Monday, February 21, 2011

SAA Track and Field Series 2

The SAA Track Series 2 was held at ITE Simei this time and it was overwhelmed by the superb support and participation of schools. Coaches and teachers were ready to expose their athletes to the local competitions in a bid to prepare for the coming National Schools Championship in April. These competitions serves as build up races to allow specific training preparation.

It was so exciting to see athletes competing and doing Personal Best already in February. On Day 1, Haikel from ACS(I), whom previously had a PB in the 100m of 11.7s, did 11.33s with the wind of 1.8+, finishing neck to neck with 3 other athletes whom were just a mere 0.01seconds away. He did a fantastic acceleration up to the 50m and was leading till the very last 5m when all 3 sprinter stick their neck out and tried to finish the race first.



Calvin Kang finished the race first with the time of 10.70s but with the aid of the tail wind of 2.8m/s+. However, the HCI boy Tan Zong Yang did a fantastic dash and finish right behind Calvin for the second spot and Izwan passed the tape as 3rd position. Hakeem was not training well for the pass few months due to his University commitments and therefore came in last in the heat with a time of 11.14secs.



We also witnessed the 400m race on the same day. The performance from Chin Hui of Raffles Institution JC was something to note. He did a personal best of 49.70secs finishing the race infront of teammate Seow Yeong Yang. I'm very optimistic that he will do very well in the National Schools and might have the chance to qualify for the 2011 World Youth Championships.



Nikita did a timing of 61.52secs for the Women 400m. I will have to increase the intensity of her training and hope she will do well and qualify for the World University Games in August.




The overwhelming participation of the Track Series 2 delayed the events by more than an hour on Day 1, and ended about 7 to 8pm. It was tough on the athletes to gauge the warm up time, and eventually they were too tired and unable to compete properly. Day 2 was much better, the organizer managed to follow closely to the time schedule. The competition finished off with a short get-together for the SEA games qualifying athletes. A short presentation was given by Mr Kunalan, and also by the German expert Mr Gunter Lange, who shared his experiences with the athletes and coaches. Mr Gunter was here for the past 2 weeks and gave an intensive workshop for periodization and also sprints training.

I will write more about what Mr Gunter shared in the sprints and planning workshop, in my next post.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

SAA Track and Field Series 1 and POLITE Games 2011

Happy Chinese New Year to all! Wishing all a prosperous, fruitful and lots of Personal Best in this Rabbit Year!

This was a busy year to start with. The Track and Field Series earlier this month and also the POLITE games are the first 2 competitions of the year. We were all excited about competing in the first SAA Track Series, previously called the All Comers Meet. I’ve also realized that there are quite a number of athletes I now work with, namely Reactiv guys, ACSi, Republic Polytechnic and our latest inclusion of Seng Kang Secondary.

SAA Track and Field Series 1 was held on 2 days, 16th and 23rd Jan 2011 at our very familiar Bukit Gombak Stadium. For the 2 Sundays, our guys tried sprinting and competing with their spikes after a long break from the conditioning phase.

ACS(i) was having a school overseas trip on the week of the track series and therefore only a handful of athletes took part in the competition. We had quite a good conditioning phase, doing reaction drills, speed drills, acceleration drills, working on the core muscles and body weight exercises. Not forgetting the dreadful endurance sessions to work on our aerobic and the anaerobic system. Below are the results of some of the boys who participated:

Let, Jian Jie

100m - 11.93s
200m - 24.06s

Muhammad, Hasif

100m - 12.75s

Ismail, Haikal

200m - 24.06s


We were also very anxious about the POLITE Games that was just a week after the Track Series. We were training 3 times a week but most of the time, not all could make it for the training. However, I felt that competition is the best training; therefore I encouraged all of them to participate in the track series. The results are as below:


Lee, Natalie

100m - 13.63s
200m - 28.37s

Muhd, Firdaus

100m - 12.03s

Kyser Tan

100m - 12.01s(H)

Sapari, Zaki

100m - 11.50s ,
200m - 23.27s

Tiang, Alicia

100m - 14.14s
100mHurdles - 18.61s(H), 20.79s(F)

Ross, Khalis

400m - 54.82s
200m - 24.30s.


The latest training group is from SengKang Secondary School. We started early January and worked mainly on drills, basic strength and fitness. Although it was only a few sessions, I can already feel the energy and passion from these youngsters. They signed up for the competition before I took over the team, and these are the results:

Nurpriska

100m - 14.55s

Lin, Iris

100m - 14.90s

Goh, Jio Yan

100m - 15.33s

Lee, Ryan

100m - 13.98s

Liew, Rachel

100m - 15.39s

Abdul, Halim

100m - 12.72s

Siti, Nuraishah

400m - 1.12.77min

Ng, Shirlene

200m - 31.90s

Ang, Chen Shan

200m - 29.19s

Lastly, these guys who train and raced the whole of last year, did the usual preparation and raced in this track series. To my surprise and worth mentioning is Hakeem. He did a time close to his PB (10.93s). Hakeem trains 3 times a week without my supervision, due to his work and academic commitments. It seems that this works better than 5 times with my supervision! Another worth mentioning is Calvin Kang, who did the total opposite of Hakeem. Calvin did 1s off his 200m PB! His 21.68s was done during 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. And 2 months later he cruised through the 200m with a time far off his PB. Please see results of the guys below:

Melanie
100m - 13.04s
200m - 26.57s

Sharda, Nikita

200m - 26.54s

Abdul Hakeem
100m - 11.17s (H), 11.03s(F)

Amos Lim

100m - 11.88(H), 11.74s(F)
200m - 24.51s

Kyser Tan

100m - 12.01s(H)

Wong, Tsu Haw

100m - 12.37s(H)

Poon, Wayne

400m - 56.78s
200m - 26.01s

Kang, Calvin

200m - 22.68s

Photos: http://tinyurl.com/664llbr
Videos: http://tinyurl.com/67s8ylp



More updates coming up for the next few competitions!

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Alfred here signing off