Institute Varsity Polytechnic (IVP) Games Day 1

The Inter-Varsity Polytechnic (IVP) Track and Field Championships are currently being held over two weekends, with the various local universities, polytechnics and ITEs coming together to compete in this highly competitive meet. IVP 2010 is being organized this year by Nanyang Technological University and certain events were held yesterday at the Bukit Gombak Stadium.

We saw a few Personal Best (PB) and Season Best (SB) performances from Coach Alfred Sim-trained Republic Polytechnic as well as competitors from the Reactiv training group.

Personal Best and Season Best

1. Nikita ran 2 PBs yesterday with one coming in the 800m finals where she came in 2nd behind Lossini of Singapore Polytechnic, and another in the 400m where she established new PBs in the heats and finals, on her way to winning the 400m event.

(Coach Alfred: Nikita started proper sprint training with me during the 4th quarter of last year and improved on her speed after a year of training. She has shown much improvement in her running form. After a few competitions, she started to get the 400m race tempo, and eventually did her PBs at IVP. With the strong endurance base developed by her previous coaches, Mr Low Cham Pew and Mr Lim Kien Mau, it was not difficult for me to bring her to the next level.)

800m - 2mins 32.72secs (PB)
400 heats - 60.68secs (PB)
400 finals - 60.26secs (PB)

2. Melanie ran her first 400m race this season.

(Coach Alfred: Mel was not familiar with the race tempo and messed up her race during the heats, going too fast in her first 200m and eventually dying out due to the early onset of lactic acid accumulation in her race. It was after the 2 hour break where she realized her mistakes and did a SB to justify her painful lesson learnt.)

400 heats - 64.71secs
400 finals - 62.87secs (SB)

3. Firdaus As a captain of RP track team, he managed to run a PB, at the same time clocking below 12s. He is also in the RP 4x100m relay team, where he runs the 2nd leg. RP is now in the finals of the 4x100m to be run this coming Saturday.

100m heats - 11.97secs (PB)

4. Natalie Lee from Republic Polytechnic, who trains with Sprint Dynamic Sports Consultancy (SDSC), came in 3rd in the 100m finals.

(Coach Alfred: She managed to run a Personal Best in the heats. She is strong in her push and gave Balpreet from NTU a run for her money. What she is lacking though is stride frequency)

100m heats - 13.26secs (PB)
100m finals - 13.35secs

5. Shireen, Alicia, Kyser, Khalis and Zaki from Republic Polytechnic ran in the other individual events for RP.

(Coach Alfred: It was after a long break where Khalis and Kyser started theiur training proper just a few weeks before the competition. Someone who amazed me was Alicia, who only did 2 hurdle training sessions and 4 training days in total, and yet managed to run her way into the 100m Hurdles finals. Unfortunately, she didn't manage to finish the race after tripping over the first hurdle. On another note, Shireen, who was part of our Asian Youth Games contingent last year, unsurprisingly came in first for her pet event as she out-jumped the 2nd place jumper by more than a meter! )

Shireen 1st for Triple Jump (trains with Dr Valeri Obidko)
Khalis came in 4th in the 400m finals with a time of 54.00secs (trains with SDSC)
Zaki came in 2nd in the 400m with a time of 51.04secs (trains with SDSC)
Alicia Tiang heats - 20.22secs. Tripped on the first hurdle and did not finish the finals.
Kyser ran a time of 12.19secs in the heats.
4x100m Boys (Kyser, Firdaus, Marcus and Zaki) qualified for the Finals



Day 2 of the IVP Meet will be held on the 30th of Oct. We hope to see more PBs and SBs on that day. Hakeem and Melanie, both from NUS, will be running in the 200m and 4x100m finals.


Credits:
Written by Shalindran and Alfred
Edited by Hakeem
Photos courtesy of Singapore Athletic Association Facebook

Read More

Wings Track & Field Meet 2010

Wings Athletics Club organised the Wings Meet for the local athletes after 1 week of break from the Singapore Open. It meet was held at ITE Simei where the events waere delayed due to the pouring rain and the logistic problems. They couldn't find a starter gun in time for the races thus causing delays to about an hour or so.

However, there were still PB times made in this Wings Meet.

1. Calvin Kang

100m - 10.94sec
Mens 100m Heat 6


Mens 4x400m relay




2. Shalindran

100m - 11.27sec (Season Best)
200m - 22.29sec (Personal Best)



Men 100m Heat 2



Men 200m Heat 4



3. Hakeem

100m - 11.34s - (Season Best)
200m - 22.49s - (Season Best)


Men 100m Heat 6



Men 200m Heat 4




4. Prayaank

100m - 11.72secs

Men 100m Heat 3



5. Shahrul

100m - 12.02secs (Season Best)
Men 100m Heat 4





6. Melanie

100m - 12.98secs
200m - 26.63secs


Women 100m




Women 200m




7. Nikita

200m - 27.78secs
800m - 2mins 39secs


Women 800m



Women 200m

The Wings meet created another platform for more local athletes to compete. The meet was not perfectly organised, but at least we managed to have fun and had friendly competition between athletes. We hope that there will be more of these races in a year to help athletes prepare for their competitions, e.g. IVP, National Schools, Major games like Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, SEA Juniors and even SEA Games.

We have many clubs in Singapore, However, the active ones that have been organizing competitions for the past 5 years are Swift and Wings. I believe the future of Singapore Athletics will be club based and subsequently create the friendly competition within clubs in Singapore. More clubs, more athletes, more chances to represent and compete and thus this will hopefully increase the participation of Athletics in Singapore.

Read More

Singapore Open 2010

The Singapore Open 2010 was held on the 18th and 19th of Sept and it attracted many foreign and local athletes to Singapore. We saw countries like Japan, Sri Lanka, Chinese Taipei and Thailand to name a few.

Locally, the Singapore men's 4x100m relay team used this meet as their preparation race and tried to emulate the SEA GAMES medal placing run which they did last year. There was however a shuffle in the team as Lee Cheng Wei had to sit out due to a hamstring injury. Calvin Kang was picked to replace him and anchored the race.

Despite coming in 2nd with a timing of 40.71s, the team was still in high spirits and took the opportunity to learn from their mistakes which was evident in the race. We hope they will get their work together before they leave for New Delhi 2 weeks from now.

It has been a tough season for most of the athletes, facing major events like the YOG. This is indirectly affecting our athletes, where it is a nation wide participation and training was slightly disrupted. Having not competed for a long time, our Reactiv athletes were eager to race at the Singapore Open.

Coach Alfred Sim with his athletes.

1. Calvin Kang - 100m - settled for 11th

Needless to say, Calvin's 100m performance was a disaster! His poor execution in his acceleration phase caused him his race. It could be due to his hamstring injury that he caused him to hold back during his race. He had a minor strain on the hamstring when he went to Vietnam Open, Hanoi. However, he did a good anchor for the relay. I hand timed him a fly-in 120m at 11.9s.

Calvin in his 100m heats. finished with a timing of 11.06



2. Shalindran - 400m - 3rd in the finals

Shalindran just recovered from a poplitious tendon injury which started since last Nov. He was still racing till March and was then told to completely rest. After some extensive rehab, he started training again in July. I was shocked when he ran his heats at 52s! Luckily he managed to get back his race momentum the next day in the finals and clocked an early 50s.

Shalindran did his Season Best with a timing of 50.20secs



3. Hakeem - 200m - 3rd in the finals

Hakeem switched from 110m hurdles to 200m. This is his first official race after his switch and a short training of 2 months after this return from the USA, Texas. We were working a lot on his running posture, as he was 'sitting' a little during his run when he just returned. I think 22.55s is a reasonable time for someone who just switched events. These races can be a good build-up for him for his University competition.





4. Melanie - 200m - 5th in the finals

We did a few adjustment this year for Melanie. Her problem is always the acceleration phase. We up the weights, worked on acceleration techniques, breathing techniques and increased her fitness level by increasing the intensity and volume of the endurance workouts. But seems like she can't transfer what we've done into the races. Application is one of the toughest things to do, knowing what to do and executing it, is different!

Melanie did a timing of 27.10secs which was far from her PB of 25.91secs.



5. Nikita - 400m - 4th in the finals

Nikita did a reasonably good timing (61.9s)despite her change in event - from 800m to 400m. I saw that she has the potential to do sprints, her running mechanics and her cadence in her strides convinced me that she can do well in her 400m. Her strong aerobics based training previously with Coach KianMao from RP, made her endurance training easy to handle. We now have to work on the race plan for the 400m.

Let's hope these athletes will do a better time this coming Wings Meet, and to prepare for their big games - Commonwealth Games and IVP for the University Students.

The Singapore Open also invited athletes from SDSC to participate in our event. 100m and 200m wheelchair/non-wheelchair. It is really interesting to watch these athletes compete, especially for our local junior athletes, hope that they will be motivated and train seriously to raise the standard of athletics in Singapore.

100m non-wheelchaired athletes

I personally feel that SDSC should be working closely with SAA and organise their competition with SAA. There should not be a separate meet, as we are all categorized under Athletics. In United Kingdom Athletics (UKA), I had a chance to speak to the head coach for the Paralympic Team - Coach Peter Eriksson, he said that athletics events are all grouped together, Olympics and Paralympics athletes. Therefore I think that this is a good start to let both association and council to work closely together.

Read More

The Sprint King 2010

The Sprint King program, the brainchild of the Portuguese Athletics Federation, was created in a bid to attract the youth in Portugal to athletics. In order to fight the popularity of football in their country, the program gave athletics coaches and managers the opportunity to identify talented youths in Portugal and subsequently allowed the different channels to assist them in their sporting careers.


Taking a page out of the Portuguese’s playbook, Reactiv decided to scale down the event to the school level. One of the first ever Sprint King events in Singapore was held in Anglo-Chinese School Independent (ACS(I)) to help in their recruiting of students from their affiliated schools. It was a 2 hours session with 18 students from Anglo-Chinese School (Junior) and Anglo-Chinese School (Primary) participating.
The students were grouped into 3 heats and were subsequently ranked based on their best times in the 60m, to compete in the second race. A training workshop was conducted before the race, where simple running drills and proper starting position were taught to the students.


After the 3 finals heats, the 8 fastest sprinters were selected, with the winners being awarded a Reactiv training tee.

The Sprint King

We would first like to thank the teachers of the 3 schools involved, and also the parents of the students, without whom the event would not have been a success. Thanks also go out to the ACS(I) teachers who helped in the logistical and the administrative part of the event; Mr Lawrence Ang, Mr George Lam, Mr Wong Ting Ee and Mdm Kelly Chan. And not forgetting the student helpers from the ACS(I) track team. As a token of our appreciation, everyone involved received a free sample of our Reactiv training apparel line.


For more pictures: CLICK HERE

Read More

Training At CCAB 23/08/2010

The Training Group at Reactiv have been putting in their fullest efforts to prepare for Singapore Open which will take place on the 18th and 19th of Sept. Yesterday's training had to be indoors due to the pouring rain. We focused on drills alot and once the rain subsided, we did a few runs before calling it a day. They worked on their running technique by breaking it down into drills such as butt kicks, A skip, B skip and single leg step overs just to name a few.


Picture: Hakeem, Nikita, Calvin and Shalindran seen here doing high knee.


The group will be training at CCAB on Wednesday late afternoon again. Hope to see you there.

Read More