Tom Worboys at Lea Valley
Here is Tom's account of a training day at Lea Valley Indoor Athletics Centre...
On Saturday 7th December, David Brown and myself went to the Lea Valley Indoor Athletics Centre, one of only 6 indoor arenas in the country. For those of you who don't know where it is (I didn't either!) it is near Tottenham in London. We were attending a London and East of England coaching conference. Here coaches and athletes went to 3 different workshops, each designed to teach you new skills for athletics - ranging from training to things off the track like eating disorders and injury prevention.
We had to choose 3 workshops during the day. We chose a talk on 400 metre training lead by Mike Smith -current coach to Ewan Thomas. As a 400 metre runner myself this made me realise that perhaps there are other and better ways to doing things other than mine! In the second workshop we chose mentoring, a session lead by David Hemery - British Olympic 400m hurdles champion in 1968. This session really helped me as an athlete as it taught me to focus on one thing at a time, I was volunteered to play a game with David to show different aspects of what can and cannot be done, rather than trying to do everything at once.
Hemery also told us about his own experiences and the one that stood out for me the most was a training session he did with his coach whilst in America. It basically consisted of 6 x 400 metres at 52 seconds with a ten minute rest in between.(52 seconds is quicker than my PB, so hopefully Mr Brown has forgotten about this before Tuesday!) But after the 4th and 5th run he felt that he couldn't go on any further, but his coach said just take the first step, and eventually he did, and in an equally impressive time.
For our last workshop David and I split up, I went back to Mike Smith to do talk about sprinting (not sure why but I was volunteered again!? to do some drills) and David went to a 400 metre hurdles talk with Graham Knight - coach to Kelly Sotherton.
Finally we had a keynote speech from Lloyd Cowan - he coaches Christine Ohuruogu, Andy Turner and Biggleswade's Alice Middleton whilst she is at University in London. Since this Lloyd has become coach of the year.
Monday Night Training...
... at Biggleswade's Recreation Centre - circuit and conditioning for Senior athletes, Sportshall for juniors - 6:00pm till 7:00pm, still at £1.00 a session
(and there's a Sportshall Challenge on Sun 16th March)
Representing the County
At the Bedfordshire County AGM Andy Sadler and Natalie Darlow were honoured for their representation of Bedfordshire. A number of our members have represented the county this year:
SEAA Intercounties at Kingston Upon Thames
