Many of the county's leading young athletes have been taking part in the Sussex Winter Endurance and Track and Field Squads 2014/15.
Since October the Endurance Squad led by Alan Swetman, John Clements and Dave Leach, has run three sessions for the 84 athletes who joined the squad this year. Fifty to sixty athletes have attended each session. The programme started with a beach & sand dune session at Camber Sands which included 90 minutes of running reps on the sand before the group adjourned to a sports hall in Hastings where athletes were put through their paces with a 40-minute circuit training session. Whilst it ended with a lot of tired bodies the general feedback was that this had been a very successful and enjoyable session. Many thanks to the Hastings Club for organising the day.
October 12th was the first of two days of this year’s programme to be held at St.Mary’s University in Twickenham, now a favoured university for endurance athletes. A tempo grass running session and an ‘Oregon’ circuit were sandwiched between two lecture sessions where UK internationals Charlie Grice and Johnny Davies gave valuable insights into their own athletics careers to date and tips for up and coming runners.
In a year of mainly good weather we enjoyed the craziest of autumn sunshine at Goodwood in November for the last of the Autumn meets. The Hampshire league XC at the same venue the day before had been a complete washout. After some drill bases the mainstay of the day was hill reps over a variety of distances and we finished with a team relays over a 300m course. The day finished with what was clearly the highlight of the programme for many athletes when the squad t shirts were handed out!
The Endurance Squad now takes a break in the programme as Cross Country competition will dominate the calendar for the next few months but will be back in March and April for further sessions which will focus on the track season. The energy, enthusiasm and hard work of all the athletes has been really noteworthy this year and everyone looks forward to seeing some inspired performances in the coming months. With many thanks to everyone involved with the programme this year – see you all in March.
(Alan Swetman)
The first of the Sussex Network Winter Track and Field Squad days took place at Broadbridge Heath, Horsham on Sunday 2nd November. Around 50 of the top under 13 and under 15 athletes arrived, collected their Squad shirts and went into the session. They were taken through a warm-up routine by coaches Dave Ingram and Patrick Apantaku and were then tested on short sprints, agility, standing long jump and medicine ball throw. In the meantime, parents attended a talk on Nutrition presented by Adam Lewis. This was a general introduction, which concluded with questions from the floor and a handout.
After the tests, the athletes were divided into three groups and taken through some core/strength exercises without equipment and then with medicine balls. The session finished at 1pm with handouts listing the core exercises on which to focus.
Feedback was positive and the session was enjoyed by parents and athletes alike. However, very few coaches attended so it would be good to see a few more in future. The next Track & Field sessions will take place on:-
Sunday 7th December (Horsham) – introduction to drills (led by long jump coach, John Shepherd) plus Q&A session with 2014 Commonwealth, medal-winning discus thrower - Jade Lally.
Saturday 28th February (Horsham) – U15’s (those 14 or over) - Leadership in Athletics Course, younger athletes – multi-events
Sunday 22nd March (Lewes) – event specific coaching.
Any queries about track and field please contact Fiona Newport on fiona.home@uwclub.net. For the Endurance squad email Alan Swetman on alan.swetman@gmail.com