Weekly Updates Tuesday 28th April

Stick together, keep talking, keep in touch, just pick up the phone and give your team mates, former team mate or coaches a call, make sure everyone’s all right and keep looking after each other!

Competitions & Challenges:

For our endurance runners several virtual races have now been added here to the annual fixtures page for very late April and all of May. Click the link and scroll down the page to enter, you will require Strava or Garmin to participate in many of these virtual challenges.

For our juniors, we will be evolving the Run Jump Throw triathlon into a Home Heptathlon with the additional four events of Speed Bounce, Vertical Jump, Standing Triple Jump and Chest Push, being added to standing long jump, 10 x 10m shuttle run and toilet paper shot put. For any members that did not take participate last time and wish to also include the initial three events of Standing Long Jump, Toilet Paper Shot Put and 10 x 10m shuttle run that is fine. You can print the score sheet, instructions and rules here Home Heptathlon Lockdown Challenge.doc. Please return results no later than 8pm Tuesday 5th May. Please send us images of you in club kit and in action to @SwanHarrierDev for those of you on twitter.

For any members with even younger children, brothers and sisters why not register and try some of the fun athletics challenges and activities on https://www.startingblocs.co.uk/

Fundraising:

Well done to all our members who have been raising money for charity during lockdown, especially in the London Marathon 2.6 challenges. Don’t forget Swansea Harriers is a charity too (registered charity number 1177846)

To help raise much needed funds for the club, before you buy anything online please consider login in here https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/shac/ and register for Swansea Harriers. At no extra cost to you a percentage of your item will go to the club and there are thousands of retailers to choose from, 100% of the income raised goes back into the club.

Club Athletics In Sweden:

With no competitions and results to report on, for something different Matt Kinane one of our long serving members who now lives and works in Sweden, has very kindly agreed to write an article of what being a member of an athletics club is like in Sweden for us. Our thanks to Matt for this, it certainly does make an interesting read. Matt and his daughter Hannah both still make the very long journey back home to compete for us a few times a year too! Here you are… Swedenathletics.pdf

Coaching Ideas & Resources:

You’ve heard it all before but please do keep checking these fantastic resources for all event groups once a week as new content is being added all the time:

1. For our UK Athletics qualified coaches the previous U Coach website key content is being transferred to Athletics Hub. The new modernised website will provide additional new content whether it be in videos or downloadable readable resources across all event disciplines. It will be more user friendly and easier to navigate to find the information you want. For more detail and how to login click here.

2. With new videos being uploaded each week, the Welsh Athletics You Tube Channel has plenty of clips on physical preparation challenges and tests for athletes, most of which you can do at home.

3. England Athletics have a regular programme of online coaching webinars, focusing on a range of event specific themes that are free to register. The latest webinars on offer are featured on the following link, keep checking back as details of more webinars will be added over the coming days. Click here to see the full menu.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWwcNH-OVpE Athletics 365 resources for parents and athletes. There is free access to the Athletics 365 XL bundle for the next 12 months (until 31 March 2021). This Coaches’ bundle can be found within the Athletics 365 App. In addition to being suitable for Coaches and Run Leaders, this offer is available for parents with children over 11 years old and who hold a licensed Leader in Running Fitness or Coaching Assistant, or higher qualification, with a current DBS.