Coach to coach a-j I really hope all goes well for you and your squad in 2012.
I think there are four very good young men in the 400m development group whose coaches I mentor.
I would realistically rate three of these guys as London Olympic selection long-shots and I do not discount the fourth guy although he is lacking in the finesse displayed by the others, yet he has a tremendous fighting spirit and is as fit as a mallee bull.
We have recently emerged from the Transition phase and everyone has had at least two or three races, albeit some of those were club relay contests over 100m.
Others have raced over 200m once or twice from the blocks and three guys have raced from blocks over 400 at least once to date.
The early results are exciting with 200m PB times or secondary PBs first up this new season Down Under. We have taken the opportunity presented by the Xmas and New Year suspension of interclub meets to go back into a micro base (two hill sessions in 10 days although I would have preferred three, a bunch of 6x200m sessions and other more voluminous sessions).
Very soon we will go into a very brief TRansition II micro phase to pre-empt a return to racing. We have a very compressed domestic season because the Olympic selection trials will run from March 1-3 in Melbourne.
There will be subsequent opportunities to reach qualifying marks, but performing well at the Trials is the imperative: Perform there or Perish. That is as it should be, although when working with new talent who are still either in their first, second or third domestic season racing 400m there are still going to be rookie mistakes made on and off the track.
So with that being my reality, I am glad there are national championships a few weeks later as a backup if required.
Being rookies there is also the question of getting their individual tapers right and that usually takes a few trials. Well, we won’t have that luxury with a couple of these guys this Oz summer.
But I am really pleased to report that all four of the guys I think have international potential (at least for the 4x400m relay) clocked personal best times two days ago on the long hill we use, even in spite of the fact they had to watch their step on the sodden grass where some trucks had indented tracks across our traditional pathway.
The hill which took some of these guys almost a minute to run a couple of winters ago is now being dismissed in under 42sec by two of the guys - one of whom logged it in 40.4sec this week. This was clocked by Matt Lynch and if he ever gets it together in a race on the track will open a lot of eyes.
He ran 46.6 on debut three summers ago and hasn’t looked like running that fast since, although he has wintered well in 2011 and may race his first 400m of the new season on 7 January 2012 at Blacktown stadium. Matt is one of those guys who just thinks too much. The issue for him is to think about the process and if he can keep that focus, he’ll do very well.
There is so much more to being a winner than being physically gifted.