The Dublin Track Club was founded in 2016 and has grown from small beginnings - we're still small but have had representation at the European Cross Country Championships, World Cross Country Championships, European Athletics Indoor Championships, European U23 Athletics Championships, World Athletics Championships in that time.
In truth it was probably more by accident than design. The first athlete I committed to coaching properly was Ronan Duggan (who has since focused on coaching successfully) and with a couple of additions we became our own MTC like the Melbourne Track Club - only we were the Misfits Track Club!
From that we grew and became more serious and added a more serious title to replicate the Melbourne Track Club and the group settled on the Dublin Track Club name. Nic Bideau, the head of Melbourne Track Club, has been a great support on a number of fronts as has his wife Sonia O'Sullivan who allowed use the DTC name - one she had copywright of.
I have long been hanging around the edges of elite level athletics. I lived in Teddington from September 2005-2006 and spent a lot of time with elite athletes who were with Ricky Simms' management company PACE. Two star names I spent time with included Usain Bolt and Mo Farah but there were countless other champions from around the globe along with those aspiring to the dream of being a full-time athlete.
Since then I've gone to a lot of MTC training camps in Europe helping out as a pacemaker, assistant coach of sorts, general dog's body and providing some entertainment to the troops along the way. I've also trained and helped out in some capacity with Ireland's best such as Fionnuala McCormack, Derval O'Rourke and Mark English.
David Campbell and Paul Robinson are also close friends whom I've watched and helped operating under the MTC banner - Robinson was also coached by Robert Denmead for many years and Robert is a coach mentor to me.
It inspired a dream of what could the Irish do if we could develop some kind of MTC set-up. Irish athletes generally train as individuals but a focused group could maybe replicate some of the MTC success and bring back some of the high standards that Irish athletics has been accustomed to down through the years.
Many have travelled the American scholarship route to great success and still do. But a proper group aimed at being professional has never been done in Ireland. It still hasn't! We have no funding or support but we work on developing an elite and full-time mindset.
We have a lot of work to do but we're working hard. Sometimes it's easy to hide and hope someone will support you and focus on getting better results. We are focusing on that because our results on an international level are still in a brutal truth - mediocre at best.
But how do we get better? There's no getting away from the fact that time and money are critical. Money buys you time and time gets you money. Essentials are room, board and travel money. The rest is a bonus.
This should all be results based but we also live in a world where you must sell and adopt the Ted Turner line: early to bed, early to rise and don't forget, advertise, advertise, advertise.
So this is the first blog and in effect the first advertisement on the site - we do have social media.
I hope to post more on training, race updates and observations along with any suggestions or questions people may have.
Our training is relatively simple based on Nic Bideau's training which can be traced back to the likes of Arthur Lydiard and more recently Alan Storey. Nic Bideau is more than just a schedule writer and has been a great inspiration and provides motivation just by being his own inimitable self.
The main sessions are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday - Tuesday being intervals totalling 8km volume generally at 8-10km pace, AT or threshold on Thursday totalling 6 miles give or take, and Saturday being hills sessions. Sunday is the long run and the rest some drills on a Monday and running all the other days. Friday is easy or rest.
So that's the first post. Nicely, Feidhlim
