After getting up at 6a.m. Saturday on the August bank holiday weekend, I got dressed into my tracksuit and did a quick check through my bag to ensure I had everything I needed for the day ahead. I am on the road by 6.30am to make the 291km journey from home to Tralee Harriers Athletic Club in Co. Kerry where I will be attending the practical day of the Athletics Ireland Assistant Coach certificate course. It should be noted that the theory element of the course was delivered via a live Zoom class on Friday evening.
The journey down was relatively comfortable, taking a total of three hours and eight minutes timed on my Garmin stopwatch. This included two quick pitstops – the first to stop for diesel and a coffee and the second for another coffee as I got closer. With motorway for the majority of the distance and very little traffic it was quite handy and was made all the more better having a car with back massage functionality built into the front seats with four different settings.
Having now arrived in Tralee an hour and a half early I park the car outside the tourist center at the Tralee Town Park. A quick Google search and short five minute stroll later and I’ve gotten my third coffee from a lovely little artisan coffee shop that just for the coffee I would rate 5/5. I regret not trying one of the freshly made pastries or cakes which were on display. Americano in hand I make my way into the park for a walk to loosen my legs and I am met with plenty of locals out for a run. It turns out this park is a popular running spot and per-pandemic it plays host to the weekly VHI Parkrun. The park has a beautiful rose garden area to rival the centre of St. Stephen’s Green park in Dublin, and is adorned with statues paying tribute to the Rose of Tralee festival.
I now make my way around in the car to the opposite side of the park into the grounds of Tralee Harriers Athletics Club where I am first to arrive and have a great chat with Pat who is delivering the course. Quite quickly the rest of the participants arrive and we are all ready to get going. We begin with a quick round of introductions – name, club, discipline and why we are doing the course. Straight away Pat is throwing us into the deep end as one by one we are to take the group through a different warm-up session using the IDEA method from the theory we learned the night before. While daunting at first, we all quickly begin to engage with each other and have fun with the exercise and by the end we were certainly all warmed up and ready for whatever Pat throws at us next; or so we thought!
Next up we are breaking down the steps of the Triple Jump – hop, step and jump. As it is explained to us and demonstrated both in full flow and slowed down step by step, it is our turn to give it a go. I go second but being totally alien to the Triple Jump and with seriously overthinking it all I make the hop but while mid-aid I lose all focus and have no idea what I actually did next as Pat and the group erupt into laughter. All I could do was own it and laugh at myself. All in all there were five of us that couldn’t master this one.
Moving on to hurdles we are shown the correct technique for approaching the hurdles along with some exercises to introduce into our own coaching sessions as the majority are involved with coaching the juveniles at our respective clubs. Unfortunately as I, along with the rest of the group are no longer as flexible as we once were in our youth this proved quite difficult even at a height suitable for young kids. It was lots of fun though, with one exercise proving extremely difficult whereby you place your hands on the hurdle at the edges and have to step through your arms without moving your hands off the hurdle, all the while keeping your feet in a forward facing direction. Even if I or the kids I coach never specialise in the Hurdles events, the benefits of utilising hurdles in training are clear to see.
Sprints are up next and the first thing to know is how to correctly set up the blocks specific to the individual. What’s interesting is the set up, it gives you the correct position for a kneeling start without the starting blocks and if the starting blocks are needed
Following the sprints it was time for a go at the Long Jump which started off with an exercise to get us jumping and lengthening our stride. This consisted of running straight through a line of cones bunched closely together and placing alternating feet in between. So as I’m running in a straight line towards the cones my right foot was landing between the first cones with my left foot landing between the next set and so on. This exercise got more difficult as with each attempt the cones were moved further apart so that we essentially had to hop in order to clear them without touching the cones. This takes us to the long jump itself with another fun exercise jumping from one end of the sand pit to the other counting the number of jumps it took. On two attempts I made five jumps, missing out on four jumps the second attempt by just a couple of centimeters. The trick to this was that we had to jump forward as far as we could from a stationary position. We then had a number of demonstrations in getting set up and the technique etc. before attempting the long jump itself. If I wasn’t so old now I feel this is actually an event I could have been half decent at.
Our last event of the day was the Shot Put. This is one I was never really a huge fan of but I was eager to learn the technique and skill behind it. After having the Shot Put area shown to us and the rules etc. explained, as we as being shown the technique without any apparatus and practicing the movements it was time to step up and have a go. It took me a few attempts to “almost” get it spot on in terms of the correct movement and technique; saying that I did manage the furthest distance although invalidated by the slightly incorrect movement toward the end of my technique.
2:30 P.M. now and it’s time to bring to an end a fun-filled day of exercise and learning new events and drills to incorporate into my own coaching sessions with the kids that make up the Junior Cru of Crusaders Athletic Club. By now I am actually worn out and ready to just sit down and relax. We are given a very comprehensive and well put together Coaching Manual published by the International Association of Athletics Federations aka World Athletics. I change my shoes and leave the group to make the long journey back to Dublin stopping off in Limerick for some lunch, passing miles long traffic jams in the opposite direction of holiday-goers looking to get away for a staycation on the long weekend. After a couple of more stops and a stroll around Kildare Village I arrive home around 9 P.M. fit for my bed but looking forward to putting into practice my newly learned skills.
runnerbeancoffee.wordpress.com 