Stragglers Juniors Christmas Training Session
Posted by on 6 January 2017
The Stragglers Juniors Christmas training session is always a lot of fun, and the recent one was particularly successful. It was held in perfect weather in Bushy Park on the morning of 29th December, with the session objective being to “how to run a parkrun PB”.
We were very fortunate to joined by the person who knows more about parkrun than anyone else – founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt CBE. We ran as a group taking breaks along the way to focus on how to tackle each section of the course, with Paul delivering super coaching points to the young athletes. The session was concluded with the ever-popular team relays before returning to the Pheasantry for some well-deserved refreshments.
Running a fast parkrun time in the early months of the year has added significance for juniors since it also serves as the qualification criteria to gain a place in the London Mini-Marathon (which is run over the final 3 miles of the course in advance of the main race). There are only 6 places available per age-category for each borough, and so these are very keenly contested with the standard becoming increasingly higher each year. Stragglers manage the Kingston borough team under the leadership of Phil Davies, and I’m certain that the session we held in Bushy Park with Paul will have boosted the young Stragglers chances of making the team.
Jim Desmond
