Grangemouth

I was at the glorious Grangemouth Stadium today completing my Level 2 coaching award. I started it back in the autumn. Today was the final segment...endurance followed by assessment.

The morning was mostly classroom based, re enforcing the stuff we practice all the time. Risk assessments, energy systems, training plans, training sessions etc. We touched on the bizarrely delicate issue of kids training distances. This is a subject that just bemuses me. The answers seem obvious. Kids are individuals, they are all at different stages of development and fitness. Therefore surely the training they do should reflect their ability, training stage, development and fitness! NOT their age. Imagine if we all lined up for the women's 10k and they put us into age groups rather than expected finish times? It would not be pretty! Ultimately the discussion came to the usual conclusion of any sensible individual, that common sense should prevail.

Following a sandwich lunch I was first up for assessment.

The unusual thing was that the assessors were being assessed themselves. I actually felt really nervous for my assessor as I could tell she was nervous due to her assessor!

We had 15 Min's each to demonstrate our coaching skills. I decided to do a micro session! That is 5 Min's warm up including some dynamic stretches. 5 min hare and hounds session. 5 Min's warm down including static stretches.

All went well apart from 1 moment when Stevie (yes BIG Stevie was there too!) was the hare...I seriously though the two girls chasing him would never catch him (His legs were as long as the two of them put together!) ....it could have gone on for hours. Fortunately at this point the two girls decided to start cutting corners (which I encouraged) which gave them an advantage so he was finally caught in a dramatic sprint chase!

I am delighted to say I passed and was done by 1:35pm but all hope of getting home were dashed....I was needed as a sample athlete for the others doing their assessments!

There were about 20 of us and another group doing throws. There were only 3 assessors.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with warm ups d stretches, really hard sessions and warm downs and s stretches....for some reason coaches being assessed seem to think that they must show how hard they can work their athletes! Big Stevie did a pyramid session!!! Lindsay Wilson did boot camp!!

I didn't leave till 5:15 totally exhausted. Plans of a 6 mile run went out of the window in favour of bath, food, wine andbed!