An Interesting Weekend

It has been an interesting weekend which included the International Coaching Conference at the Marriott Hotel and a trip out to the Allan Scally Relays at Shettleston. Relays first. There were unfortunately only three runners from the club in a race where we used to have four or five teams. It's not just us - the field was dreadfully small and looked like the smallest in the race history. Part of the reason is the absence of the Edinburgh to Glasgow: some clubs selected their teams on the running in the Scally, in other clubs those already selected wanted a hardish run over a distance approximating to their stage of the E-G. When the E-G went, these reasons went and a lot of the runners went as well! In addition there was a new trail this year so the possibility of comparing times with those of yesteryear was gone. Nevertheless it is a good well organised race over longer stages than any relay currently on the calendar and it was disappointing not to have a full team out. The guys all seemed to enjoy it - Gerry was running the Scally for the first time and he liked the loop course with its long downhill at the start and the long uphill to the finish. Peter ran second and Bobby ran third. It was a good day and the official times should be up soon.

At the Marriott there were 450 paying customers to participate in the ICAF Conference and about one third of them were Scottish. The opening remarks were by Frank Dick who is always good value for money and Sergey Bubka who was much better than I had anticipated - very good English and a tight script that he delivered well and which fitted his time slot perfectly. This was the man who had vaulted over 6 metres 42 times in 40 competitions - last year the number of clearances in total was under 10! It was well received by everybody whatever their event. Then it was off to event groups - there was a group for every event on the calendar each led by an acknowledged expert. I went to the Elite Middle Distance Group up on the thirteenth floor led by Wilson Kipketer - I'll tell a wee story about him in my next post! He spoke and took questions for an hour and a half which went by very quickly. He was the man who ran 1:41 four times in 1997 as well as several 1:42's and took Coe's record from him. On the Saturday morning, Frank Dick again did his bit - and a very good bit it was too - and then Wilson Kipketer addressed the assembled multitude followed by Seb Coe (present and past world 800 metres record holders) then they were part of a double act interviewed by Frank. That one went down a storm but I'm going on a bit and I'll come back to it later in the week. It was well worth attending and I can recommend it next year when it returns to Scotland.