Mixing with some of the world's top track and field coaches at an Australian athletics coaching congress in Adelaide was a "real eye opener" for Wairarapa duo Mark Harris of Masterton and John Quinn of Carterton.
A total of 115 people attended the congress and Harris and Quinn were able to
rub shoulders with coaches who have tasted major international success, right up to Olympics level.
"It was a huge learning experience for us & just huge," Harris said.
"There was so much valuable information available, you just couldn't help but benefit from being there."
Having been brought up himself on the training methods developed by famous New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard, who was a strong advocate of stamina work, Harris was interested to find that most top coaches now place more emphasis on speed training, even for endurance athletes.
"Stamina work is still necessary of course but speed is certainly the in thing these days, a lot of the training is based around that," he said.
Harris said he and Quinn would "very definitely" be able to implement much of the new information made available to them at the congress when coaching their own athletes here.
"I think I went to 14 different seminars and all of them were worthwhile," he said.
"They threw up a lot of new ideas which we can put to good use."
