AMBLESIDE AC JUNIORS REPORT 2011

Ambleside AC Juniors was set up in May this year. We have a regular
membership of about 35 children, aged between 6 and 12 years old, with
anywhere between 10 and 24 turning up to sessions. Eleanor and Kate
have been running the Thursday night sessions with help from other club
members – Ken Dacre, Sarah Jones, Chris Waters, Paul Knowles, Britta
Sendlhoffer, Cath Musetti, Roger Bell and Mike Troup.

Sessions

We had some superb sessions this summer on Loughrigg, often doing
circuits of Lily Tarn - there are some great photos taken by Chris
Waters of a couple of the sessions. I hope to get Britta to put them
onto the club website once we have permission from parents. Now the
dark winter nights are here we are working on a 3 week rota, with two
weeks at the rugby club and then the third week is an indoor session at
Ambleside Parish Centre.

Our sessions are structured with a good warm up, including dynamic
stretching and then do some drills to teach and encourage a good running
technique. For the main part of the session we vary it from week to
week doing reps, circuits, relays, time trials etc. and at the indoor
sessions we are now doing skills sessions and plyometrics, using
equipment such as hurdles, cones and floor ladders.

Races:

We set up a junior club championship for the children, and many children
entered races during the summer months with some great results. We have
some very good runners, with great potential. We have been able to kit
the children out in club vests – at one race Ambleside Vests dominated
the race with comments such as ‘there can’t be many children left in
Ambleside today’. We are encouraging the children to enter the
Kendal Winter league races which start in January with some of these
being part of the club championship for next year. We will be buying
large trophies to give to the winner of each age category, to be
engraved with their name and to keep for one year.

Finances:

We received a donation from Ambleside Health Centre earlier this year of
£300 which has enabled us to purchase the club vests.

We make a small charge of £1 per week, which has helped pay for the
hire of Ambleside Parish Centre, refreshments, trophies and the Xmas
party.

Coaching:

To run the junior club and be insured both Eleanor and Kate need to
become qualified coaches. Back in May, Eleanor, Chris Waters and Kate
attended the Leader in Running Fitness course and are now officially
running ‘Leaders’! Eleanor and Kate are now doing the UK Athletics
Fell and Mountain Running Coaching Award (equivalent of the old level 2
coach award) which is being paid for by the club. We have just
completed two weekends of training and now have to log observed and
supported sessions before taking our assessment early next year. We
are lucky to have in the club Richard Lecky-Thompson who is a level 3
coach and has supervised and supported us since we started the juniors
club.

The junior club has become so popular that we are now introducing a
waiting list, and will be running an induction evening once every now
and then for new prospective members to make it easier to plan and run
sessions.

All in all I feel (and I’m sure Eleanor agrees) really happy with the
progress we have made over the year. It has really been hard work
but well worth it to see so many local young people enjoying the
benefits of fell running.

Kate Ayres
Mobile: 07738 274107
Home: 015394 31806