Nanyang Polytechnic Invitation Race - 16th March 2011

It was a great turn out for the first ever invitation race organized by Nanyang Polytechnic to secondary schools to encourage participation of the B division athletes. There were 15 secondary schools in total whom registered for the event. Out of the 15 schools, I was in-charge of 2 schools - ACSi and SengKang Sec Sprints team. We took part in most sprints events and managed to get medals for the short sprints.

Haikel won the 100m with the time of 11.36s - 0.3s off his PB, which he clocked one month ago. Shawn came in 2nd following very closely behind Haikel with the time of 11.58s. This is also a PB by Shawn who started training with the team for about 2 months and managed to clock a PB 0.2s faster than his previous time. Catholic high sprinter settled for the 3rd place, 0.01s behind Shawn.

Chen Shan from Sengkang sec came in 1st for the 100m finals with the time of 13.7s. She had a lead of 5m to the 2nd runner and managed to run close to her PB. However, the senior athletes had not been training consistently due to the busy schedule of academic work they have to handle in school. The following are the pictures of athletes, who took part in the event.

Doris from SengKang Sec came in 2nd in the 1500m.


Aisha came in 2nd for the 400m, SengKang Sec.

Clyde Tan ran a good race and managed to fight till the end, to settle for a 3rd position. He was initially showed resistance to change to a proposed race plan that I've been trying to explain for the past few months. He did quite a bad time during the heats with his old race plan. However he came in 1s faster in the finals after using the race plan I've been coaching since months. His willingness to try new race tactic in the finals pleased me, especially during a training competition like this.


TEAM ACSi


Team Sky Track (SengKang Sec)

The Swift meet will be the next competition - SengKang Sec will not be taking part. Shawn Poh will be representing Singapore in the WALA competition in Perth. The next big competition will be the Nationals School, which is what everyone has been training for.

All thanks to organizers, coaches and teacher in charge, who made this event a success. NYP provided free T-shirts for all participants! I feel that this invitation races should be more often, and other schools should start to initiate invitation races to encourage more participants.

Till then..

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Monitoring (internal load) of Aerobic Training (extensive interval)

We planned a lactate monitoring session on the 3rd March, 3rd microcycle of the phase. Gunter Lange advised us to work at 110% load of the maximum aerobic effort (30mins). To work at this range, the lactate measurement should be at 4-8mmol window. In order to identify that, we engaged Physiquezone to help us to do the testing. It was held at SJI and 9 of our athletes took the test. It was mainly athletes from Mr Melvin Tan's training group and our Reactiv athletes. We found quite a few interesting readings and the test results were sent to Gunter for simple analysis.

The Objective is to find the targeted time for the given distance workload and this is to facilitate the planning of the extensive intervals.

Ding Yifei from Physiquezone collecting data.


Jensen taking blood sample from Lance Tan who took part in the testing.

We were glad to have Yifei and Jensen to assist us in the testing. We will have testings like these to monitor our training loads and the next one should be done most probably in the next phase.

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37th National Junior 2011: 5-6 Mar, Bishan Stadium

The weather was not forgiving at all. Under the scorching hot sun were the athletes who qualified for the 37th National Junior 2011. Most prefered to warm up indoors at Bishan Stadium because of the heat. The 2 day event drained the coaches, teachers, officials and the athletes. Competing under such high temperature, hydration was the number one issue to tackle. However, nearing the end of the event on Day 1, the meet was stopped abruptly by the lightning warning.



The schools are using these competitions to get their athletes ready for the coming National School Championships. From the results of the sprints, it is clear cut who are the performing schools. I'm not surprised by the competitive results, and in fact waiting for more impressive PB from the athletes. The Sports School athletes are sweeping most of the sprints events in all categories, boys and girls.

There were a few ACSi sprinters selected for the competition. Chern Hwee represented in the women 100m hurdles U20, came in 3rd with the time of 18.89s. Jonathan Wong came in 1st with a PB of 2.05.24 in the 800m U18 boys. Ariff in the same race but different fate, came in 2nd last with the time of 2.17.54. Ariff competed in the school sports day the day before and therefore the inconsistency of race result.


Haikel 2nd from the left

Haikel suffered from a headache and only managed to run 11.54s for the heats and 11.55s in the finals. Brian Foong ran the 400m U15 and managed to do a PB of 60.94s, but not good enough to squeeze into the finals. In the boy U18 400m race, Jonathan Wong did a 55.05s in the heats and 54.33s in the finals. And Jianjie ran the U20 400m with a time of 52.45s in the heats and 52.30s in the finals, fighting through the race to dip for the 3rd position, behind Zaki and Chin Hui - 2nd and 1st respectively.


Men U20 400m

The bulk of the participants were from secondary schools and JC, only 2 polytechnics took part, Singapore Poly and Republic poly. Zaki from Republic poly came in 1st in the 400m Hurdles with the time of 55.76s, giving a big lead to the 2nd man following behind him with the time of 63.00s

The next big thing coming up is the SPH relays. I will do my selection for the boys and girls to decide on the 6 runners for SPH.

For results and information,
Please visit : http://www.singaporeathletics.org.sg/37th-singapore-junior-athletic-championships-2011
For Photos :
Day 1
Day 2
For Videos :
Stay Tuned

Pictures and Videos courtesy of Singapore Athletic Association

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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.

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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, 16^th and 23^rd 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!

Stay tuned and like our Facebook page!

Alfred here signing off

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