Sunday 15/12 was the first indoor meeting of the 2024/25 winter. Last year was my first year as a coach at Exeter University, and to put it bluntly, the indoor season was a cock-up. I was relying on the athletics club committee to guide me take a lead with the competition schedule, and they got caught out with the popularity of indoor meetings in Cardiff (the nearest indoor track to Exeter). Not many of our athletes ended up competing prior to BUCS indoors and so we were underprepared to compete. The athletes were in great shape, they just didn’t know how to run on a banked track, or they didn’t have any competition experience to ‘sharpen’ them up. In addition, some horizontal jumpers who were good enough to compete, couldn’t go because they hadn’t demonstrated that they met the minimum standards.

This winter, I’m better prepared with a far clearer idea of what the winter program looks like in our part of the country, and we are making sure that we enter events as soon as entries open. The indoor open meeting in Cardiff on Sunday was our first opportunity to compete, and I was delighted that 10 athletes stuck around for a few days after term had finished to compete. In comparison, last year, about 10 athletes turned up to our final Wednesday session (the busiest of the week) and it was observed that this was a huge improvement on the year before. This year, 10 athletes competing after term had finished! A brilliant change in culture.
4 of these athletes had never competed at a proper event before. 3 had never done an indoor event before. In fact, 2 athletes had only recently bought their first pair of spikes! These athletes raced brilliantly!

Of the more experienced athletes, Ali was 0.01 off his PB over 60m (7.17), and Rohan beat his PB twice (7.15 to 7.07, then 7.00) and placed 4th in the final. Maurice has a solid first outing in the long jump, fouling on what would have been a big PB (or so he says!).

In addition, Holly ran an excellent 600m race, despite being ill, which sets her up nicely to run close to 2:20 for an 800m at BUCS for Plymouth Uni. Holly is a regular at my Exeter Speed training sessions, and I also do some personal training in Exeter with her. She’s got a great work ethic and I’m so delighted that she is pushing outside of her comfort zone to race in events like this. Last summer, she only ran one very low-key open meeting in Exeter.

Fantastic effort from everyone and a really pleased coach.