Category Archives: Club Athletics

Sunday 7th September saw the first ever John Hewitt Memorial – Junior Club Championships, the championships devised by the AFDAC Young Leaders was hosted in remembrance of John Hewitt who died earlier this year. John has been involved with Athletics, local community and AFD for a long time, and the Young Leaders felt that something should be done to remember him. With that in mind they set about devising, planning and ultimately hosting the first ever Championships.

The day was great, weather was excellent, organisation exceptional. Robbie entered the U15 Boys 1500m Championship Race, on the day the 1500m was run as a single race incorporating U15 boys, U17 boys, U15 Girls and U17 Girls. Robbie went off from the start with a deep intent to ensure that he won, and more importantly beat all the girls 🙂 An aim he managed to succeed in. Ultimately the time wasn’t spectacular 4’30.8″ but given that he’d run in excess of 20k during his morning training session it was pretty good.

Congratulations to all the AFD Champions on the day, and to the team that organised the event it was an excellent day out for everyone.

If you’ve got time to look at your watch, you aren’t trying hard enough.

With less than two weeks to go before the Hampshire Schools Championships Robbie has managed to push out a National Schools qualifying time. Running in the 1500m at the Watford Open, with a heat target time of 4’15” Robbie was hoping to use the fast pace of the other runners to pull him round for a schools qualifying time. Unfortunately the race wasn’t as fast as hoped and Robbie ended up having to set the pace, once again leading the pack from the front and doing all the work, this didn’t bode well for a great time, but in the end it was good enough to provide the needed qualifying time, and another new PB.

The finishing 300m saw Robbie knocked back in to 2nd, then 3rd place but not by far, the race being won in 4’19” and Robbie finishing in 4’20”. A good run, well run but a better field would definitely see Robbie improve his times even further.

Pushing the Pace from the front – Watford Open 4th June 2014

Day 2 of the Hampshire Championships and Robbie is officiating again, but the race of the day is the 1500m, which possibly carries a little bit more importance than the 3000m as it will feed the English Inter-County Championships. Originally scheduled as a single heat followed by a final, drop outs on the day caused a rethink by the officials and the race was reorganised in to a straight final. After planning for a heat, this meant a quick rethink by Robbie on his tactics, and he pretty much went for the same tactics as he did in the 3000m, i.e. Get out there, run like mad and hope he burns out the opposition. Great Plan 🙂

The race held completely different opponents to the 3000m, but a similar race style with Robbie leading from the front, Alex Forster took up the shoulder sitting role and kept hard on Robbie right up to the 1200m point, where Robbie started to pull away, and Alex started to slow having given his all and Robbie seeing the clock kicked with a hope to hit the elusive 4’22” English Schools qualifying time, unfortunately he didn’t make it and Alex was knocked back in to 3rd place by Patrick Whelan from Southampton, but not making the qualifying time was a minor and almost insignificant point on the day, Robbie got a 1500m PB of 4’23”, won a second gold for the weekend and was, for the second time in two days awarded the title of  County Champion, this time at 1500m.

Once again, well done Robbie.

Podium Line up for the Hampshire Championship 1500m

Day 1 of the Hampshire Championships comes to a close, both Robbie and I have dipped our hands in to the “Officials” role today, along with Robbie’s outing in the 3000m. After coming second last year to Jack Boswell, and with Jack now running in the age group above Robbie was expecting to have an easy win today, that thought direction changed though once we saw the field of runners competing, with a number of XC rivals stepping up to the 3000m track challenge too. The plan? Go as fast as possible and try to burn out the opposition, a plan that worked exceptionally well, Zac Mahamed stuck to Robbie like glue for the first 3 laps, making a push to take the lead in the fourth, his 1st place lasted roughly 200m before Robbie took the mantle up again and started to pull away within a lap the gap was growing substantially and the supporters on the sidelines could see a win in the offing. Despite a fairly obvious kick in speed at the bell from Zac, Robbie continued to maintain the gap between them, eventually winning the championship 3000m in 9’29.49″ less than 4 seconds of the Championship record.

Hampshire 3000m Champion 2014

This is Robbie’s first time as a County Champion, so a very pleased, if very tired young Coupland returned to Fleet. Just time to rest up for tomorrow’s 1500m heats and race. Well done Robbie!

Another gloriously sunny day in Portsmouth see’s Robbie run his first 3000m of the 2014 summer season, with a current PB of 9’53.56″ to beat and an ambitious season target of 9’25” in mind, Portsmouth seemed like a great opportunity to get a good foot in the door for the season. Unfortunately the organisers decided to set the race on age, not ability so once again Robbie found himself out front on his own trying to set a PB. A PB was set, and a great improvement shown, but not close enough to his season target to make him happy. Finishing in 9’41.82″, knocking off approximately 12 seconds from his PB was still a great start, let’s hope he gets a chance to put a good paced time in at some point this summer.

Running for the bell, 2600m and looking good.

Saturday 3rd May saw Robbie’s first club competitive race of the summer season, selected to compete for AFD in both the 1500m (his ideal race) and as one of 4 in the 4 x 300m  Relay. A good day for AFD coming 4th overall and doing particularly well in the middle distance events. After leading the 1500m for at least 1100m Robbie ultimately finished 2nd to Surrey runner Harry Boyd. The time was good, as was the race with Robbie coming in 10th’s of a second slower than his PB in 4’26.0″. IN his first ever outing as a 4 x 300m relay runner Robbie ran an excellent 3rd leg in approximately 45″ helping AFD to 1st place in the event.

Robbie kicking in to full speed in the 4 x 300m Relay.

Last night saw the first event of Robbie’s 2014 Summer Season, a 2 hour trip around a crowded M25 to Watford for a 1500m race. Set off nice and early to ensure we got there on time, last year there was a bit of a panic as we were minutes away from registration closing time when we arrived, held up on that awesome M25. This year, with the early set off, we had a good 2 hours to kill before the 1500m started, Watford Open is a seeded event, so Athletes enter their PB or Target time and the organisers group the Athletes in to races based on those times. Last night there were 6 races, the first being the slowest grouping, the 6th being the fastest, Robbie was seeded in Race 5 along with quite a few adults so it was closer to 20:00hrs by the time he actually ran, meaning we’d been hanging around for quite some time by then.

Anyway the target time for the race was 4’25” which would knock 10 seconds off his 2013 PB, a bit of a steep ask, but where he needs to be in order to get selected by Hampshire Schools. Robbie finished the race in 5th place, in a tim e of 4’25.63″. So overall a great start to the season.

Robbie in Track Mode