Gothenburg

One of the jobs of the coach is to gradually widen the competition experience of his/hers athletes. If your only experience of athletics is the school sports you will be beaten by those who have run in club championships; likewise if your top experience of the sport is in club champs then you will be well and truly gubbed by those who have competed in District Championships - and so on. I used to take athletes on a monthly basis in summer to the BMC races at Stretford in Manchester and then during the season to Solihull, Cardiff, Watford, etc. Peter Halpin as a coach took Jolene Robert, Daniel and Lawrence to all the GB Cross Country GP races. If all you race are 10K's on the road in Scotland, then that's the standard that you have set for yourself. The three amigos raced all over the UK winning races in Ireland, Wales, England and even Scotland.

With these thoughts in mind Phil Dolan (who himself raced in America, all over Europe, in all the home countries as well as in Scotland) took a small group of runners to Gothenburg which is one of the major European Open Meetings to see how they stood up to the greater challenge. The answer is that they stood up to it very well indeed. By common consent Ryan Nelson did relatively better than the rest when he ran 4:53 for 1500 metres. Maybe the best in real terms was Johnathan Farrell who was third in his heat of the 100 metres in 11.36 and then was 11.49 in the final. Peter Bowman had a very good trip as well running 2:01.7 in the 800 metres to have probably his best ever competitive race. Cameron McLeod made the mistake of sitting out in the sun for a couple of hours before his races Nevertheless he was clocked at 45.0 seconds for the 300 metres hurdles. This is not an uncommon thing for Scotsmen - we see the sun for such a short time each year that when we see it we go crazy! I remember in the early 1990's when we thought that Kheredine Idessane and Ewan Calvert were going to pace each other to a League Record in the 1500 metres, Khere just couldn't hack iot because he had been at the Celtic game the day before, minus any head covering in the full glare of the sun; or when Alistair MacLeod sat out in the sun on the back straight of the Meadowbank Stadium and then wa so sick that he couldn't race the 200 metres - I think that Peter Halpin stood in for him. Meanwhile back in Gothenburg, Lewis Wood gai9ned valuable experience in the throws events - after throwing 7.90 metres in the shot he waited for the hammer throw which wasn't called. Actually it had been called but was outside the main stadium on the training area and he missed it. Why do we take athletes abroad? To learn, and he did. Tony Dolan had a good run in the 800 metres to be clocked at 2:31 and set himself up for this weekend at Wishaw.

The guys stayed in a hostel about 30 minutes away from the track and Coach Phil became Chef Phil who is reputed to boil up a mean pot of pasta!