of carbohydrates, before loading it with carbs during the three days immediately before the race. Today, many marathon runners skip the depletion phase of carbo-loading, believing it stresses the body and does not seem to provide more benefits than eating normally and then simply loading in the last three days before the marathon. Boreham describes that race:

‘I felt awful during the first part. By 17 miles I felt brilliant, but it was too late then. To miss three hours was depressing really. I had no one sitting on my shoulder like the year before. I had tried to do the carbo loading and I felt pretty horrible from 6 to 17 miles, then felt brilliant. Maybe I was a victim of the new carbo loading craze!’

Boreham finally broke the three hour barrier that year in the Dublin Marathon. It was to be her last marathon, as her husband retired from competitive athletics after the 1984 Olympics and they concentrated on raising a family.

A Leading Lady for Athletics in Northern Ireland

But Boreham was in many ways a trailblazer for female athletes in Northern Ireland, demonstrating what local women could do with talent, training, and a love of the sport. She recalls that it wasn’t always easy for women who took to the roads and trails in the early 1980s:

‘Today there’s greater freedom for women running. When I was out running it took a lot of guts to put a pair of shorts on and go out on the roads. For example, men would have made cat calls out of bars and so on. It would have been quite unusual to see women running along in shorts. But a woman can do anything now, there are no barriers. Also I would have run a lot along the towpath, there would have been occasions it would have been dangerous enough running on the towpath. But now it’s a main thoroughfare. It’s much safer and much more accepted now for women to be out running.’

Boreham says she never exceeded more than 55 miles per week in her marathon training. When she stopped competing, she remained active, running for a few days a week. Today she runs three days a week and plays golf. She has had a disc operation in her lower back and has a bulging disc in her neck, which places some limitations on her activities. But she insists it is important to keep active, even if it is ‘at a much more sedate pace.’

Getting Local Kids Up and Running?

On that note, Boreham admits that she is saddened and perplexed that Northern Ireland does not seem to be producing the same number of top quality athletes as it did during the 1980s. As a physical education teacher, she says that pupils who are really keen about sport and athletics in particular are the exception to the rule. She says:

‘Sadly I think that participation and encouragement of children to take part in sport is probably not as good as it was. I think there are other things that children are keener to do and I think that maybe the systems aren’t there to get them home from school, if there are practices after school, and so on. I don’t see the participation levels now in my particular school, as high as they were 15 years ago.’

Boreham says that she attends some schools athletics events during the year and thinks that there are not as many competing as when she was a participant. She says,

‘Maybe our climate is not the climate for athletics. It’s an individual sport. Maybe it is more attractive to play a team sport, where you don’t put your self-esteem and everything else against anyone else. There is a lot of pressure on children in individual sports – you are not allowed to fail anymore. So I don’t know if that pressure affects taking part in athletics. Northern Ireland once produced lots of Commonwealth Games medal winners in athletics and that’s not happening anymore.’

But Boreham doesn’t think all is lost for our local athletes. She says that individuals will need the support of their families, coaches and clubs, as she received when she was competitive, but that with dedication and hard work Northern Ireland athletes can still reach the top:

‘They have to be hungry and keen and willing to work quite hard. But if they do then they can get what they really want out of athletics.’

Past and present marathon runners help Athletics Northern Ireland celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Belfast City Marathon. Athletics NI have played an instrumental role since 1982 in the organization and logistics of the Marathon along with arranging the elite field over the years. Greg Hannon & Susan Boreham were the 1st winners in 1982 and are joined by marathon regular Alan McCullough (Willowfield Harriers) with his infamous hat and NI’s top finishers in 2010, North Belfast Harriers Breege Connolly and Lisa Sturgeon.

By Gladys Ganiel

Marathon Question and Answer with Matt Shields

2011-04-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

The man who finished third in the very first Belfast City Marathon, Matt Shields, is still active in athletics in Northern Ireland as a coach and veterans competitor. The North Belfast Harrier was recently awarded the Belfast City Council Senior Coach of the Year.

Shields has a marathon best of 2.19.43 from Dublin in 1983. Now 57 years old, Shields competed during an era when it was not unusual for men from Northern Ireland to run under the 2.20 mark for the marathon. Fourteen men from Northern Ireland have broken 2.20, and all but two of them (Tommy Hughes in 1992 and John Ferrin in 1995) achieved this between 1978 and 1988.

Shields says he has run about 20 marathons, all between 1979 and 1990 with the exception of last year’s London Marathon, which he completed in 2.54.37. He got his start in running during PE class in secondary school, when a teacher spotted his potential. From PE class he was directed to Lisnagarvey athletics club. Shields didn’t compete during his time at Queen’s University, but when he returned to the sport, he says that ‘marathon running found me’ and he joined the elite marathon squad at Duncairn Olympic. When Duncairn disbanded he joined North Belfast Harriers, where he has remained for the last 17 years.

With the 30th anniversary edition of the Belfast City Marathon fast approaching, Shields shared some of his memories of the Belfast City Marathon, explained his training philosophy, and reflected on why the overall standard of marathon running in Ireland and the UK has declined.

Q: What was your best race in the Belfast City Marathon?

A: My best race in the Belfast Marathon was probably the first year. The first year there were 60 mile an hour gale force winds and it was a two lap course. You’d be running along and you’d come across a gap between the houses [on the course] and then you could see the other runners. It was like a chess game. Do you go to the front? Do you hide? Do you try and break away? Do you wait till you turn a corner? Will the wind be behind you? Will it be in your face? It wasn’t just a race. There was a lot of strategy, there was a lot of thinking in it, and it was a real test of strength. It was an ordeal just to get around it, and I really enjoyed that! It was a very tough race and I think that’s what I enjoyed about it.

Q: What are your favourite memories of the Belfast City Marathon, including the most impressive performances?

A: The most impressive performance in Belfast was probably Marty Deane. [Deane set a course record in winning the 1985 Belfast City Marathon in 2.15.51, a mark that still stands.] The organisers had a habit of bringing outsiders in, big names in, and certainly the year that Marty won was no exception. They brought people in but Marty somehow found something and actually beat the outsiders. I can remember the Belfast Marathon where he won, he didn’t pass me till about ten mile. He stopped and he had a chat with me, and then he said he’d move on. I was absolutely amazed to find out that he’d won. But he had it totally under control, was calm, and knew what he would run. He had a plan, and the plan blew away everybody else. I would have a lot of respect for Marty and what Marty has done in the marathon. I think he has a lot of knowledge, and he’s a man that I would love to see involved in marathon running now.

Q: How has the Belfast City Marathon changed over the years?

A: In the early days the Belfast Marathon was a pure marathon. I’m not a great lover of running a marathon in the middle of relay runners. When you are running with people and you know they have the same distance as you to do, and they are going to pay the price for every silly move – the same as you will pay the price – well then that’s fine. But when you are running in the middle of relay runners who surge and drop out at 5 mile and say hey, good luck, I don’t like that. Nowadays the Belfast Marathon is really severely diluted by the relay. I know the relay brings the numbers, brings the revenue, keeps the event alive, and makes it everything that it is, but from a marathon runner’s point of view, I would rather run a genuine marathon.

The Belfast Marathon always has been hamstrung by politics in that they have to run through the various areas. It has to be part orange, part green, and it’s never been a case of sitting down and saying, what is the best course here for running 26 mile on? But Belfast is not a bad course, it’s a good enough course and it’s well enough run. It’s a good enough time of the year and usually the weather is kind enough.

Q: How did you train for the marathon?

A: When I joined Lisnagarvey, my coach was Jim Kennedy. Jim has remained my lifelong coach. Jim was one of the few people at that stage who was interested in marathon running and was knowledgeable about it. Most of what I preach or practice would be coming from Jim.

So we did mileage, but we didn’t necessarily do long. We didn’t necessarily do 3 and 3 ½ hour runs. We might have done things like 15 in the morning and 15 at night over the weekend, because it suited my job. I was an engineer working on sites doing quite a physical job so I tended to cram the mileage and a lot of the heavy work into the weekend. We might do a double 15 on Saturday and Sunday and maybe a late Friday night run as well.

The speed work was tempo runs and it was track work. The track work truthfully would have been a lot faster. I suppose relative to the times that I was running then it maybe wasn’t that fast as what I think it was now looking back at it. We were doing 400s in 68, 70 with short recovery, quite a lot of them. But then we were also running 10ks near 30 minutes. So it was one track work a week, it was probably one tempo a week, it was lots of variable pace running at the weekend in Belvoir and it was beyond that just miles.

The way it worked with races the club said, there’s a race in such and such we need you. Run. It wasn’t really a question. Everybody had to toe the line to give the club a chance. So basically if you didn’t race every week you raced every fortnight. I think the variation in pace and distance and terrain and the regular racing was a big part of the training. For example if you ask Tommy Hughes what speed work do you do? He says, I don’t do any, I just do races. His speed work in the past would have been doing races.

Also, a lot of the training that has evolved in the various groups has actually evolved from training that started with Marty Deane. We copied Marty’s sessions. It worked for Marty so we started doing it. One of the sessions that would be done would be a fartlek lap of Belvoir. Marty used to go into Belvoir and do a minute on and a minute off. He’d run around for half an hour doing that, variable- pace running over hills. That’s still a session that’s carried forward and used by different groups.

Q: Why do you think there is no longer the quality at the top of the field in races like the Belfast City Marathon?

A: We’re basically the same people that we’ve always been. The people that are running about now have the same ancestors, all the same characteristics. The shoes, the equipment, the nutrition, the support have all improved. So what is it that has changed that means the quality’s no longer there? I feel it’s to do with the way children are reared nowadays. When a child is growing up, it goes through certain growth phases where the hormones within its body are presenting an opportunity that will never again be presented within its life. If when that child’s growing up it is reared in a certain way it will draw benefit from that [growth spurt and that will] enhance its capabilities in later life.

To compare, when I was a youngster growing up there was no drive to school. Living in the countryside, the town was 3 mile away. And we thought very little about quite often missing the last bus and running 3 mile home. You’d have run a mile and a half to get the bus, you’d have run a mile and a half home, you just were constantly active through the growth years. In addition to that my father was a part time farmer and a coal man. Weekends I was carrying bags of coal and on school holidays I was doing the same. So we were doing strength work, conditioning. I wasn’t actually doing athletics but I was laying a foundation for later life. The youngsters nowadays are reared in a sedate manner and they pass through development phases without picking up any benefit whatsoever. If you look at the countries that are still producing good marathon runners and good distance runners they are third world countries that are still reared in the manner that I’m talking about.

Q: Can we get the quality back?

A: Once you’ve passed that development phase the amount of development that you can achieve at a later stage is limited. You can still be the best you can be, but the best you can be is no longer as good as it could have been. In the future you can try to bring children in at an earlier phase. I don’t think there’s enough structured approach within the sport for realising that. I think there should be much more work and a much better club structure, where there is appreciation of this, a real groundswell of work bringing kids in and working with these kids on a ten year cycle. Clubs should be at the heart of that plan because the association (Athletics Northern Ireland) will need the clubs to deliver it. The association needs to be helping the clubs and the club structure. It will be a very big effort to do that but I think that’s the only thing that will turn it around.

Q: Finally, what makes for a good marathon runner?

A: A marathon runner is a different breed of a person. A good marathon runner in my mind is usually somebody who’s pretty calm, pretty quiet. They can actually take the energy of marathon day and can hold the energy and control it. Now that’s not to say you’re not going to be nervous. Everybody has to be nervous. But you are going to have to be able to manage and control the nerves. So if a marathon runner can’t do that, I think it’s going to be very hard for them to harness the big day.

Plus when you run the marathon you’re no longer there racing like another race. You’re no longer running with people around you. The people around you are on a journey. They are on a journey with you. You’re racing yourself. A good marathon runner will actually go deep and go quiet within themselves. They will not hear the crowd around them, they will be totally absorbed, and they will be listening to the rhythm of their own body. The other type of runner, say a 10k runner, will be excited. They will be out listening to people around them, responding to breaks. They will be doing all sorts of silly things that will eventually use up the energy and break them down. So there is a physical side of marathon running. But it is a certain mental makeup that makes a good marathon runner.

By Gladys Ganiel

5-mile Road Race sponsored by Beechmount Harriers.

Left to right: Aidan Donaldson, Michael Dogherty, Tommy Hughes, Matt Shields, Jim Kennedy.

Teresa Duffy: NI's fastest ever female Marathon runner remembers her love of the long run

2011-04-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

Teresa Duffy is the most-accomplished female marathon runner that Northern Ireland has produced. Duffy has recorded the fastest time ever for a woman from Northern Ireland, 2.35.27 at the 2001 London Marathon. She also competed for Ireland at the World Championships, finished fifth in the 2002 Commonwealth Games for Northern Ireland, and won the 1998 Dublin Marathon in her debut at the distance.

Because of her demanding racing schedule as an international athlete, Duffy competed in the Belfast City Marathon just once, in 2002 when she finished second in 2.50.33. Scotland’s Trudi Thompson was the winner that year in 2.49.39.

Duffy was preparing for that summer’s Commonwealth Games in Manchester, so she treated the Belfast City Marathon as a ‘training run’ and says she was pleased with her finish.

‘I always wanted to do the Belfast Marathon,’ says Duffy, now 41. ‘In 2002 I was also running the Commonwealths that summer so I thought I would use it as a training run, as I wanted to do a long run that weekend. I led for a long time, probably up to 21 miles, but I just hadn’t done the work for it. I was pleased to get second.’

Duffy started running in secondary school at age 13 when her PE teacher noticed her potential and got her in touch with Belfast Olympic athletic club. She later joined Beechmount Harriers, the club she ran for during most of her career. Duffy says that she ‘loved athletics straight away’ and was ‘very competitive from the beginning.’

In 1984, at the age of 15, she had already run 4.46.4 for 1500 metres and within two years she was running at the World Cross Country Championships. Before turning to the marathon at age 29, Duffy posted personal bests of 4.21.59 for 1500 metres, 9.12.87 for 3,000 metres and 33.33.7 for 10,000 metres.

‘It was always in my heart to run a marathon,’ Duffy says. ‘There’s just something about that extra distance of the marathon, everyone wants to achieve it, whether you want to just finish or get a personal best.’

Duffy’s debut marathon was a spectacular win at the Dublin Marathon, where she clocked 2.39.56, at the time the second fastest ever for a woman from Northern Ireland and the fastest ever debut. Duffy says that this marathon remains her favourite. She says,

‘That was a fantastic day. Because it was my first marathon, there was the unknown factor. I had done the work and now it would come down to the day. It was a real confidence booster for me, and faster times came in a couple of years with more training.’

Duffy says that the change in her training from 10k to the marathon was ‘drastic to say the least.’ Before moving to the marathon, she says she ran 60-70 miles per week and really focused on her speed sessions. Marathon training involved stepping it up to 90-100 miles per week, which meant she very often ran twice a day. This was made more challenging by working full time as a leisure centre attendant.

Duffy admits that she found it ‘frustrating’ to lose her 10k speed as she added the miles during marathon training. ‘I’m glad I didn’t go to the marathon too soon, because I lost a lot of speed. I didn’t want to tackle the marathon too young. But the years were rolling on, and I thought I was at a perfect age when I started.’

Looking back, she now thinks she ran her best marathons when she kept her mileage lower, but retained her long runs at the weekend and a medium-long run in the middle of the week. ‘I now think 80 miles per week maybe would have been the ideal cut off point for me,’ she says.

Duffy says she also had a good strength foundation from doing pylometric exercises and weight training when she was focusing on shorter distances. She believes regular hill sessions, such as 12 X 400 metre length hills, were key sessions for toughening her body.

But for Duffy, the marathon was just as much mental as physical and she also relished that challenge. She says,

‘The marathon is all about using your head. You can’t get carried away with a fast pace. For the sake of 10-15 seconds per mile faster in the first half of the race, it will make all the difference at the end. You will pay the price. So you have to check your split times, run the right pace, don’t panic. Once you get through 21 miles you should be safe – your body will get you through then. It’s just a matter of getting through that bad patch before 21, keeping calm and working through it.’

Duffy says she also was spurred on by the quality of competition when she was racing, and notes that there has been a drop in the numbers of men and women running at a high standard in Ireland and the UK. She says, ‘When I was competing you were always guaranteed a good race, especially in championship races. People were trying to make teams, to run for the national team. The way I look at it now, with all the sports funding, in the late 1980s it was nothing like it is now. I think to myself, if only I’d had that then! But I don’t know the reason why the standard has dropped, maybe the interest is not there for female athletics. I couldn’t put my finger on it.’

Duffy says that she still loves to run and even contemplated taking part in this year’s Belfast City Marathon, the 30th edition of the race. She says she went to the launch of the 30th anniversary of the marathon and that ‘this gave me a wee boost to start training more,’ though she feels now that she hasn’t put the necessary work in to get around the course in the way she would like. She says,

‘I’m out training four days a week now and enjoying it again. I’m fit to run, if not fit to compete. But it still is in my mind, to maybe do another marathon again before I really retire. I never really leaves you, the love of running. So you never know – maybe next year!’

By Gladys Ganiel

Belfast City Marathon will be Greg McClure's 50th!

2011-04-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

When the 30th edition of the Belfast City Marathon gets underway on Bank Holiday Monday, one man among the crowd will be chasing his own significant milestone.

Greg McClure of North Belfast Harriers will be aiming to complete his 50th career marathon. The 54-year-old Lisburn man finishes most of his marathons in and around the 3-hour mark. He has a personal best of 2.57.35 from the 2007 Belfast City Marathon and has dipped under the 3-hour barrier ten times – all since he turned 50 years old. Just two weeks ago he chalked up another sub-3 hour clocking, cruising through the London Marathon in 2.59.14.

The Belfast City Marathon is McClure’s favourite race and he has carefully planned his schedule so that his 50th marathon will coincide with the event. McClure ran the inaugural edition of the marathon back in 1982 but in 1983 he gave up running and didn’t return to the sport until 1999. Watching the Belfast City Marathon in 2000 inspired him to rededicate himself to marathon running.

McClure says, ‘I was watching friends of mine run the Belfast Marathon in 2000. I remember standing on Balmoral Avenue and cheering them and thinking, I would love to be in this. The question was nagging me – could I finish a marathon again?’

McClure ran seven marathons between 1981 and 1983, his best coming in London in 1982 when he recorded a time of 3.06.55. He describes his training at the time as ‘ridiculous,’ and admits that he didn’t really know what he was doing in terms of training, diet or shoes.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

But McClure had enjoyed running, and says that during the 18 years when he didn’t train he ‘always had pined for it.’ During that time he says he smoked and drank too much, and his health deteriorated. It was the desire to quit smoking that led him out the door to try and run his first mile all over again in 1999.

So when McClure lined up for the 2001 Belfast City Marathon, his goal was just to finish. He completed the course in 3.44.50. He ran Belfast the next two years in succession, gradually improving his times to 3.16.04 and 3.13.40. His sub-3.15 clocking in 2003 was significant because that guaranteed him an entry to the London Marathon as a ‘Good for Age’ category runner.

McClure says, ‘The obsession with London started to kick in after I ran 3.16. London had been the highlight of my running in the 1980s, because it was the fastest by far and that 3.06 almost sounded respectable. And it was done off no training, well, not no training, but ridiculous preparation in terms of what we would think about today. I had entered the ballot a couple of times for London, and hadn’t got in of course. Then I discovered their good for age entry system. So then the only way to get into this London Marathon was to break 3.15. So in 2003 Davy Wright and I ran to try and break 3.15 in Belfast and we did by about a minute and a half. And that was me into London and I’ve run London every year since that.’

RACING TOWARDS 50

As McClure got faster year on year, rolling back his years in terms of improving health and fitness, McClure began to set himself new goals. He wanted to run faster, and he wanted to run more marathons. So in 2004 he ran four: London, Belfast, Longford and Dublin. In 2005 and 2006 it was five: London, Belfast, Longford, Berlin and Dublin. In 2008 it was six: London, Belfast, Newry, Longford, Berlin and Dublin. In 2009 and 2010 the list expanded to seven: London, Belfast, Newry, Longford, Berlin, Dublin, Barcelona in 2009 and Cork in 2010. So far in 2011, he has Barcelona and London under his belt.

Somewhere along the way, McClure realised that he had run more than 30 marathons. He says, ‘I’d seen the 100 marathon club and thought, I’m never going to get to that. Maybe someday I will, I don’t know. But 50 just seemed a goal. And I thought, I’ll not think about 100 but I’ll do 50. I can do that in 3 or 4 more years if I keep going the way I am. And then I wanted to construct it so Belfast would be the 50th. So I had to work that out last year, and that was one of the reasons I went to Barcelona – to get another one this year so Belfast would work out. I thought 50 is another reason to keep going.’

McCLURE’S MAGIC IN THE BELFAST MARATHON

McClure explains why the Belfast City Marathon is special for him: ‘Belfast is no doubt my favourite marathon. I love the whole Belfast experience. Belfast is the home marathon. And it’s always been a tough course, even when the courses were different. But you’re at home, the support is local people, people you know. So you start and finish chatting to people that you know. I think logistically it’s easiest. You can get your diet right, your sleep right, you don’t have to travel. And it’s been good to me. I did a PB (personal best) in it oddly enough, despite running Berlin and London umpteen times. The PB is still in Belfast.’

McClure recalls the first Belfast Marathon, and the ‘razzamatazz’ that accompanied the inaugural event. His abiding memories are of running into a strong wind on the Boucher Road, and being given half pints of Guinness after finishing. He says, ‘They were giving out Guinness free at the end out of a caravan, so you got these wee plastic cups of Guinness. It made me feel awful but I think I took two half pints. At least you felt better for a couple of minutes!’

McClure’s personal best was also the first time he dipped under 3-hours. He describes that day: ‘It was windy but I was going well and I felt strong. At the bottom of the Shore Road, I was feeling I was going well and I was starting to think, I am strong today. This could be my day. And that was about 15 miles. And Steven Harkens shouted at me, you’re flying, Greg, you’re flying! And I thought, yes, he’s right. I am. The pace, the time I am at this point in this race is in advance of where I’ve ever been before. I think I felt strong all of the way. I hit some sort of a wall but I didn’t lose much pace. Weather, temperature, all the factors conspired to make it a good day. Two weeks before that year, I’d missed sub-3 hours in London by 24 seconds. The previous London I’d missed it by 12 seconds. And I said to coach Matt Shields, that run in London was the run that set it up. The body had recovered well and then was ready for another goal.’

Aspiring marathon runners can learn a lot from McClure’s extensive experience. He emphasises variety in his training, making it a point to include weekly long runs of 2 to 2 ½ hours and attending a speed work session with the North Belfast Harriers at least one evening a week. McClure races often over various distances to test his body in new ways. He also builds running into his lifestyle, running in and out to work several days a week. McClure is a systems development manager at Queen’s University in Belfast, which means his two-legged commute from Lisburn is about nine miles each way. He sometimes even runs to the shops with his rucksack on his back, buys his groceries, and then runs home again. McClure says he runs about 70 miles per week, and has totalled as much as 90-100 per week.

As for the Belfast City Marathon course, McClure says that the toughness of its terrain, such as the long hill on the Antrim Road, appeals to him. His strategy for managing the course is breaking it up into chunks, racing himself to see what time he will arrive at familiar landmarks. He says, ‘The current course is a good challenge and I enjoy it. I think the good thing about it is you can break it up and that’s how I deal with it. You don’t break it up by mile, you break it up by place. There’s the Antrim Road bit, the downhill bit after 14 miles, the Loughshore, the Duncrue, the Odyssey, the Ormeau Road, the Ravenhill Road down to the finish. So the Antrim Road I know it is going to be tough but once I get to the top I have two very fast miles. So don’t worry about the time, it will come back. When you know the course well you can use those kinds of tricks.’

When asked what sort of goals he’ll pursue after achieving his 50th marathon, M

cClure laughs and says he’s been considering that. He would like to try ultra-marathoning, although he is anxious that the long recovery periods from ultra marathons could interfere with his regular road racing schedule. Apart from his multiple marathons, McClure is a familiar face at half marathons, 10ks, and other shorter events throughout Northern Ireland.

McClure also says that he’ll just keep on running marathons. He says that he remains motivated by trying to break 3-hours every time out, and enjoys the physical and mental challenge of every marathon. McClure says, ‘every marathon I run I realise there is no such thing as an easy one. There are no gimmees in marathons. So it’s a worthwhile challenge, it’s not a walk in the park. Even to run it at 4 hour pace still isn’t a walk in the park. So it is always a worthy thing to take on. Even if I was to run it slower than I thought I could it is still worthy to take it on and finish it.’

By Gladys Ganiel

(Left London & right- Belfast)

Time Out with Eamonn Coghlan in N. Ireland

2011-03-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

A legend came to town at the weekend of 19-20 February as 1983 World 5000 metres champion Eamonn Coghlan visited the Irish Indoors at the Odyssey.Eamonn has broken four minutes for the mile on 82 occasions including a sub 3 minutes 50 clocking. He was the first to break the barrier as a 40 year old. We put some questions to him
WHAT STARTED YOU IN ATHLETICS

My Dad Bill was President of Irish Athletics for 3 years and used to take me to meetings. Then I had a schoolmate who was in a club and I went along with him. I quickly found that I liked running better than soccer as it was an individual sport.
WHICH SPORTSMAN DID YOU ADMIRE MOST
Muhammed Ali Dad you used to wake me in the middle of the night to listen to his fights with Sonny Liston. I was also a red hot fan of the Dublin Football team I would have given anything to play for the Dubs. My father worked on the sound system at Croke Park so we were regular visitors.

YOU GOT A SCHOLARSHIP TO VILANOVA IN THE USA. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT

I was just out of school and in fact was only the second to be picked after Tom Gregan who had run 4 mins 01 There was a great tradition at the University for Irish athletes going back to Ronnie Delaney and beyond.
DESCRIBE THE USA COLLEGIATE SYSTEM

It is fantastic for bridging the gap between 18 and 22 years. We came under the influence of the legendary coach Jumbo Elliott. He ran Track and Field like his very successful business and got fantastic results. The competition was intense but it gave us a very positive outlook and we knew how and when to raise our game.
YOU OBVIOUSLY LOVED INDOORS BEING KNOWN AS THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARDS

It was great -11 laps to the mile on wood! Everyone said that it was my build and style that led to success and a sub 3-50 but there were plenty of tall athletes like Ray Flynn, John Walker and Steve Scott who enjoyed Indoors.
YOU WERE TWICE 4TH IN THE OLYMPICS HOW DID THAT FEEL

Sometimes when Ilook at the 1976 1500 metres on tv I wished that Ihadn't taken the lead so early but whats done is done. In 1980 I was a little naive in the 5000.
IT ALL WENT RIGHT IN THE WORLDS IN 1983 WHAT CHANGED

I had been injury free for over a year. Ihad probably overtrained in 1980. This time mind and body were great and Iknew that Iwas going to strike Gold.
WHY WERE THE LATE SEVENTIES AND EARLY EIGHTIES A GOLDEN ERA FOR IRISH ATHLETES WITH YOURSELF, MARCUS O'SULLIVAN, FRANK O'MARA, JOHN TREACY AND MANY OTHERS

It comes in cycles. We were al determined to make it. There were less distractions. Now Soccer, Rugby and Gaelic are getting great tv coverage and there is mega money in some sports.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PRESENT STATE OF IRISH ATHLETICS

There has been great improvement in a range of disciplines. Sprinters Paul Hession and Ailis McSweeney, Hurdler Derval O'Rourke and Hammer Thrower Eileen O'Keefe all come to mind while there are at least 12 middle distance runners who can run sub four.
Ciara Mageean is a brilliant prospect. She has achieved a lot but still has a way to go and must not fee pressurised by comparisons with Sonia O'Sullivan who did not have that burden. Ciara, helped by coach Eamonn Christie has limitless potential.
YOU ARE NOW ON THE IRISH SPORTS COUNCIL

Yes I am chair of the committee for the high performance programme. We look at all sports to maintain high standards.
IS FUNDING SATISFACTORY AS WE COME TOWARDS THE 2012 OLYMPICS

The carded athletes are well funded. I would like to see more money directed towards Indoor training and competition facilities. The new Athlone venue will be great as, unlike the Odyssey it will be available all year round. Ideally there should be an Indoor venue in each province.

HAVE YOU HAD SUPPORT FROM YOUR FAMILY

Yes my wife Yvonne who I have known since we were kids is fantastic and has been with me every step of the way.
DO YOUR CHILDREN FOLLOW IN YOUR ATHLETICS FOOTSTEPS

John, the youngest, is a middle distance champion, Suzanne has a career in Banking, Eamonn is a Golf professional in Alabama and roomed with Ulster star Gareth Maybin at college while Michael is an aspiring tv and film actor.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE HOLIDAY DESTINATION

We have a house in the Costa Del Sol, Spain.
WHAT WAS YOUR BEST MOMENT IN ATHLETICS

Winning the World 5000 in Helsinki and running a sub four mile at 40 plus

AND YOUR WORST

Only 4th in two Olympics after winning all round from 1976 to 1980.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOUNG ATHLETES

Train consistently. Look at the big picture not just one race at a time. Write down targets and move from one plateau to another.
CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR CAREER

I got a tremendous lot out of the sport since starting as a 12 year old. I thoroughly enjoyed each race and do not look back with any regrets.
It was a privelege to chat to Eamonn, a true legend in any era.
Interview by Dave McKibbin for the Newsletter

Build Up to 60m National Title

2011-03-07T02:14:00.000-08:00

60m is over so fast that there is barely any time to think about the race. By the time you are up into your running, the line is there right in front of you. People say, Ahh sure its only 60, over in a flash! This is true although it takes a lot of effort to overcome your competition in such a short distance. All about the start? If this was true then I’d be lovin’ it! There is still a lot to work on in order to achieve my potential over the distance.

Training for 60s can be very repetitive and difficult to finish when your head isn’t there but in the end you just gotta knuckle down and get it done! I had ups and downs in training leading up to the indoors but the ups gave me confidence and kept my mind set on my targets for the indoor season.

Jordanstown, my own patch, was the venue for my first 60 of the season. You can never expect too much for a first race but I had a time in the back of my mind. Equalled PB, 6.89s. Couldn’t complain. Very promising start!

On to Loughborough to build on a decent result. It was weird staying somewhere on my lonesome, when staying with groups was what I was used to. All about the independence I guess.

On the start, standing next to two European Junior 100m finalists, I had to keep reminding myself that I would be in the mix. Finishing 2nd and beating the European Junior bronze medalist was the silver lining as I thought my time would be quicker than 6.92s and I tweaked my hamstring after 40m :( It’s hard not to think that the trip was a complete waste as the 2nd race was out of the question, but you always have to take away the positives.

Nenagh! It may freeze the face off you, but I love the track. The Irish University Championships took place there in early February. As UU captain, making sure our team were sorted and ready to compete was at the front of my mind but when it came down to it, I was focused on my race.

6.95s in the heats, quickest qualifier, happy enough. Now for the final! Setting up my blocks for a practice start, it never entered my mind that I would have to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Years of my coach shouting not to stop abruptly suddenly made sense. My calves tightened and cramped. Game over. It’s hard to hide the panic and anger of something unexpected like that. I got to about 5 metres in the race before the same feeling grabbed my legs again. It’s also hard to watch the rest of the field run away from you as the win you had hoped for disappears as well as the prospect of a free pair of trainers. Accidents happen. Time to forget and move on to the next goal.

In my case, the next goal took place in the Irish Indoors at the Odyssey Arena on the 19th and 20th February. Heats on the Saturday, semi and final on the Sunday. The plan was to blast the heat to build confidence.

6.85s! I couldn’t have asked for a better start. The much sought after PB in the bag in the first round. It’s important to cool down, go home early, reflect on a good day and look forward to the second day.

It’s easy to get thrown by incidents at the start of a race. The semi-final was an example of this. We had ran 40m before being called back for a false start. In the back of your mind you’re thinking, was it me? :/ but you’ve gotta have faith in your start that you won’t jump the gun. B of the Bang as they say.

6.86s! Just squeezed first place despite that feeling beginning to creep back into my calves. A good time considering! A bit of sports massage always was going to ease my mind before the final. Really appreciated it that weekend.

Its almost overwhelming to think that all the training and mental battles all come down to a 7 second blur. I had hoped they wouldn’t play the Rocky music as we stood behind our blocks as it would only enhance my nerves, but they did. You have get the fact that your family and girlfriend are watching you out of your head! It ain’t easy!

On your marks....Set....Bang! Drive, drive, drive! Up into my running and so close to my goal. An involuntary ‘Yeah!!!!’ comes out as I dive over the line. 6.85s. What a feeling. I hope I’ll have more like that.

Determination and hard work really do pay off. So I didn’t get the qualifying time to take me to Paris for the European Indoor Championships. Plenty more chances in the future with some more improvements. I did however win my first senior title, previously won by sprinters such as Paul Hession and Paul Brizzel. I’ll take that! Now to try convert that feeling to the end of a 100m in the summer.

Dean Adams

Mageean in the running to be class act at 2012 Olympics

2011-01-26T03:12:00.000-08:00

The night draws in on another session. At the 200m mark the shrill sound of Eamon Christie's whistle pierces the Belfast air and, at his signal, two girls push hard for home.

The coach knows they are tired now, approaching the limit of their endurance, but still he drives them on. He cajoles them into one last, lung-bursting effort, hoping to instill the belief that, although they are close to exhaustion, they can still aim higher. Still ask themselves for more.

When they are done, Ciara Mageean finds the support of a wooden barrier to anchor her burning legs. She gasps for breath and forces a broad smile. “Alright?” Christie asks. “Yeah, grand,” she replies. The ankle she tweaked running for the bus in Portaferry that afternoon has stood up to the test. She couldn't feel better.

When she is racing there are times Mageean will cross the line hoping to find a quiet spot where she can throw up, or any available space beside the track if she cannot. She tries to eat as lightly as she can on the day of a big race, but not to the detriment of her performance. She's not embarrassed anymore. She's an athlete trying to be the best she can be, she says, not auditioning for the Rose of Tralee. For a time it bothered her. Once at an indoor meet she threw up after the line, found herself apologising profusely and offering to clean up the mess. She just lives with it now.

When she claimed a remarkable silver in the 1,500m at last year's World Junior Championships, she was immediately surrounded by a posse of reporters, stunned that an unheralded white Irish girl could live with the best Africans in the world. “Excuse me a moment,” she said. She had business to take care of first.

“I suppose it's kind of strange,” she says. “Sometimes when I'm coming into a race I know I'll be throwing up afterwards, but I don't mind it that much. I mean if I could change it I would but it's not something I worry about. I've come off the track many's a time and thrown up and anybody who's been with me knows that. It tends to happen if I run a PB or a season's best so it's nearly like if I run a fast race and don't throw up I wouldn't be happy.”

Her constant fear is of leaving the track with the uneasy feeling that she still had more to give. At the European Cross-Country Championships in Portugal last month, she ran well and finished seventh but felt too comfortable at the finish. She hadn't emptied herself. Broken her first rule of running.

“I don't want to finish and think ‘oh, I could have run faster’. I want to be completely exhausted. If you finish fifth and know you've run your guts out, that's okay. You've run the hardest you could.”

She was 11 when she learned the lesson, competing at a cross-country meet in Newtownards, the first proper race of her life. She finished fourth, missing a medal because, half-way through, she'd felt tired and stopped to a walk.

She had waited for the cover of trees before stopping, ashamed that people would notice her taking the soft option, and vowed on the way home that she would never do so again. “I had to get rid of that mentality,” she says. “I wouldn't have got very far.”

Christie has coached Mageean since she was 13 when Helen McCambridge, her PE teacher at Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch, contacted Northern Ireland Athletics to alert them to her potential. At first he had little reason to imagine she was anything other than mildly promising. He had another athlete, Joanna Mills, who had beaten Mageean any time they'd met. Mills was one of the best juniors around, though. There was no shame in it.

Three months later, he took them to Tullamore for the 1,500m under-15 championships. For three laps Mills and Mageean ran shoulder to shoulder. He waited for Mills, the more seasoned campaigner, to assert her dominance over the final 400m. But with 300m to go he watched Mageean power clear and put 10 seconds on her rival by the time they reached the line. He remembers thinking. What exactly had he just witnessed?

Two years later, she lined up for the national senior indoor championships at the Odyssey Arena. Christie had quietly told friends to expect something special, thinking she might win in something like 4:35 or thereabouts. In the event she blitzed the field in a time of 4:24.07, shaving two seconds off the existing junior record and the first of the Sonia O'Sullivan comparisons were born.

Under Christie, her progress has been relentless. He has watched her develop from the five minute-plus athlete he first saw at 13 into the sub-4:10 phenomenon who stunned the athletics' world in Canada last August, running almost six seconds quicker than she'd ever run in her life.

O'Sullivan's long-standing junior records have tumbled. And because he has deliberately kept her training schedule light, Christie is certain there is more to come before she hits the inevitable plateau.

Canada worked like a dream. Christie figured correctly that the Kenyans and Ethiopians, no love lost between them, would cut their throats up front and that the American girl, Jordan Hasay, would try to slug it out with them. He didn't fancy her chances. He told Mageean not to worry if a gap opened up. The key was not to panic, trust that her heart and finishing speed would stand to her on the last lap.

The race panned out exactly as he had predicted. At half-way he clocked her at 2:09, not quick, but she was still on her toes, still in control. Then when the bell sounded and she began to bear down on the leader, Tizta Bogale, he thought for a few strides that she might kick on for victory, but the Ethiopian proved too strong. He thinks of the 61-second first lap they ran that day, how comfortably she lived with such searing pace and the possibilities it induces for the future. Four steady laps like that, he thinks. Almost scary to imagine.

Ask him for a defining memory, though, and he takes you back to Bydgoszcz two years previously. Mageean's first World Junior Championships. He points to a spot maybe five feet in front of him. The distance, he says, she dipped to clinch fifth place in her heat and make the final as a fastest loser.

Christie knows they have reached a critical stage in the athlete's development. She is pushing 19 now, her A-Levels behind her and a life to think about too beyond athletics. She spent the first week of the month helping out in a veterinary clinic in Downpatrick and, somewhere down the line, she'd love the chance to pursue such a path in university. How that would combine with her athletic ambitions is a conundrum she will have to work out.

Even before Canada she was an athlete in demand: scholarship offers pouring in from America, the UK and Ireland. She visited Villanova and Providence and spent time at Loughborough University in England, but for all the vigour with which they pursued her, she found they had little to offer her academically.

Growing up in Portaferry in the Ards peninsula, her father Chris was one of the best hurlers in Down and that was her first love. Pucking a ball around the local hurling field with her sister every day and then, when she started running, pounding lap after lonely lap around the same muddy field.

School, camogie, running, home. She can't imagine a happier childhood. And she likes it too that, with Christie, the simplicity has been retained. Just a coach, a physio and a small, happy group of athletes. She needs no gimmicks to help her run fast, no music to pump herself up before a race. “I just like to have my own mind,” she says. “My own voices in my head telling me what to do.”

There are no clouds in her life right now. Last week brought the Belfast Telegraph Young Player of the Year award — and the announcement of a lucrative sponsorship deal with the Boston-based footwear giant, New Balance.

She doesn't see any of this changing her. She'll still blush when someone makes the Sonia comparison, still talk humbly of the day, when she was 14, when she was selected for a day out at the Mary Peters' Sports Academy and she didn't even know who Northern Ireland's most famous athlete was.

She hears people talking about her as if she is a full-time athlete and the words seem strange and ill-fitting. “I never really imagined myself as a professional athlete,” she says. “Lots of people say it and it makes me laugh 'cos I'm doing exactly the same as I was at this time last year when I was doing my A Levels.

“Training hasn't changed at all. People think you can make a fortune in athletics. They don't see how hard it is. Anything can happen. It can all go down the tubes in a flash. At some stage I want to go into university. Putting all your hopes into athletics isn't a good thing.”

For now it's enough to think about the next day. The next race. This week she’s off to the Armory in New York City for a 1,500m indoor race for New Balance athletes, a chance to impress in front of her new sponsors.

She had an invitation to run in the Millrose Games the following week, but will be at home instead, getting ready to defend her national indoor title at the Odyssey next month. That's the stage they are at now. Turning down prestigious events because they don't fit her schedule.

After Belfast, she will train for the European Juniors in Estonia in July. Her last big target as a junior. After that she will chase the Olympic target for 2012. Christie figures the B standard will be in the region of 4.07 and she will be disappointed if she doesn't reach that mark somewhere during the year.

Push him gently and he states his belief that she'll run 4.04 over 1,500m this year and go close to breaking the two-minute barrier over 800m.

Running the Show

2011-01-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

There's not many people who can say they have one of only twelve in the world of anything. Athletics NI are lucky to be in that position, holding an IAAF 2011 World Permit for the Antrim International Cross Country.

This event is happening once again at CAFRE's Greenmount campus this Saturday, and I'm going to give you a bit of a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes in putting on the show...

The preparation starts many months in advance with the decision on a fixture date, application for an IAAF permit, confirmation of inclusion in the McCain UK Cross Challenge, securing sponsors, booking the venue & facilities and blocking off accommodation. When the event is set in stone there is the small matter of a 6 page checklist to work through, all before the hard work starts in the final countdown after Christmas. So this week has been somewhat frantic!

Everything is put together at Athletics House, including an Air Traffic Control-spec transport plan for our two drivers, accommodation logistics that change on a daily basis right up until the day before the event, 700 athlete chips & numbers, workplans for the course builders, the staff, the marshals, the ANI Volunteer Squad (email me if you want to get in on that), checking deliveries, trying not to leave anything back at the office. And there's the Marketing & Communications plan... but that's Clare's problem!

There are some common side effects in prescribing to our particular brand of mania, including temporary forgetfulness, episodes of hilarity, technology rage, over-caffeination, talking to yourself, but if you can keep on top of that it's all worth it. With only one more day in the office, and one day to set up at Greenmount, there is a real buzz in the place as everyone pitches in to get it done.

Hopefully at the end of today there will be a neat snake of boxes in the function room ordered by where they've to go at the course. Then all we'll need is the weather to hold out, for all the flights to get in ok, and for some great international standard competition to make it a great day out for all.

To find out more about the event visit www.niathletics.org and click on to the event page. If you can't get there don't be left out of the action - follow the goings on with Twitter throughout the day, and see the athletes' reactions on YouTube. Full results lists will be posted on the Athletics NI website.

Jenni Robinson

Admin & Events Manager

info@niathletics.org

Sally Brown: It was just like Christmas when my kit arrived

2011-01-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I'm in New Zealand! This time last year I was competing in Northern Ireland for my school and for Springwell Running Club in non-disability events and I had no idea there were such amazing opportunities in Paralympic sport.

I'm a T46 100 metre and 200m sprinter and the only Northern Irish athlete on the Aviva Great Britain and Northern Ireland team out here for the IPC Athletics World Championships. This is my second time away with the team but my first in a senior competition and I'm really excited to be part of it.

Overall I've had a brilliant year – I competed at events at home and in England and my highlight was definitely going to the Czech Republic for the IWAS World Junior Championships where I won two silver medals for the 100m and 200m sprints.

I feel really lucky to have been given a break in disability athletics. I was invited to Leeds by UKA to be assessed by some of the team there including the UKA Paralympic head coach Peter Eriksson and former Olympic sprinter Paula Dunn. We went through all sorts of drills and it made me realise what I could really be capable of. The fact that Paula was excited made me excited too.

I went on to compete in Cardiff at the Aviva Parallel Success event and to be officially classified for the first time. I'm a T46 which means "single above or below elbow amputee or physical impairment".

My whole summer was then mapped out and I went on to compete in Gateshead in UKA's Disability Athletics Challenge. I must have done something right because a couple of weeks later I was called with the great news that I'd been selected for the IWAS Juniors.

It was just like Christmas when my kit arrived – I had no idea how I'd find time to wear it all but I was so proud to know I'd be representing my country for the first time and wearing the red, white and blue.

I don't think even I believed I'd go on to be selected for the IPC Athletics World Championships but now I'm here in New Zealand it's really starting to hit home. I flew from Belfast to Heathrow on January 4 and ended up using my sprinting skills to good effect when we were delayed and had to race from one terminal to another to catch our flight to Auckland via Los Angeles. It was quite strange meeting up with everyone for the first time but it also made me really proud to wear my team kit.

There are 40 athletes on the team but I'm one of the youngest along with Jade Jones. I think it must be weird for some of the older and more experienced athletes like David Weir, Shelly Woods and Stephen Miller who have been competing at this level for a while – they must be wondering who we all are. We know who they are though and it's great to know we can speak to guys like that and ask them to help us out or give us advice as they are always full of wisdom for the situations we find ourselves in.

My own coach Phillip Tweedy isn't out here but the coaches with us have been brilliant and it's great for me to work so closely with Paula Dunn who was one of the first people to get me involved. Paula really knows all about competing at the highest level - she went to the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 in the 100m, 200m and the relay and she won five Commonwealth Games medals in the 100m and the relay from 1986 to 1994.

She's taught me a lot and I'm already starting to see a difference in my training and the way I can interpret and know the difference between a good session and a poor session. I know when I'm running correctly and when I'm not and I've been practising my relaxation techniques and my breathing.

We couldn't really ask for a better place to prepare for the championships. We're staying at the Millennium Institute of Sport and Health in Auckland and it really does have everything we could ask for. All of the athletes and most of the staff are staying on site so we can get up in the morning and be sitting eating breakfast within five minutes while looking out of the window on to the track. I've also got wise to the fact that I can literally jump out of my window and on to the track if I'm running late.

As well as the main outdoor track there's an indoor track, a 50m pool, a CV gym and a weights gym. Everything is so accessible. I think it's been quite hard for some of the wheelchair athletes who have been trying to get some miles in on the roads because it's so hilly, but it'll definitely be helping to get them into peak shape for the competition.

In my spare time I have been shopping with Hollie Arnold and Hannah Cockroft in the mall which is just ten minutes away. There are also some shops close by so when we're walking to them we get to see some of the beautiful area and also soak up some sunshine.

I'm competing on the very first day (January 22) in the 200m and hopefully I'll make it through to the final the next day. My 100m heats and final – all being well – are on January 24 and 25. My personal best times at the moment are: 13.33/13.32 for the 100m and 27.37/27.04 for the 200m. My main aim is go even quicker and to make the final, but of course I want to win a medal, as does everybody on the team.

This is a huge stepping stone for me in my aim to represent Great Britain in the Paralympic Games. I'd absolutely love to compete in front of a home crowd in London next year, but I have to remind people I'm only 15. If I do make it to London it would be a dream come true, but my real chance of a Paralympic title might be four years later in 2016 – Rio watch out!

Sprinter Sally Brown is one of the youngest members of the Aviva GB & NI team competing at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the only member from Northern Ireland.

The South African Adventure

2010-12-13T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hi to all back home in Northern Ireland, I hope you all survived the early part of winter! I heard there was alot of snow, not to mention freezin!That made me feel so much better,(sorry), that I had made the right decision to get out of there before the white stuff arrived.

I am at the end of my fourth week in Potchefstroom, South Africa, at 1400m altitude, with blue skies and average temperature of 30+ degrees. Awesome.

I arrived here after a bit of a problem, as I was due to go to Florida with Jason (Smyth), but it all fell through and I knew I had to get away. So I contacted James Nolan three-time olympian and also my new Paralympics Ireland team manager and he put me in contact with Jean Verster, the Mr. Fixit for world class athletes who want to train in South Africa.

So I had a flight to Heathrow on Saturday 13th November, and then an 11 hour journey to Johannesbourg. After being picked up at the airport by ATP rep Jenny, I made the final 90 minute transfer to my new "home in the sun", Huys Ten Bosch, right on the edge of the Potchefstroom High Performance Centre.

I spent the first day getting to know my surroundings and the next day I met with a group of local athletes that I have since trained with on occasions, that includes Samuel Seppeng, brother of former Olympic 800m champion Ezekiel.

The first few days I found it very difficult to adapt to my new situation, I was away from home, in a strange country, knowing absolutely no-one and staying in a B&B that can accommodate 26, but I was the only person there! To make things worse, the owners didn't live there and when they locked up I felt like a bit of a prisoner in isolation. Add to that the fact that it was dark by 7 o'clock and you start to get the picture. I was more than a little homesick! I spoke to my dad on facebook on the third night of solitude and said I didn't know if I could hack it or not; he then told me some home truths and talked me round and my little sister's comment was "Man up!" From there I took her advice and moved on with the adventure.

Since then, I spent 6-7 days getting used to the altitude and the heat with daily visits to the grass track and the trails that surround it,just running easy miles and trying to keep my heart rate below 200!!, interspersed with trips to the gym and ice bath, where initially my tolerance lasted about 30 seconds!Lol Unfortunately the South African group of athletes took off to a high altitude training camp at 2400m above sea level, which didn't help. But hey!

Did my first workout on Tues 23rd 6x800m + 2x400m on the grass track(beautiful surface) and then 10 x 300m on thursday.

At the weekend, I was taken to a private farm where Jean has an agreement with the land owner, so that athletes can use the roads that run through his land.Contained within was a perfectly smooth road surface that I was to use for my sat hill session. Oh joy! The hill goes on forever! But perfect for what I need with no through traffic.

With my own weekly routine established with tues, thurs,sat session interspersed with wed and fri gym sessions I was firmly in the groove and enjoying the routine of a full-time athlete, with the realisation that being out of my comfort zone was actually good for me and was so I can be the best I can be in January, in the IPC World Paralympic Championships in New Zealand.

In the last ten days a group of Slovenian athletes have arrived and I have made good friends with them and do some of my easy runs in company, as well as having company at dinner each night, and watching plenty of Premier league and Champions league football together.

I have just over a week to go here, before I head back home for christmas, but before that I have 2 more sessions and a time trial to go. Just hoping the weather is kind when I get home and allows me to continue my build up to the championships.

This has been a real journey for me in many different ways, a real learning curve, about athletics and about myself and what I want from life. Very worthwhile and hopefully building the foundations for a great season ahead and hopefully contributing to among other things, St. Malachy's A.C. retaining their Senior Cross Country title!

Best Wishes

Michael McKillop
St. Malachy's A.C.

Lee Valley Experience Blog 3

2010-12-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

Thursday was the group’s recovery day following the heavy lactic session on Wednesday. This consisted of a slightly reduced warm up routine, multiple jumps unit, general strength, multiple throws (Medball), hurdle mobility and finally body building (gym session). Dan feels that this type of recovery acts to reboot the parasympathetic nervous system.

It was a fairly quiet morning for Lee Valley as many had struggled to get there through the snow. The group were adamant that I join in the session as it was an “Easy” day and it was the best way to learn. Secretly I had been dying to get involved although a bit apprehensive of training beside these guys.

Marlon Devonish proceeded to take me through the full warm up grid, giving me great feedback. It was definitely more of a learning curve than just watching the drills from the side. I learned more about the correct body positioning and execution than I ever could from observing. The drills looked easy when you were watching but doing them correctly was a whole other ball game. When it came to the build up runs over 30m the thought of running beside Marlon made me feel sick. However I tried to relax and think about my own acceleration mechanics. Maybe it was the nerves but I went for it and was a stride ahead at 30m. Obviously he was going easy but I think he was slightly shocked. Go me! HeHe

Next up was two Multiple Jumps Circuits, “Everest” and “Kilimanjaro.” As the names suggest they are not exactly easy. The jumps were plyometric and multi-directional as Dan believes in working the body in all planes (sagittal, frontal and transverse). This was followed then by a multiple throws session and lastly into the gym for some ancillary lifts. It was not a shock to me to find some rotational type lifts in the programme, which are quite indicative of Dan’s programme. The variety in the programme helped to keep the mind fresh throughout the session whilst stimulating the body in a holistic manner, reawakening areas that had “Shut down” due to the hard work inflicted on them the previous day thus encouraging active recovery.

Friday came too soon and all of a sudden it was my last day with the team. The morning started with some of the athletes having their skin folds taken. Steve Lewis very kindly let me practice on him. My data was slightly lower than that of Stuart’s initial assessment, however it was consistently lower and so Steve was convinced I was more accurate giving him a better result. Sorry Steve but I think Stuart was right! Once the warm up was complete it was onto Acceleration Development, the session I had been waiting on all week! I decided to do some video analysis, mainly to assist my own learning but the guys were happy with the trackside feedback the recordings could give them. It was during this session that it was drilled home to me that if I have a “Coaching Eye” at all, Dan has “Coaching Binoculars.” Where I observe things almost in one dimension as this is all my “Coaching Eye” can cope with at present and I need time to analyse what I see before I can make a judgement. Dan’s “Coaching Binoculars” observe movement in three dimensions and he can instantly assess what the problem is using his Knowledge of functional anatomy and instantly cue the athletes to correct or intervene with therapy to make the necessary change. Dan has developed these skills over many years coaching and I feel that this is the key to his success. Boy, have I a long way to go to develop my “Coaching Eye.” I think I have cataracts!

The highlight of the week for me (and it was very hard to choose one) had to be during this session when Rhys Williams (400mh) and Gianni Frankis (110mh) actually asked me for feedback on their acceleration mechanics. Using my “Coaching Catarats” I gave it my best shot and they seemed to take it on board. The highpoint in my Coaching Career to date!

My experience at Lee Valley working closely with Dan Pfaff, Stuart McMillan and their group has been the biggest learning curve for me and really has identified how much I have to learn and develop to get to where I want to be with my coaching. Not only that, but it has given me direction as to where I need to go with my learning. Coaching is a vocation, were you must have a balance between the art and the science and sometimes it is hard to know where to start. This past week has made that decision a little bit easier for me and for that I would like to thank Dan and Stuart for inviting me to shadow them and for their time and patience over the week. I would also like to thank Athletics Northern Ireland for their support and encouragement to take advantage of the opportunity. Time to get my head down!

Elaine McCaffrey

Elaine McCaffrey Lee Valley Experience- Blog 2

2010-12-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

Tuesday was a very fun day at Lee Valley with many top training groups present and working hard. For a novice like me in this environment it was very hard to decide who to focus my attention on. The choice was too tantalising with Tony Lester working with Nicola Sanders in one corner, Ayo Falola putting Marilyn Okoro through her paces in another and of course Dan’s group. In my initial attempts to take it all in I noticed that the coaches were working very hard on drills and skill of running technique and again the focus was on correct execution. I feel this may become the theme of the week!

Later in the session I got the chance to work with Pole Vaulter Steve Lewis, Videoing his vaults and then working with him on some Medball Multiple Throws Exercises. Unfortunately as it was just the two of us and most of the exercises required a partner I had to join in. It was great to experience the exercises first hand and so fully understand what effort was required.

Wednesday was a big day for Dan’s Group with lactate profiling planned during the running session. The warm up was extremely important and each drill is used as a screening tool to assess if the athletes have any mechanical issue cause by soft tissue dysfunction. These issues are then worked on immediately at the track side using therapy techniques, most notably active release. Active release enables the issue to be resolved whilst keeping the athletes fired up so not to interrupt the warm up.

15 minutes after the warm up the lactate profiling started. It was then repeated during and after the session at specific times. The lactate profiling will be done over a number of weeks and the team hope the data will give an indicator of where the athletes are at and alter training to try and develop any issues uncovered. This was a very exciting task for me and I was in my element testing Marlon Devonish, Ryan Moseley and Steve Lewis throughout the session. The results were instantaneous but further analysis of the trends will produce some areas for the guys to work on.

After this gruelling workout the guys then went on to some multiple jumps. The aim of this is to teach the body to work with the lactate in the system. This was then followed by weight training in the gym. This really is a full time job for these athletes. From witnessing and being involved with this heavy training day and questioning Dan as to how this would work for part time athletes I learned that the similar training protocols can be utilised by part-time athletes however the work should be spread over a longer period of time with adequate rest and recovery factored in, taking into consideration their other commitments. If you do not have the luxury of time on your side you must stick to the correct training philosophies but be smart about how your training is structured.

This was probably the best day of my career so far, learning from the best athletes and coaches and being right there in the middle of everything. I’m not sure if it can get any better but here’s hoping for tomorrow!

Lee Valley Experience Day 1

2010-11-30T04:59:00.000-08:00

Athletics Northern Ireland's Elaine McCaffrey has had the opportunity to work with some of the top coaches in the UK this week!

Today I flew to London to start my week shadowing Dan Pfaff, UK Athletics Director of Lee Valley High Performance Centre and his assistant coach Stuart McMillan. Dan has a rich coaching pedigree which includes coaching 33 Olympians to seven Olympic medals and 45 athletes to the IAAF World Championships, where they have won 10 medals.

Among the athletes he has coached is former Olympic and World 100m champion and world record holder Donovan Bailey. As you can imagine I, along with thousands of other budding coaches’ wish I could have one ounce of his experience and so I travelled excitedly to Lee Valley for the first of five days with the team to try and learn a thing or two.

The first thing I learned on my arrival was that good news has obviously travelled fast (as fast as I did when I got the invite to Lee Valley) and Dan’s group consists of a very large number of talented athletes from all event groups. The majority are fully funded athletes but unsurprisingly there are a few self funded athletes hoping that Dan’s magic might give them the chance to actualise their true potential. To name a few of those I had the pleasure of observing and interacting with today included Marlon Devonish, Martyn Bernard and affectionately known as the “Queen” of the group, Goldie Sayers. Witnessing the goings on, I was like a child in a candy store!

Unfortunately due to snow in Belfast in November my flight arrived slightly later than planned and I missed the first 2 hours of the session but luckily enough there was about another four hours worth to witness. Being a full time athletes is definitely not all fun and games and the athletes had to maintain focus and technique throughout a long session of track work, multi throws unit and then into the weight room for lifts and specific strengthening work. However the large group of individuals seemed to keep one and other focused and motivated.

The biggest surprise for me came in the weight room, where I expected these guys to be lifting everything in sight but in contrast the loads were manageable with “Perfect” technique controlling all loading and the team watching every athlete like a hawk. This seems indicative of all Dan’s Coaching Philosophies and although all coaches look to observe technique it was the attention to detail that was a contrast to the norm and could possibly be a big insight into where many coaches and athletes are going wrong.

The gist of his thinking from questioning him on his views are that... loading poor technique in the weight room will ultimately lead to issues on the track. I feel that tomorrow’s session on running technique will uncover more of Dan’s Philosophies and I look forward to learning some new skills from both Dan and Stuart.

More to follow later in week! UKA have a great coaching resource- UCoach- click here to visit.

Elaine McCaffrey

Talent Development Coach

Athletics NI President wins 'Frank Horwill Trophy for Services to BMC’

2010-11-17T02:20:00.000-08:00

What a weekend! On Saturday afternoon I watched the cream of British and Irish Masters battle it out over the fields of Santry Desmene, where I ran in my first All Ireland Championships well over 40 years ago.

On Saturday night I was the guest of Athletics Ireland at their Annual Awards Dinner and had the pleasure of seeing Eamonn Christie and Ciara Mageean pick up two well deserved awards. I also got the opportunity to speak to and receive an autograph from the great Ronnie Delaney, the Olympic Champion from Melbourne in 1956 and hero of all aspiring young middle distance runners in Ireland of my vintage.

On Sunday morning I was up before the larks and on my way to Dublin Airport for what I hoped would be a reunion with another legend.

I first met Frank Horwill in October 1973 when he was invited by Sean and Maeve Kyle to lead a training weekend based on the North Coast around the dunes of Portstewart. By the end of the three days Frank had approved my qualification as a BAAB Club Coach and left me a quivering wreck.

I had finished the 1973 season fairly satisfied with a 1:52.4 800m and a conviction that I knew what hard work was all about. Mr. Horwill knocked that idea on the head. On the Friday night after Registration we did a 35 min run. The following morning the session was an 8 mile run including 2 miles fartlex. After lunch we returned to the dunes for 10 mins hard sand running including a ‘sprint’ up a giant sand dune. This was followed by 4 x 5 x 100 metres with 20/15/10 and 5 seconds recovery and 2 minutes between sets. Sunday being the ‘day of rest’ we began with a mile warm up and some exercises on the sand. Then it was into 3 x 800m fast with 4 minutes recovery and a mile and half jog back for lunch. All that remained was an afternoon stroll of 10 miles!

It took me two days to recover but I left Portrush inspired by this man and in possession of a signed copy of what was to become my ‘bible’ , The Complete Middle Distance Runner by Horwill, Denis Watts and Harry Wilson (coach to Steve Ovett). Frank had inscribed the book with the words “Coaching an athlete from nothing to something is a noble cause”.

Frank was not everyone’s cup of tea but he was full of qualities that I admired. He did not treat fools gladly and British Athletics had more than its fair share of fools. He was the scourge of the English Womens’ AAAs because he had the audacity to believe that girls should be training as hard as the men and running long distance races like 3000 metres! He spoke his mind and cared not a jot about what others thought. He was generous to a fault and he lived and breathed running.

He was also a fighter, a quality which has stood him in good stead in the last number of years as he has fought illness time and again. I have known his qualities as a fighter since 1974 when having shattered my personal bests for every event from 100 metres to 2 miles Frank invited me to run in a British Milers event at Crystal Palace. The invitation included being hosted by Frank in his one roomed flat in London. In the evening he took me for a meal to his favourite Greek Restaurant in Golder’s Green.

As the meal progressed we noticed that another of the customers in the restaurant was one of Britain’s greatest runners and I was totally star struck. Unfortunately the athlete in question was, in modern parlance, ‘blocked’. He was also somewhat belligerent and called Frank some very nasty names and questioned his parenthood. Frank accepted the first onslaught but issued a warning of retribution if the insult was repeated.

The insult was duly repeated and retribution followed in the form of a punch to the nose which sent this very famous athlete flying over the dinner tables. Frank compensated the owner and we left. In the early hours of the morning we were awakened by the phone as a sobering famous athlete issued an apology!

The significance of all this to my weekend was that I was travelling to Manchester to meet Frank again for the first time in nearly forty years. During that time Frank’s training methods produced the best ever performance by a British athlete at the World Cross Country when Tim Hutchings took the Silver Medal and Peter Coe acknowledged Franks’ influence in his coaching of Seb to Olympic Gold. His ideas are heralded throughout the world and countless athletes owe their success to his methods and in particular his ‘five pace’ system all of which can be read in ‘Obsession for Running’ of which Frank is the author.

Arguably Frank’s greatest contribution to middle distance running was his formation of the British Milers Club. Formed in 1963 the aim of the club was, and remains, to improve the standards of British Middle Distance running. This is to be achieved by coach education, providing competition opportunities where the main aim is to improve times and to encourage the top British athletes to compete against each other.

As a further consequence of that initial meeting with Frank I found myself in 1975 succeeding Neil Morton as the Northern Ireland Regional Secretary for the British Milers Club. I would be the first to admit that my contribution to the above mentioned aims has been somewhat minimal. But in the last few years I have shown a greater commitment and have promoted several middle distance meets under the BMC banner as well as a couple of high profile races at Ravenhill with Ulster Rugby. I also came into contact with the BMC Treasurer and Chairman Pat Fitzgerald and Tim Brennan and when the idea of a Grand Prix BMC meet in Belfast was muted I jumped at the chance.

Thanks to the efforts of Pat and Tim and a lot of hard work by the staff of Athletics Northern Ireland the event was considered by all to have been a great success. Frank was unfortunately too ill to get across to Belfast but he too was convinced that the meeting was a success and so it was that I found myself on my way to Manchester to receive the ‘Frank Horwill Trophy for Services to BMC’ from the man himself. Despite being hospitalised again during the week I was delighted when I saw Frank entering the room and I was therefore given the opportunity to publically pay tribute to the man who has had an immense influence of my running and coaching career.

Despite the fact that the criteria for the award required the ‘Services to BMC’ to be for at least 10 years I am acutely aware that it was the success of the Belfast Grand Prix which was the main contributing factor in the award and I would like to thank all those who worked a lot harder than me in making it a great success.

However it is my name on the trophy and I am keeping it!

Visit John Glover's NI Stats website at: http://www.track-ni.org/

The Kirks Trip to India!

2010-11-12T01:50:00.000-08:00

Our adventure to Delhi started at the Belfast City Airport on a wet Friday evening. 12 hours later we touched down at Terminal 3 in Delhi Airport. We knew that the athletes had arrived at around the same time as us so we hung around waiting to see Katie and the rest of the team before they were whisked away to the Athletes Village. 20 minutes later we saw them!

It gave us some idea what might be in store for us. The group of athletes were being escorted out the airport by a large number of armed guards who did not like us approaching them! A quick exchange of hello’s and goodbyes and they were escorted onto their air conditioned bus. We battled through the hoards of people crowded outside the entrance of the airport and took a taxi to our hotel.

Our first mission was to collect our tickets from one of the outlets near our hotel. On paper this seemed like a simple task in reality it took us about 3 hours and lots of hassle. No one seemed to know where we were supposed to go and we were sent from pillar to post! To make things worse when we arrived back at the hotel tired and thirsty and definitely in need of a beer there was none to be had it was Ghandi’s birthday and the hotel had declared it to be a dry day!

The following day was the opening ceremony. 3 hours after leaving the hotel we eventually got to our seats. Security was very tight the queues were enormous and there was pandemonium around the stadium. We were searched three times once we passed through the gates of the stadium. No water was allowed no food no video cameras no coins no batteries no flags the list went on and on. When we eventually got to our seats we were not allowed to take our drinks (which we just queued 30 minutes for) down to our seats!! Very annoying! Especially in 34 degree ‘s heat!

The opening ceremony was spectacular though and it was great to see the Northern Ireland team coming out into the arena.

The first day of athletics followed a few days later. We were fortunate that the BBC commentary team were staying our hotel and they had warned us about the state of the track as they had got down onto it that morning. It was undulating and had undergone major patching up following the opening ceremony. Strangely it was not a Mondo track like most modern day stadiums but the same type of track surface as the Mary Peters Track which is basically a surface that is used for training tracks. They were of the opinion that pb’s would be few and far between.

The 400m girls were running their heats on the 1st night and all competed very well given the hot humid polluted conditions.

Katie was in the 4th heat which had an Indian athlete running. The noise from the crowd during her heat was unbelievable! Even when the athletes were called to their marks the locals were screaming and whistling. A lesson learnt for Katie as she let it distract her and didn’t hear the gun go off!

Others nights in the stadium were equally as noisy especially when Indian athletes were competing. The loudest cheers were saved for the woman’s 4x400 final when the Indians pulled off a surprise win. I have never experienced anything like it. The noise was literally deafening!

We managed to get a visit to the village which was interesting, especially given all the bad press it received before the games. The apartments were ok but poorly finished and still dusty, but better than the accommodation that we had when I was at the Commonwealth games in Auckland. We slept in bunk beds in prefab type huts with paper thin walls. Not good when the person in the room next door snored all night! We were able to sample the food in the dining hall and it was really very good especially the naan bread which you could watch being made. Security into and out of the village was very strict. We had to surrender our passports before we were let in and were searched three times on the way. We were starting to get used to this though, experiencing this every time we went into the stadium. The Delhi police advised that the athletes were not to leave the village and if they did so they were not to wear their sports gear. We managed to smuggle Katie out for an afternoon at our hotel much to the disgust of some of the team who were looking to escape as well!

At last it was time to make our way back to the airport and fly home. We left with mixed emotions. The extreme poverty we witnessed will be forever etched on our minds. The poor organisation was also disappointing. Delhi 2010 was the first event I had ever been to that there was no merchandise to bring home- no tee shirts, no polo shirts really no branded mementos at all! Ticketing was a disaster we queued for ages only to be told that the computers were down (again)! Then eventually when they were up and running they would tell us that the event was sold out! This was not the case as we could see loads of empty seats on TV!

On the positive side we met some really nice Delhiites who were very friendly and welcoming. We watched some great athletics. Some of the food we had was awesome. Saying that, it was great relief when we got back to cold and wet George Best City airport!

Mark Kirk
Father and Coach to Katie Kirk (4x400m Relay)

Commonwealth Games- an amazing experience!

2010-11-10T04:19:00.000-08:00

It’s a bit of an anticlimax being back studying after the most amazing 3 week experience; one which I will never forget…

The whole experience started back in July when the athletics team was announced. My year up to that point had been mixed. My indoor season took a while to get going, but ended with a big indoor PB in Birmingham, which gave me great confidence for the outdoor season. My outdoor season then proved inconsistent due to a back injury, however I still managed to improve my PB on 3 occasions and my confidence going out to Delhi was high.

Portugal was fantastic. The food, accommodation, training facilities and area were super and the week was brilliant. It was great to have Dan out in Portugal to help with my training and Niamh, the physio was fantastic help. Half way through the week I did a 400m time trial, which went very well and made me confident I was ready to run faster than I ever have before in Delhi. However after this run I felt severe pain down my right side, which I managed to put to the back of my mind as much as possible. The week ended on a high with a team meal in Villa Moira and team spirits were high going out to Delhi….

After a lot of hassle with getting our ‘slightly’ oversized bags onto the plane to London without being charged excess baggage (N.B. Giving gifts to the check in staff always help this matter….on this occasion Jackie sacrificed a Team NI T Shirt!) we were on our way. After arriving in London, we faced another problem in transferring the pole vault poles to Heathrow from Gatwick. Luckily we all made it just in time to catch the flight to Delhi, and 8 hours later were landed.

We were all a little apprehensive about what the village would be like, as the press hadn’t been so kind, however when we arrived we all stopped worrying. Bar nothing a few dettol wipes couldn’t sort out…everything was grand! We had a comfortable apartment, not far from the 24 hour food hall which we were to spend much of our time!

I had just over 5 days until the first round of the 400m and felt I could manage my injury with copious amounts of pain killers and physio sessions.

The 400m heats were in the evening, so after a couple of trips to the food hall we were ready to head to the stadium. I was in heat 3, and although the line up looked difficult, qualifying for the semis didn’t look impossible. The call room process wasn’t the best, but we all had to endure the same….we were then taken onto the track and told to sit in the middle of a bug cloud for about 20 minutes before the race started. It was an unbelievable atmosphere out in the stadium and I was excited about racing.

On your marks, get set, go! I was in lane 2 and completely stumbled out of my blocks. Third step into my race I felt a sharp pain shoot down from my back to ankle. I slowed the pace for a few metres, hoping it would go away however this wasn’t the case. I decided to keep running and tried to pick the pace up towards the end, but the pain was unbearable. All this training, all the hard work to be dealt a blow all due to a poorly executed start. I was devastated, more because I knew I was in great shape and had high expectations of myself going into the event.

The relay was the following Monday, and I was determined to run! After much rest, I convinced everyone I was ‘healthy’ enough to run…but the order was changed so I would run last and not have to do another rubbish start! It was great fun, and although we failed to meet our target of either breaking the NI record, or reaching the final we all left the track determined to come back in Glasgow 2014 and cause some trouble. It was a great experience, and with the team so young, I’m convinced the future will hold great things!

Memories from Delhi are never ending….Amy getting fed ketchup nut birthday cake on arrival at the airport, Pool Champ Kelly and her mad obsession with collecting pins, Jo Mills and her super ability to stay protected from mozzies and her cool banana case, Katie and her ‘love’ of all bugs big and small, Ciara and her toad handling skills, Teen and her amazing flexibility, Tom and Camilla, Jackie and her ability to sprain her ankle while not doing anything, and Davy and his love for all things Indian (food, mozzies etc).

Almost a month since we returned from Delhi, and life is getting back to normal. I have just started winter training, which so far has involved a lot of rehab work and not a great deal of running…but that will come soon!! Being part of Team NI was an incredible experience and one which I will cherish forever. The whole team were amazing, and I know with all the youth and raw talent, things can only go up in the future…Bring on athletics in 2011!!

Jo Patterson

My Half Marathon Blog (Half Marathon Series)

2010-11-08T03:44:00.000-08:00

At the start of the year when I was putting up my wall planer 2010 and printed off the race fixtures, I sat down to plan which races would fit into my Dublin Marathon training, when the half marathon series was announced, I thought I would attempt to do all 7.

Larne 20th March

I persuaded a few of the club members to train for this as their first half, as I did this last year I knew the route and it was reasonably flat till mile 6-8 and then all downward home to finish. I ran along with Francey for the first 6 miles to keep her paced as this was her first ever half. The crowd was great and the atmosphere was brilliant running along the promenade to the finish line. I ran home in 2.21 to start the half series off with a PB.

Omagh 27th March
With only 7 days after Larne I knew I would have to do this all over again. Omagh was a surprise to me, very hilly and I wasn’t prepared enough for it. I ran a reasonably race; my legs were tired after last week. With great support along the route I ticked off the miles……we ran along the track to finish, this was amazing. I ran home in 2.27 and ended up with a blood blister on the sole of my foot due to a small stone in my shoe…. But 2 down and 5 to go….woo hoo

Next day I did mud madness for fun, I knew it was two months till the next half so I could concentrate on the distance and pace in between. 145 miles later I was prepared as much as I could for Newry.

Newry 21 May

Leaving the house at 7am to travel to Newry I felt great, the weather was perfect, sun was shining. I knew the route again from last year, but this year I would be able to finish in a more reasonable time as I picked up an Achilles injury and limped home last year. A few hills on the way out until we reached the massive hill around 8 miles, god that hill was murder, but what goes up must come down again. Then flat all the way home, running down the home straight to the shouts of our club members made all the difference. I ran home in 2.30 not bad, but very pleased.

Lisburn 16th June
This was a Wednesday night race and another I ran before and loved. By the time the race started it was getting very warm….I was struggling, felt sick and throw up at 1.5 miles. Once this happened I was grand. The first 8k was brilliant till we split off from the 10k pack, up along the carriage way at Sprucefield; it seemed a never ending hill. Once over the hill and we turned into the countryside, at 8 miles I caught up with a club runner I had been trying to catch all night. The local support was brilliant, a man give me a bottle of energy drink and I don’t know if it was that or the fact I caught my club mate that I found my energy again, from mile 8 to 12 I flew, once I reached the long hill home I looked at my watch and knew I was going to knock minutes off last years time. So I had a massive smile on my face crossing the finish line. I ran home in 2.27.

Newtownards 2nd July

After I finished this race last year I vowed NEVER ever to run it again, but I had to give in as it was part of the half series, wasn’t looking forward to all the hills, mostly up. Running it this time was a completely different experience, I had a brilliant time, I ran along with another club member for a few miles, the boy scouts at the water stations were a god send, the best part of ards for me was the down hill at mile 12, passing all the walkers, knowing I only had 1 mile to go. With a lot of the members waiting for me to come up the home straight, shouting, encouraging all the way over the mat I had a big grin on my face and got a big hug from Chipman. I ran home in 2.27 again for the 3rd time. Next race I will have to break the dreaded 2.27.

Cookstown 25th July
This half I slotted into the beginning for my marathon training, I hadn’t done Cookstown before so I ask around and was given a mixture of reports on the route. We started off down hill which I thought was the start of a good route till we turned the corner and it was more up hills than down. I was told about the big hill at 12 miles and to keep something in my tank for it, but I used up all my energy on the rest of the hills before I reach the 12 mile mark, with only 1 mile to go I pushed on and hoped for a long down hill, we turned the bend at the top of the hill to a very short down hill, I was feeling it in my legs by now, I knew we had a up hill to finish and over a cattle grill. I don’t know where I found the last bit of energy to sprint home up into the leisure centre.
I ran home in 2.26 wow. I finally broke the 2.27 by 1 minute, I didn’t care, I was overjoyed at my time. Talking to a few other runners from North Down afterwards and the all reported the route took everyone be surprise. This was the hardest of all the halves so far, harder than ards. 6 of 7 completed yippee!

Derry 12th Sept

The was reported to be the flattest half of all. We had 10 club members that travelled to Derry early on the Sunday morning for the last half in the series. I was only too pleased to be standing on the start line injury free. I was very relaxed and all I wanted to do was finish in one piece, no time target, no pressure to get a PB. I ran my own race, I normally stop and run along with someone who is struggling or has stopped cause of a stitch, which I help to push out. Ticking off the miles one by one was easy, they seem to fly by, running around the industrial estate and seeing all the other running ahead of me on the loop back home, shouting encouragement to them, I loved it. We came back into Gransha at mile 12, I knew I was on to break my PB of 2.21, the club members had all came in before me and were waiting to cheer me across the finish line to complete all 7. I ran home in 2.22 to top it all off, I started the series on a high and finished on a high.

I will be encouraging everyone to complete the half series in the club next year; it was massive achievement to cross that finish line in Derry. Roll on next year, I’ll have to set my goals higher now and try to improve my times, barring any injuries I’ll be back. Thanks to all our club runners for all the encouragement and company along the way.

Also thanks to Glenn (chipman) always a big smile when I cross the finish line, all the event sponsors and supporters without you things like this would be possible.

Barbs
Up and Runners

The Half Marathon Prizegiving Photos are available here and further details on the 2011 Series will be on http://www.niathletics.org/ in the New Year!

Delhi Decathlon

2010-10-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

Decathlete Tom Reynolds talks about his Commonwealth Games experience.

Well, what a month it has been! Injuries, arguments, last minute technique changes, PB's and great experiences.

Things were looking very bad just over a month ago, a series of back injuries left me limping and unable to do much at all in the weeks before we departed for Portugal.

There were a period of a few days where I thought I wouldn't event be on the plane but thanks to the NI physios Phil, Naoimh and Chris I arrived in Portugal in once piece, was able to do all my planned training and make it through the Decathlon without any major injuries.

Portugal was brilliant, excellent hotel, facilities and weather. It was great having my coach Brendan McConville out there and he managed to completely sort my pole vault out in two sessions. It was good having the rest of the squad training there too and we all supported each other. Towards the end of the week I was getting up at 4.30am to try and adjust my body clock for the time change in India, this made the 26 hour journey to India a little easier.

The first few days in India were surreal, the heat and humidity, meeting Olympic Champions like Steve Hooker and Valerie Villi in the Village and having as much free food and drink as you want 24 hours a day! Stranger still was my first session at the village track; I was doing a quiet shot putt session with my old flatmate Roger Skedd (Scottish Decathlete) when all of a sudden a crowd of people were moving towards us including loads of press, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowls. We didn't have time to put t-shirts on and that is why the press took so much interest in it. Charles and Camilla seemed to be quite amused by our "attire" but they said it was very sensible given the conditions! They were also very interested in learning about the Decathlon. We carried on training and forgot about it, they next day I was hearing from home that it was in every major paper and even on the TV show Loose Women, hopefully it led to a few extra people watching our Decathlon!

The Decathlon itself was two extremely long and hot days of ups and downs. The 100m was brilliant, from the day I was selected I was dreaming of winning my heat in a new PB and if you were watching you could see how happy I was to do this. The time I was dreaming of was 10.99 of course but I guess with my injury and a headwind that was too much to ask. Long Jump was a complete unknown, I hadn't jumped over 6.70 since June and had hardly been able to train for it but a first round argument with the officials about the plastacine not being rolled properly (which lead to me fouling when it shouldn't have been one) was exactly what I needed to fire me to a 7.04m jump and my 2nd best ever. The shot and high jump was a little disappointing but no major losses there. The 400m was 0.01 off my pb and even though I died more than ever before, the 45,000 crowd made it a very enjoyable race. So after day 1 I was 60 points off my PB in 11th place. By the time I had an ice bath and dinner it was about 11.30pm, I perhaps got 3 hours sleep but that is standard Decathlon procedure!

Day 2 and the physios did a great job to get me going in the morning. The main problem was the hurdles, where I had to change my legs in the blocks around becuase of my back injury. This didn't cause many problems for the 100m but in the hurdles it meant I had to take one less stride to hurdle 1, which is a massive change. I managed to do it ok but it was very difficult to adjust to the new rhythm, I felt I should have won the event but once I have had a year to perfect the new technique it will make me much quicker. The discus was solid but it is one of my worst events and needs improved! For me the Pole Vault was the best event, there were only about 3-4 thousand people watching (as opposed to 45 thousand plus for the evening events) but they had obviously never seen Pole Vault before and the noise they made was incredible. I had more arguments with the officials about being given 25 mins warm up time, most of which was spent watching them put up the bar and knocking it down by mistake.

This resulted me having to start the competition without having done a single vault, thankfully everything worked out and I managed to beat my PB from 2007, there is a lot more to come as I could see from the replay screens that I was 25-30cm over 4.60. Javelin was my 2nd best ever but I had been throwing much better in training before the Games with my javelin coach Paddy McGrattin, so I was slightly disappointed, this also meant my chance to break the NI native record was gone, it will have to wait! The 1500 was horrible in that heat and huimidity, i knew I was in PB shape but had completely run out of energy.

In the end I finished 9th with 7210, my second best score ever and still over 400 points better than my PB before 2010. I was 15 points short of my goal of top 8 and 40 points short of 7th place, but this has spurred me on to continue to Glasgow and aim for the top 5. It was a briliant experience that I will never forget, and it was great to do it along with so many friends (three of my uni housemates were in the decathlon too). It was great being with the NI team and supporting each other.

Pictured: Me and Brent Newdick, the silver medalist who lives and trains with my Brother Luke in Auckland!
Me and some of the girls at the closing ceremony.

Follow the Athletics NI Twitter account and Facebook account.

Road to Delhi: The Challenge of Continuous Improvement...

2010-09-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Soaked through to the skin at my last golf match of the regular season which leaves a bit of time for athletics planning and blogging.

Review training schedules, check dates/ times- make a list!! Less than a week until we leave, exciting times, but also apprehension. I have been to the last two games with Team NI, packed with our best, and my goodness how tough it is on the dancefloor in the stadium. All throughout the qualifying period this was at the forefront of my mind. Fortunately our ten do not have to look too far for inspiration as our last medallist is supporting them throughout the qualifying period.

It’s been an interesting year in terms of planning as a personal coach. Normally its Ballyclare in Welly Boots in October, instead we’re in India trying to run PB’s! It’s been a challenge for periodising the year, and I have learned an awful lot about myself as a coach throughout the year. Will add more fuel to the fire for my annual/ quadrennial planning lectures! ‘Coaching is a process of gathering scars’. Next year’s challenge is a more normative one- Asia in august.

With an average age of 21.4 the team is definitely going to be around again for Glasgow 2014, which can only be progress for the sport. I have worked with the two experienced members of the team throughout the year who have been great in terms of supporting the younger athletes and I’m sure James and Kelly will continue to mentor and support the younger members on camp, before getting down to the business on getting on the start lists for the middle distance finals. Let’s hope lots of 15/16 year olds watching on tv in NI are inspired to make the next team.

Ciara, Amy and Christine have already brought home plenty of medals from major age group competitions so that should stand them in good stead for this new task. Having a decathlete in the squad is great in terms of drama and excitement. I worked with Louise Hazel at the 2005 Europeans and one minute you’re smashing a PB in the hurdles and the next you’re facing a pressure last jump in the long jump to stay alive. It’s like a mini soap opera.

For those of you that were unfortunate enough to see me in a vest and shorts you’ll know how much I love the 4x400m. My fondest moments in athletics as an athlete came in relays, and most of my friends were members of those teams either for Irish Universities, Northern Ireland or my club City of Lisburn. There is a nucleus of a top class squad here that if we add to it can become one of our strongest events at the next two games in 2014 and 2018. I’m looking forward to watching the team unit develop on camp and at the end of the athletics programme for some big PB splits as a fantastic end to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

I’m grateful to get the opportunity to support the squad over the next three weeks. Thanks to Athletics NI for the foresight in providing a preparation camp in Portugal. The weather has turned recently and as you can see from Stephens blog it’s difficult to get quality work in. Over the last 17 years I have travelled to camps/ golf holidays in Portugal many times. It’s a great country and blessed with excellent athletics facilities (and golf courses!)along the Algarve.

Despite mass speculation Athens was ready, Beijing was excellent and New Dehli looks prepared for the event. I remember the dignatories touring Melbourne village and an assistant making notes. Having a track in the village is just luxury, and makes our job so much easier. (Jackie, James and Kelly will remember me driving the team bus the wrong way up the road in Manchester looking for the training track!) The recent photos of the village facilities look like they did in Manchester and Melbourne and the Stadium looks spectacular.

A couple of weeks hard work and it’s time to shine. Keep the messages of support coming through!

David Reid

Assistant Team Coach, Delhi 2010

Also launched is the new NI Commonwealth Games Council website which is currently being developed. A sneak preview is available to view at- http://www.nicgc.org/ . Over the coming days it will provide information relating to athletes, venues, competition schedules etc. You will also be able to keep up to date with the latest news by joining us on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

It’s the final countdown!

2010-09-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

The NICGC had a team get together on the 10th and 11th of September which has brought home how close the XIX commonwealth games are to getting started. Collecting the kit, meeting the other sports officials and competitors and getting talks on final preparations, has brought it home that in exactly three weeks time the athletics events will be underway in the Jawaharial Nehru Stadium.

Next week sees the Athletics Northern Ireland Team head to Portugal for final preparations and a chance to get into competition mode. The athletes and their personal coaches have been given the opportunity to attend a training camp on the Algarve and as the September weather conditions become more and more like winter, the week in the Algarve will assist in the athletes acclimation to Delhi conditions and will allow them and their coaches the final push to get ready for the Delhi Commonwealth Games.

I am looking forward to seeing the team, that has a mixture of youth and experience, take on the Commonwealth. It is worthwhile noting that eight of the ten athletes have already taken part in a multi sport competition/championship (European Youth Olympics, World University Games, Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games etc) – so whilst the team may be young they are extremely experienced.

Jackie McKernan- Athletics Team Coach

Also launched is the new NI Commonwealth Games Council website which is currently being developed. A sneak preview is available to view at- http://www.nicgc.org/ . Over the coming days it will provide information relating to athletes, venues, competition schedules etc. You will also be able to keep up to date with the latest news by joining us on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

"Runners to the line", "Toes behind the line"

2010-08-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

On your marks, get set, go.... I find myself sprinting into the clear, arms up high defending position on the rail, and float around the bend, 3 laps later my heart is pounding in my chest, a weak athlete would slow, give in to the pain, I find myself questioning fate, one last effort to make the commonwealth games, I find another gear, im kicking hard, now im leading, but it's too early. Arms stephen arms, keep driving your arms.

I hear John Allen, "Keep working to the line", it wakes me up and I kick again, catch my balance at the line and its over. I've been running for 11 years now, and It all came down to running fast on my home track in Belfast. I've been lucky to find people to help me along the way, and provide the vital support required that got me both mentally and physically ready for Belfasts Grand Prix.

It's been a really great and enjoyable last few months, which took me from the downfall in Marseille, to the fast tactical 1500m in Budapest, then to Sweden for a painful experience over 5000m, and back to London for Solihulls breakthrough, and finally the big one in Belfast. But the whole journey has been enjoyable and that all began under Coach John Moffett at the Mary Peters track in 1999. Since then ive changed coach a number of times, and continue to have contact with most. You have to learn how to use the people around you, and let their knowledge and experience help you push forward.

I've just gotten word that im selected for the Commonwealth games in India, It hasn't completely sunk in yet. Im blogging from Belfast City Airport, before I board my plane back to London. A great place to base myself for the pre build up training. The commonwealth games will see me race hard in front of thousands, but for me its important to learn from the big occasion. Its an honour to represent the country that made me, the country that taught me to survive on the 1st three laps of my 1500m, and the country that taught me how to fight on the last lap.

For now, I will be enjoying a little lay off period for a week; however, I have some work to do if I wanna be ready for India. Were given these opportunities in life to test us, and see how good we can be. Its time to fight for Northern Ireland, and put our country on the map. Lets bring some pride back to Northern Ireland, someone has to take home glory, why can't it be the small team from Northern Ireland.

Stephen Scullion

Jason Smyth takes hype in his stride ahead of Europeans

2010-07-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

Jason Smyth's take on becoming the first Paralympic athletic in history to compete at a European Championships has to be gently teased out of him. The unassuming Northern Irishman's appearance in Barcelona later this month has been generating copy around the world but Smyth is taking matters in his increasingly lengthening stride.

"The first Paralympian to compete in a European Championships - that's what I've been told," the 23-year-old shrugs when interviewed by BBC Sport.

"But I never get too bothered or stressed about things like that. I just focus on myself and don't get distracted by silly things that are going on around you." That approach has worked well for Smyth so far.
The Derryman had perfect vision up until the age of nine before a hereditary condition known as Stargardt's Disease began to cause his sight to deteriorate. It wasn't a sudden loss of sight but adjustments had to made in his life from then on.

"I would be able to see things generally around me," said Smyth in a Sunday Times interview in 2006. But getting things further away would be more difficult. I would be able to see colour and images and people pretty much."

He still managed to become a regular on the school football team although judging the path of the ball or finding an unmarked team-mate was not always easy.I worked much harder than I had ever done previously
However, he was to find his real sporting call in 2003 when he hooked up with Strabane man and emerging athletics coach Stephen Maguire. Maguire, though, didn't even learn of Smyth's visual impairment until after the youngster became Irish Schools champion nine months later.

The coach realised Smyth might be eligible for Paralympic competition and by the following summer he was a double European Paralympic champion, those performances qualifying Smyth for the maximum 40,000 euro Irish Sports Council grant. Further financial help from his uncle Stephen, a successful businessman in the US, enabled the athlete and coach to effectively go full-time.

Double World Paralympic gold - both in new world records - followed in 2006 and, apart from a blip at the World Junior Championships where he got stuck on the blocks, success followed success in the run-up to the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. Smyth arrived in China as the red-hot favourite for double gold and he didn't disappoint as he took the titles with two more world records of 10.62 and 21.43.

Those performances convinced athlete and coach that becoming the first competitor to compete at an Olympics and Paralympics in the same year was a realistic goal for London 2012. But Maguire knew that the training regime would have to be upped significantly for Smyth to reach a level which would give him even an outside chance of making sporting history.

Prior to Beijing, Maguire had already been in regular email correspondence with top coach Lance Brauman, whose group includes Tyson Gay, and the Florida-based American invited the Irish duo to the United States for a training stint in the early part of 2009.

"We went out there last year for six or seven weeks and that led to us going out for the whole winter this year," says Smyth. "My family and my two uncles and their families have bought a holiday home out in Florida. We are there over the winter and they head out in the summer. Otherwise realistically, we couldn't afford to do it."
Last year's six-week stint was a taster but Smyth knew that a full winter was needed in the US for him to have any chance of reaching his full potential.

"We went out last November for two months and then came back for three weeks - then out again for two months and back again. We were out for three different blocks during the winter and spring and I worked much harder than I had ever done previously. We trained six days a week and usually kicked off at 9.30 and kept going until half past two. We would be on the track for a few hours and then we would head up to the gym.
I was in the gym four times a week doing heavy weights, whereas here at home the year before it was once a week. Every one of the six days, we were on the track and sometimes doing really hard sessions. By the time dinner time came around, I was just about ready for my bed - absolutely shattered. I was kind of living a life of just training."

Gay, double World Champion in 2007, missed Smyth's opening weeks in the US last winter as he was recovering from injury but the Kentucky man began to take the Derry sprinter under his wing after rejoining Brauman's group after Christmas.Without a doubt that's where we want to be. Run in the Olympics and retain the Paralympics titles.

"He was always coming over and telling me different little things. He'd be saying 'this is what you should be thinking of, this is what you should be feeling at different stages of the race'. I suppose there was [an element of him taking me under his wing]. Within the group, everybody is so supportive of each other and wanting each other to do well."

The group also contained the multi-medalled Bahamian Debbie Ferguson and Jamaican Steve Mullings and the Irishman in the African-American and Caribbean sprinting posse came to be affectionately known as the 'white rabbit'. The camaraderie is tremendous. Even people that weren't competing would go to competitions to watch the others," he added. And people are always interested in what I'm doing back here." Smyth started his summer season by shaving .01 secs off his 100m personal best in the US as he clocked 10.41 to again better the European Championship standard.

However, the immense value of his Floridian winter was put into sharp focus by stunning runs on successive Saturdays last month as a new Northern Ireland 100m record of 10.32 was followed up by a wind-assisted 10.27 when beating 2004 Olympic silver medallist Francis Obikwelu at the European Cup meeting in Budapest.
That run in Hungary suggested that Smyth is on course for the European Championship semi-finals in Barcelona and a place in the final may not even be beyond the 23-year-old - although Maguire is frantically playing down any such suggestions.

"I would never think about the final," adds an on-message Smyth. "It's all about focusing on one race at a time. I'll try and run quicker and quicker and if that got me to a final, that would be a fantastic achievement. "It's just about getting there injury-free and if I can run in the low 10.20s - whatever happens I would be delighted. This time last year, I wouldn't have predicted that I would be getting near to that kind of category."

The mention of injury is salient because Smyth has been bothered by a hamstring niggle since the Budapest win although he has still been able to train well. He has been named on the Irish tean for the European Championships band intends to have a race on the weekend of 17/18 July "blow out the cobwebs" before the Europeans start on 27 July.

The Barcelona championship will only be the start of a "massively busy" six months for the Londonderry man with the Commonwealth Games following in Delhi in October and the World Paralympic Games in New Zealand next January.

2011 could also see Smyth competing alongside the likes of Gay and Usain Bolt at the World Championships in Daegu in South Korea in the final major outdoor championship before London 2012.

Smyth says that his performances so far this summer have proved to him that competing at the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 is "definitely achievable".

"Legally I've run 10.32 and I should go low 10.20s this year. Without a doubt that's where we want to be. Run in the Olympics and retain the Paralympics titles.

"I'll aim to continue to progress and be in Florida over the winters over the next two years. I don't see why I can't continue to improve and achieve what I plan to achieve."

Jason has his own website- Click Here. Interview above with BBC Sport.

A day in the life of Joy Alexander

2010-07-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Well it’s 7am Saturday morning, the day of the NI & Ulster Senior Champs and Commonwealth Trials. At least the sun is shinning and no rain is forecast. Better hurry up and get to the track for the first event – the hammer at 9.30am. Arrive at the track at 8.30am to find the forum staff busying around – is there a steeplechase I hear them shouting over – need to get the water switched on. You’re ok I answer...no steeplechase today!

Off to the store to get the registration tables set up with a lot of help from my friend Lawson and the hardworking Jenni. What a week Jenni and I put in, checking entries, changing timetables, trying to keep everyone happy and on board. That’s the bit nobody sees or fully appreciates! And we do this for fun/relaxation – I keep reminding myself. Let’s hope all goes well today!

Someone’s here with a hammer to check in – I hear someone shout. Give me a minute I’ll be over! Hammer is ready to go and officials are at the cage!

Next job is to decide on call room location and to get it ready. Oh I see Pam arrive with Chris Cohn, the UKA National Technical Delegate, who has come to report on the Championships. Poor Chris straight into giving us a hand getting things ready- he’s just flown in from the Diamond League meeting in Rome – bet he didn’t have to haul pole vault mats or hurdles around there! As ever it is all hands on deck.

11oc’clock all seems to be going ok- think I’ll grab a quick cup of coffee. Trying to keep an eye on field events and getting the track ready for the off. Joy – where is this, where is that, who’s doing this –questions/ queries - just a normal day in the life of a meeting manager!!

What a great bunch of officials we have – I keep pushing for us to try and keep to time – they never complain, just keep going from event to event. We are really lucky – just a pity we couldn’t get a few more to help!! It really is good fun!

Call room – a new venture this year – seems to be going ok. A few teething problems but we do have to keep trying to move our champs on each year. Kate and Eric are doing a wonderful job.

1.00pm – bit behind on time now – hopefully will catch up – I know extra time was left middle of afternoon. Mens 100m what a run by Jason Smyth – these are the times which make it all worth while! Nearing the end of the day back on time all seems to be going ok, some positive comments from a few folk – always much appreciated.

5.30pm Phew – all done – absolutely exhausted! Must put a pedometer on some day must have walked miles! Heading home now at nearly 6pm – don’t work as long hours in my “real job”. Looking forward to a Chinese with some of the officials and then we’ve got it all to do again next weekend with the age groups! But sure we love it really!!!

Joy Alexander

Joy Alexander is one of the most tireless officials in the country. As well as chairing the Athletics NI Track and Field Committee until recently, she is present almost without fail at every meet in NI throughout the track and field season.Her roles at these events include level 5 field official at many events as Meeting Director –not only accomplishing her field duties but also dealing with numerous queries and problems in the most professional way. She was a worthy recipient of the Official of the Year award.

The Athletics NI Officials have just launched a new kit- click HERE to view the press release!

100 Days to go to the Commonwealth Games!

2010-06-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

100 hundred days to go to the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi!

The Queen’s Baton 2010 Delhi has arrived in India today! The baton will now travel across the country covering a distance of 20,000 kilometres, will pass through the hands of more than 5000 Batonbearers across 200 cities and thousands of villages using all modes of transport including land, air and sea, before arriving in Delhi for the grand Opening Ceremony of the Games on 3 October 2010.

Locally the past few weeks have been busy with the first phase of athletes being nominated and of course others chasing performances for selection. We have had our NI Commonwealth Trials and a fantastic day it was in Antrim. The sun showed up and the pick of the day had to be Jason Smyth's performance in the 100m (10.32s) where he broke the Northern Ireland record. Jason further showed his form beating Obikwelo, the European 100m Champion in Budapest last weekend. Athletics NI have their own YouTube channel and quite a few of the races from the championships are on it.

Wednesday 22nd June saw a ladies 4x400m team post a time inside the guideline – the average of the team is 18 so a great prospect for the future and there are numerous athletes competing around Europe either looking for times or confirming performances.

A busy few weeks ahead and hopefully a few more performance within or close to the guideline standards before the final team is nominated on the 25th July the day after the British milers club event at Mary Peters Track.

I know of one athlete in 1986 who left it to the very last day, Scottish Championships, to achieve the Guideline standard for the Discus?
There is plenty of time yet!!

Can you guess who it is?!

Visit the NI Commonwealth Games Section

Visit the Athletics NI YouTube Channel

A Lesson Learned...

2010-05-19T01:31:00.000-07:00

For most athletes in Northern Ireland it is a great accomplishment to represent their Country, some athletes choose to run for Ireland, and others choose to run for Great Britain. However, in the Commonwealth Games it's an opportunity to represent the small country of Northern Ireland.

Up until recently the Commonwealth games were just a competition late in the season that I honestly didn't believe I could qualify for. The times were released last year and my Pb's were a long way away, with some athlete's already qualifying including magnificent junior Ciara Mageean, and the well established 1500m runner Kelly McNeice. I decided that I wouldn't put all my focus into the commonwealths incase I was faced with dissappointment. During previous years, I spent alot of time chasing qualifying times for the 3000m S/C and I believe this affected my performances in other competitions. The problem with chasing qualifying standards leaves room for negativity if you fail to accomplish these goals. Such negativity in previous years has lead me to almost quiting the sport, World Juniors in Beijing 2006, my parents, who have supported me in more ways than they possibly could, spent a large sum of money on a flight for me to chase the time in the AAI National Championships. When I failed to qualify I was massively dissappointed, even though I just ran a personal best and gained a bronze medal in the National Seniors.

My recent changes in attitude have lead to some great improvements in my running, attitude towards the sport, and general approach to achieving success. I decided to forget about chasing qualifying times, and setting limits. I believe anyone can set big goals; however, even the biggest goals can set limits to your potential. The only goal I aim for now, is to reach my full potential in everyway possible, sometimes this is very good, and allows me to push hard in training, and run up to 80 miles per week, but other times its hard work, when I am forced to rest or relax if I have small problems. I decided to search long term into the sport, believing everything else will fall into place, If you go about your business well, and make good choices not only during training 2 hours per day, but also the other 22 hours in the day. You will no longer need to set targets and goals, they will find you, recently any targets I had set for a session, race or season, seem to change daily. It is not a bad thing to set targets, or to have dreams, but I would encourage that you do everything you can to move forward. Every athlete needs to learn to respect how difficult athletics is as a sport, so many factors like Lifestyle, Nutrition, Medical support, and Coaching are essential for elite performances. Consistent training and lifestyle can change everything for you.

Having now been running since primary 6, I believe I have been competing for 12 years, this is a very long time but in running years its very small. In September, I attended St Marys University in Twickenham , my goals were simple, to learn from the established athletes around me. Through watching and experimenting I now have a lifestyle that allows for big improvements. I regularly run between 70-80 miles per week, I have averaged 65 miles for the last 2 years( that includes weeks of due to recuperation or injuries).

At the university I changed coach from Mick Woods, to Nick Anderson, and I am now training with a very experienced athlete Andy Vernon. We regularly take part in Drills sessions, Body weight core work, and General dynamic stretching. These are sessions that I had not included in my training before, and websites do have sample programs for other athletes to see. The biggest change is having company for most runs, and sessions making the hard work a lot easier. I would advise anyone who trains alone, to find company for steady and long runs, most athletes can run at the same pace for these. Training didn't change dramatically at the university, mileage stayed the same, and runs became slower, sessions where longer, and tempos where introduced weekly, the amount of Threshold training I did each week went up to almost 60 minutes on some weeks. I believe this training is neglected by many athlete's and it has been a key ingredient to my improvements.

My ex coach Damien Gill, used to follow a program closely linked to what I do now, he encouraged myself and other North Belfast Harries to get a Vo2 max test which would help are training, after 6 weeks of threshold blocks with Damian I was 2nd in the Schools Internatial, (2005). I am still very stubborn and believe if I had continued this threshold training, I would be a much stronger athlete now.

I have some races set up for the next few weeks, including a 1500m on Wednesday 19th May, this can hopefully set me up for a fast 5000m in Manchester BMC, the Commonwealth Games standard is a fast 13.40.00, I can only hope training goes well, and the race is fast. I have also committed to racing a fast 10k race on track in June or July, and I will have a chance to run under the standard of 28.45.00. It would be a great achievement to recieve either; however, I believe I have done everything possible to run fast, and if I run slower than either of the times, Im sure I will still be happy and learn from the results. I try to analyse most of my races now, and if I have a good race I try to pinpoint any changes that lead to the improvements, and also look at further changes that could lead to better results in the future Sometimes too much pressure is put on reaching times each year, but if you continue to improve each year, the times you ran last year become irrelevant. The challenge most athletes are faced with is staying positive and not quiting one of the hardest sports there is.

Feel free to follow my results and training on Twitter, remember to live each day trying to improve your performances, for every good decision you make in your life daily, all the percentages will add up. A change in lifestyle and attitude towards the sport can create huge improvements, follow your dreams and good luck.

Stephen Scullion

Gladys Ganiel:Making the US Olympic Marathon Trials

2010-05-17T02:51:00.000-07:00

I went for my first run 20 years ago. I was 13 and it was the summer before I was to start eighth grade at Harrington Elementary School, in Harrington, Maine, USA.

On Sunday April 25, with two decades of running behind me, I completed the London Marathon in 2 hours, 41 minutes and 45 seconds. This time qualifies me for the US Olympic Marathon Trials, which are scheduled for January 14, 2012 in Houston. The qualifying time for the US Trials is sub-2 hours, 46 minutes. Runners have between January 2010 and December 2011 to qualify. The first three finishers in the Trials race make the US Olympic Team.

I’ve been running for Abbey AC in Belfast and Newtownabbey since 2006. I’ve lived in Ireland pretty much full-time since I first arrived in 1999 to start graduate school, but I’m not yet eligible for either Irish or British citizenship.

Especially since 2008, I’ve really benefitted from the support of Athletics Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland running community, returning to a level of training similar to what I did under Coach Ray Treacy at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, USA (1995-1999).

London was the third marathon that I have trained properly for. I ran London in April 2009 in 2.47.53, and Amsterdam in October 2009 in 2.46.46. For a period of seven years between 2000 and 2007, I had a chronic pain condition that prevented me from running seriously – even though I was a member of Dundrum South Dublin AC and scored for the club on three occasions when we won the National Inter Clubs cross country championships. I had a lot of pulsing and throbbing in various parts of my body, as if my nervous system wasn’t working quite right.

This was hard for me, because I loved competing. During that time I was completing a doctorate in Politics at University College Dublin. In 2006 I got a job lecturing in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast (on the Antrim Road). That’s where I still work.

In 2007, not long after I returned to Northern Ireland from doing research in Zimbabwe, my pain condition (which no regular doctors or sports doctors had ever really been able to explain), started to gradually get better. In 2008 I married an Irishman, Brian O’Neill, and he and his family have been a great support to me. It especially helps to have a husband and mother-in-law who are good cooks and ready to feed you after a long run!

For my marathons, I have devised my own training schedules and taken advice from my coach at Providence College, Ray Treacy, and North Belfast Harriers veteran Matt Shields, one of the fastest marathoners ever from Northern Ireland. Irish Olympian Maria McCambridge of Letterkenny AC, who was my teammate both at Providence College and in DSD, has also always been supportive and offered a useful perspective on training.

London 2010: Running the Race …

Because of my experience in the two marathons in 2009, I knew I was close to the Olympic Trials qualifying standard and I knew what to expect in the race itself. If you are trying to race a marathon, it is inevitable that you are going to experience a great deal of pain for much longer than is normal in other races.

I had been doing good long runs with some of the top marathon runners from NBH, and judging from my performances in workouts and races I thought it was reasonable to try and run 6.10 per mile pace from the start. My first two miles were right on target, but then I went a little faster than I should have! I went through halfway in 1:19:55, about a minute faster than I had planned for that stage.

That’s not a huge misjudgement for a marathon. But in my previous races I’d gone out in roughly 1.21.30 so I was concerned that it would all fall apart. By 16 miles it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold the pace. I knew that I had to relax and concentrate on running one mile at a time. To think that there were still more than ten miles to go would be overwhelming! At every mile mark, I tried to add 6 minutes and 10 seconds to the time on the clock, so that I had an overall time goal to be shooting for at the next mile marker.

Back in high school, my coach Ric Lamoureux had said it was important to relax in races. He tried to get me to smile as I was running by him, as smiling relaxes the muscles in your face. If your face is relaxed, then the relaxation can spread more easily to your neck, shoulders, and all the way down to your legs. So I tried to smile – although it probably looked more like a grimace of pain.

When I turned the final corner in the race, to run down the mall, I could see the time on the clock ahead and my overwhelming emotion was relief. I knew I would finish well inside the qualifying standard and I was happy that I’d soon be meeting up with my husband, friends, and runners from North Belfast to enjoy the accomplishment.

Next Steps …

Leading up to the Trials, I hope to keep running marathons. I plan on running the Dublin Marathon this autumn, and competing well there for Abbey since the Dublin Marathon is also the AAI National Marathon Championships.

I ran about 70 miles a week in preparation for the London Marathon. I know that mileage total puts me on the low end for women who will be competing in the US Trials, but that is simply the level that I’ve been able to build back up to after my seven-year hiatus and also while working a full-time job. To put it in perspective, the top women marathoners in the world routinely run more than 100 miles in a week. I read recently that Kara Goucher, one of the leading American marathoners, is four months pregnant but still running 70 miles per week!

Before my previous two marathons in 2009, I averaged 60 and 55 miles per week. 55-60 miles per week would have been my normal training load during most of my years in Providence, training for cross country and the 10,000 on the track.

I’m excited, though, because I think there’s a lot I can do in the next few years to keep improving. Apart from taking advice from experienced coaches and runners, I would also read a reasonable amount about training and I have found the letsrun.com website and books by Matt Fitzgerald especially helpful.

I think that after every training cycle you can find something in your preparation that you could have done better, whether it is drills to improve stride efficiently, using hills more strategically, or adding core stability exercises.

But what I’m most excited about is that I am able to run again. I’ll treasure every step, and every smile, on the road to Houston.

It’s not every day you see an elephant on the equivalent of the West Link!

2010-05-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

It’s not every day you see an elephant on the equivalent of the West Link!!

Well this was exactly what I did see when I traveled to Delhi with a number of NI Commonwealth Coaches to see the facilities for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in October. The information gathering trip included presentations from the organising committee on various aspects such as catering, transport and of course detail of the various competitions and a visit to the stadia.

The city is full of activity getting ready for the Games with Delhi under going a face lift for the October event. Millions of pounds have been spent on the facilities and the athletes village is starting to take shape. The athletics stadium is in the process of having a major face lift and will be an impressive venue.

It’s now 152 days to the start of the Games and the Indian authorities are certainly putting in the resources to make the event special. The Games will add to the already vibrant and busy city.

It’s also the start of the Athletics season and it won’t be long before the athletes will be posting performances hoping for selection.

The vibrant city of New Delhi, home to 14 million people, will host the Commonwealth Games in 2010. This will be the first time India has hosted the Games and only the second time the event has been held in Asia. The dates for the Games are 3 - 14 October 2010.

The Athletics Northern Ireland team for the Commonwealth Games will consist of a maximum of 10 athletes (inclusive of IPC athletes). The number finally selected will be at the discretion of the ANI selection committee and subject to approval by the Commonwealth Games Council.

Visit the NI Commonwealth Games Section

Jackie McKernan, Athletics NI High Performance Manager & Team Manager for Commonwealth Games (Athletics)

New Athletics NI Blog

2010-04-23T03:51:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the New Athletics NI Blog!
Over the coming months we will have blog about the key things happening in Athletics around the country including covering 'The Road to Delhi' as we countdown to the commonwealth Games in October in Delhi.

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