“In the mid-1980s, I started cross-country training at Tullamore Harriers but soon realised I wasn’t able for the long runs and constant laps.  I was suspended after the coach caught my friend and me hiding in the hedge every second lap. I wanted to prove him wrong, so I started training myself, running laps of the grass track!  One evening I was noticed by some senior rugby club members who also used to do athletics for the summer. They put me into a 100m race which I won, realising that shorter distances suited me better.

I used to take part in community games every year. It was a great competition and a fantastic promotion of the sport by Gerry Cronin. Paddy Larkin of Tullamore Harriers also helped coach us, and both he and Gerry were always so positive and encouraging.

Over the years, I was lucky to meet and train with world-class athletes and coaches at home and abroad, gaining invaluable insights and knowledge. I learned the importance of rest and recovery and that more and harder training wouldn’t necessarily make me a better athlete.

In my mid 30’s, I returned to Tullamore and began to sprint again. With the help of coach Nick Hannon, I won silver at the 2010 world masters indoor championships in the over 40’s 60m race. This was huge! At that time, I was only the second-ever Irish Masters male to get a world track sprint medal. I set a few Irish records along the way but eventually, time and effort caught up with me, forcing me to retire.

I turned my attention to coaching juvenile athletics. I realised that what worked for me as an adult wasn’t working for the kids. Trying to learn how to coach better, I found that most courses centred around performance training instead of training developing athletes. Rather than training kids to be super kids and having nowhere to progress as an adult, I aim to build skills and knowledge and a love of the sport firstly. Hopefully, they’ll keep at it and hit their peak as adults. However, my greatest learning to date is that the effects of patience and encouragement far outweigh science and academic qualifications when coaching youth athletes.

Some kids just want to sprint, so we try to camouflage training for other events to expose them to all areas of athletics. Last year, we had one young athlete who only wanted to sprint. In the Leinster championships, we encouraged him to have a go at the long jump while waiting for his next race. He gave in and beat nearly 40 athletes to bring home a Leinster silver medal! The secret was that he had been training all along for the long jump in our training drills but never realised it. Our little squad is full of such wonderful stories!”