 So our first guest is Dick Cooper, who is a three-time winner of the Dublin Marathon, 1980, 85 and 86, six-time national marathon champion, three-time Olympian, 80, 84 and 88. He has a 21 sub-220 marathons, his PB is 2,1219. Again, we'll round it down. He has coached 25 different national champions, he's a retired bank manager and has been a member of Rahini Shamrocks for over 50 years. So welcome, Dick. Next time maybe I'll get James. James Nolan has represented Ireland at 800 and 1500 meters and two Olympics, two world championships, three European championships and six world indoors. He won silver in the 800 meters at the Euro under 23 championships in 1999 and also silver in the 1500 at Euro indoor in 2000. He's a PB of 335 in the 1500 and 354 in the mile. He is currently working with Paralympics Ireland where he is head of athletics there and is also coaching a lot of athletes around UCD. So welcome, James. Next, I've Katerina McKiernan. Katerina here. I see you, yeah. Katerina is regarded as one of the world's best-ever cross-country runners. Born in County Cavern, she grew up in the family farm and played a lot of sports during her school years before taking up athletics seriously in the late 1980s. Her first success came in 1988 when she won the Irish School's cross-country title. From there, her career as a cross-country runner blossomed. She won silver in the cross-country championships four years in succession from 92 to 95. In 94, she won the inaugural European cross-country title and in 92 and 96, she represented Ireland at the Olympic Games. In 97, she decided she'd kind of go into semi-retirement and moved up to the marathon. She has won the Berlin, London and Amsterdam marathons and I think it was in Amsterdam that you set the current, still the current, Irish marathon record of 223.44. No? Oh, well, you're doing yourself a disservice because that came from your email. And then last but by no means least we have Emmett Dunleavy. I saw you were not at the edge of a row. You were actually first on my list to call up. Emmett has coached hundreds of runners since establishing perfect pacing in 2014. He's an athletics Ireland level two qualified endurance coach and he has managed a lot of Irish teams and athletes at international level. He's currently coaching a wide variety of athletes and groups from recreational to professional. He could be seen in Bellfield on many nights and where he has a very, very large following. Some of his current roles include endurance coach with UCD, Bell Park triathlon and Kylco. And I hope that's correct. I got that from the internet. So it has to be right. So I guess this is the part of the day where I would hope that we have a lot of questions from the audience, but I might kick it off if I can start. And I know that some of you have been here for the whole day and some of you have arrived as the day has gone on. But I think maybe Emmett and James you have been here I think most of the day. Are there any things you've heard that kind of struck a chord with you or resonated with you compared to your own experience either in either competing or in coaching? Yeah, I suppose a lot of the focus which was great is on the running itself, which when we go out to run we can probably only do about two hours of quality running a day. I suppose the other 22 hours of the day determine how good that two hours can be. So really sort of analyzing what you do in the other 22 hours is as if not more important than the two hours just when analyzing the training. Yeah, and I think that somebody else mentioned earlier on about the fact that full-time athletes can really focus on that, but an awful lot of people who are recreational athletes or I don't know if the phrase recreational even counts because who isn't obsessed with running? You're not recreational, you're an obsessed, but so believe athlete, but there's all sorts of life pressures to deal with, which means recovery can be very difficult. Emmett, is there anything that you... Yeah, I suppose one of the things that struck a chord coming from the coaching background was Ashley's presentation and that continuum of injury from running smoothly up to very serious injuries and how far up that continuum was before they consulted a coach was probably a little bit of a concern, but I suppose looking at all of the information that we've got today, I suppose it's important to come at these things from coaching and athletics is both an art and a science, and we've got an awful lot of the science side of things today, and it's a case of combining that with your own intuition and breaking things down to an individual basis and combining those because we can look at big data, but it's also important keep in mind that we're all very much different than individuals as well, so we're going to find a happy meeting between the two. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I'll maybe ask a couple more questions, maybe Katrina, I'm particularly interested and somebody mentioned during the week about the similarities between the middle distance and the long distance. When you did make that transition from moving from running the shorter distances, and I guess they weren't really short distances, but when you moved up to the marathon, what kind of changes did you make in your approach or your training? Well, actually it was easier for me to run the longer distances than the short distances, I suppose from I started running or competing at 18 years of age, my coach Joe Dunan was very scientific and I suppose wanted everything to be right, and I went to Trinity to get tested on the treadmill with Professor Maira O'Brien and Bernard Dunn and that very evening that I went the test that they did, they said that it was made for the long haul, but I was only whatever 18 at that stage, so I needed to build up endurance and I had a lot of work to do, so that meant running shorter distances and in actual fact, those world-crossed country championships, European championships, there were only six k, so that was really hard work for me because they were very short and it meant me working at a pace that I wasn't comfortable at, so I suppose to answer your question when I did move up to running the marathons, I was at a comfortable pace, the only thing that changed was the distance got longer obviously and the pace got a little bit slower and a little bit more comfortable, I was cruising at that pace and I always worked under heart rate, I feel that people who are training without heart rate training are running a little bit blind and I had three different zones that I trained at and in actual fact the most important one was my easy run because I had a tendency to want to you know want to achieve, wanted to do good and be the best that I possibly could, but in actual fact easy running has a lot of benefits and my easy heart rate was 130-135 and it's important to run easy because then for me in particular I was rested enough then to run on the days that was meant to run hard and that's a mistake that a lot of people make is to run too fast on their easy days and then they're not rested enough and therefore not able to get to progression in their training. Okay right and one question, if anybody wants to ask a question stick your hand up, I have one question for you Dick Salves intrigue me, I mean I've watched on YouTube not so long ago the video of the 1984 marathon and it just seems to have been an amazingly uncomfortable and intense experience in terms of the heat and the environmental conditions and you know maybe interested in your perspective looking back on it when you compare running the Dublin marathon in October and running in different environments like that you know how much like because performance wise you you were able to maintain the performance but how much more does it take out of you when you're in those environments? Generally I know anybody who has watched the championship marathons over the years they're invariably in hot countries on tough courses and the times that are recorded in those championship marathons are not commensurate which what you'll find from Berlin and London and Chicago and these places probably before five minutes down but they're true championship races. The Los Angeles one you asked about was actually at five o'clock in the evening people have seemed to have forgotten that and it finished in the dark. It was still very hot but the actual burning sun wasn't as prevalent I suppose on the day so you know it produced a result that obviously thrilled Ireland for those of you who don't know I'm the third part of that quiz question. We had three Irish runners in Los Angeles John Tracy got the silver medal the Great Jerry ran ninth I was there as well I picked that day to run poorly which always haunts me so thanks very much for asking the question. I was just thinking though as I was looking I'm not here that long I got the last hour of it I got the bit mostly on the wall there that you were talking about and for anyone who's running in the marathon has particular interest in it my theory on that is that when you're training for it the most important session that you do in the week is your long run and your long run has two benefits one it's educating the body to deal with fatigue and two it's educating the mind to deal with the time that you're going to be out there it's very very hard when you're in newbie to get used to being out there for two three four hours and occupying occupying your mind and that little negative fella he comes very early in those runs sometimes he wants you stopping after four or five miles and you feel worse after four or five miles than you do at 20 miles but that's that can only be dealt with by regular practice and regular just doing it and so that is the most important thing the tempo sessions the speed sessions they are of course very important but they they are they won't get you there and they won't get you to the finish line they'll get you there faster if you're doing the other stuff properly but the most important thing is the long run so I can't emphasize that enough I think somebody mentioned did they have to do a 30k run to be sure that they could finish was it was something like something to do with that well I would be sort of what would you say negative about that kind of an attitude which you need to do the long runs you need to do them regularly educate the mind and the body brilliant thanks we have a question from the audience here it's it is a lot of it is in the mind really really and I suppose during my career there was different stages that really made me think that more you know maybe and that's a percentage wise but you have to have the right mindset for training and for for competition and it's not always the fit exactly that wins the race it's the one that has the strongest mindset and I have a nice little saying that I share with people usually is my mind is a garden my thoughts are seeds I can grow flowers or I can grow weeds so that'll even take up five or ten minutes of your of your run so and and and even if you even if you keep repeating that but just you know to understand how important your mindset is how important it is to feed it positive thoughts and as Dick said they're not to let those that little person come in and and distract you and you know get things like for me during when I was competing I was very lucky in that I had a lot of support from home in cabin and I was allowed run on the on cabin golf course and which was great because it was all up and down hills and then when I would go to a cross country racing the likes of France or Belgium or Spain or wherever it was it was totally flat flat so instantly I thought okay I'm so used to running up and down hills that you know I can win this very easily and it did feel easy because of the strength that I had from running up and down hills so you're always there trying to find the positives rather than feeding the negatives and then you know as I said the support at home family support and another little story that I often tell as well you know on a Sunday more it was I grew up in a very very rural part of the country and you know there wasn't a lot to do actually only run around the fields in the family farm and I'm the youngest of seven so it was a great way to get away from the mall but you know the priest on a Sunday morning when I was running a race would say a prayer for me off the altar and everybody were joining so you know when the legs were hanging off me with a kilometer or whatever a mile to go these were the sort of things that I thought about that got me to the finish line there were really a strong very very strong driving force and I'm sure you all have things that you can distract yourself with that will drive you to the to the finish line and I suppose the most important thing I will say on that is to realize how negative you know how the negative thoughts how detrimental they can be to your performance and not to entertain them and they're only thoughts they're not they're not real and I think if we can get that point across to you all that the mind plays such a big big part and you know when when they do come in just accept them but don't let them take from your performance and practice it and training and just get out there and all kinds of weather we never we don't have extreme weather here at all get out and enjoy the sun in your face enjoy the rain in your face enjoy the hailstones on your face and just get out and get out and do it because you know and and everybody has different standards different focuses but the most important thing is to get the most out of yourself whatever that standard is and the joy is in the journey thank you I'm just I just have a question on you do you want to go out and is there an argument potentially made for the talent ID well I won't answer that last part of the question because I can't you know everybody has a choice in what they do and I can't you know that's that's their plan but you know obviously you need to have talent not with marathon but with any distance in running you need to have have talent but as the saying goes hard work beats talent when talent won't work hard so there's no point in having the talent if you don't put in there in the hard work and there's no doubt about it it is it is a commitment there's a lot of dedication there's a lot of different aspects to it but I would say to try and keep things simple I think over the years with all of the technology that things have got a little bit too complicated at the end of the day you just have to get out that door and do the miles and do the work and you have to enjoy it and if you don't enjoy it you're not going to perform as well you're not going to get the most out of yourself and I just loved running by myself I had no you know nobody else to run with and that you know I knew no better and that didn't bother me and I think you know if you want anything in any sport or in any walk of life if you want it badly enough you will walk out and make no excuses that's the key make no excuses and get the most out of yourself. Do other cultures have any perspective on that that's an interesting that was a really interesting question. Talent identification is an interesting one certainly in the marathon in Ireland after the 80s particularly in the men Katrina Zero was a little bit after ours and she kept the women's going up to the sort of the late 90s but after that there was a ferocious drop-off of people venturing into the marathon these would be people who should have been trying it. I personally have a view that it coincided with the Celtic Tiger and people were too busy making money and their bosses wouldn't let them train enough and you know there was a lot of that kind of stuff in it I'm serious about that and if you look at the history of running and mass running and everything like that it tends to be when times are a bit down but the numbers surge and during the we had a surge in the 80s the Celtic Tiger came along and everything dropped we nearly lost the Dublin marathon during it and then lo and behold the running boom came again but our most most talented runners I think it fell as like Peter Matthews and Seamus Power and those kind of guys they were superb runners and they should have gone to the marathon in their mid to late 20s but they left it as an afterthought and by the time they got there it was too late because they never viewed themselves properly as having a career path. Then we formed a thing called marathon mission and out of marathon mission first of all we had a situation for a lot of years where nobody was qualifying then for major games nobody at all I think Martin Fagan in in 96 was it was it in 96 was it that late yeah he qualified but and Pauline Curly got there at some stage but there was virtually nobody qualifying whereas now we're back to a situation where there we invariably we have three people on each team it's beginning to sag again and there's a bit of a worry if you look at our more dominant men and women the performance graph is dropping but then we've a plethora of young athletes coming through our juniors are under 23s and all that kind of stuff I only hope that their coaches won't delay it too long I see a young man called Ephraim Gidei and if you ask me he's going to be the next Irish record holder for the for the marathon but he's only 21 but I hope he doesn't leave it too late you know if he gets there by the time he's about 25 26 if you look at a lot of the Olympic champions a lot of the world champions they're pretty young they're 24 they're 25 they're 26 they're not they're not all guys now and they're 30s or L ones in there whatever coached only if you have a view on this yeah I suppose purely from a physiological point of view your first part of the question was are they born or are they made and to a large extent marathon runners are born and a lot of the attributes can be changed and tinkered with and improved over the years but I suppose even if you were to go down the road of physiologically testing the likes of Katrina or Dick the results would point towards them being a marathon runner but even if you look at the profile of them as the distances go up these types of athletes tend to come into their own as they're not particularly quick over 800 1500 meters and you figure out even as a coach or as an athlete over the years that these guys are ultimately made towards the marathon and I think a challenge as coaches and as a nation as well as is identifying the one the athletes at the moment we've got a huge because you know we're spoiled with the amount of underage talent that we've got coming through it's a case of you know identifying the athletes that are most likely going to be our best marathon runners in the in a few years time and as Dick says not being afraid to actually move them up early and that they're not spending the majority of their 20s doing short stuff when ultimately what they're actually going to be better is at the longer stuff and we've had a huge increase in standards in the marathon and both men's in them inside over the last sort of five six seven years um there's a little bit more depth there I suppose what we want to come along now is is that once in a generation athletes like Katrina that will you know move the bar not just at an Irish level but at an international level um and I think if you're if we've got a nice wide pool of talent which we do they're well looked after then when the the next Katrina McCann and come along we're in a position to help them to to realize their full potential at international level and hopefully see some more medans come along you never talked about moving up James I suppose it's a good it's a good point not just for the marathon but there's opportunities I feel in other events so a lot of guys I just are trying out times here I hope you understand them so if you're running sort of 335 the 340 for 1500 you sort of get excited and you might qualify for the Olympics but that's it you're not going to do anything else so should you move up to the steeple chase should you you know should you be looking at 5k's can you progress to an Olympic final instead of just getting knocked out of the first round so I want to ask a question there about talent ID and development there's not really a structured talent ID and development system in Ireland that I'm aware of um there are other tests we could do in speed and power and jump tests as well for different disciplines long jump triple jump and and maybe we should be we should be looking at that yeah yeah I think other countries have benefited from it and Lorraine we maybe leave the last question with you because I know that the panel have places to be sorry thanks very good question after that very profound one but it was just for amateurs any advice on pureland during the marathon other than taking a few journeys during their long months before and see though it doesn't sound like it comes down to everything it's practice um I come from an era where we didn't eat anything during the marathon we wouldn't go near a gel and in fact to this day I've never had a gel I don't know if you've ever had one more um I see I see them selling all right um but that's not to diminish the the the effect of them and the importance of them maybe I would have been faster or better if I had used them I also came from an era where we wouldn't drink water except our water or any fluid except in a race my theory was that if I didn't drink any water during training so I would do up to 30 miles and I wouldn't take a drop and my theory was well camels go across deserts without without a drink so that when when races when race day came along it was a bonus to get a drink so um I was also innovative then um when I came along in that I started to drink tea during the uh I took three tea as my preferred drink during a marathon and my theory was there well what do you do at 11 o'clock in the morning or 4 o'clock in the afternoon when you want a little boost you want something like a cup of tea or a cup of coffee a coffee just wasn't on my horizon at that stage so I I made tea very lightly sugared and I suppose in that way I was fueling but that was kind of back in the 80s 70s and 80s um and I see people I tell you what really galls me when I see somebody go now for a 5k run and they're gripping a bottle and they've a belt around them and they've all this stuff and I say they're gonna put on weight and I don't want to be you know I don't I'm I'm not trying to be smarter cynical or that but um and to get back to your question I think you need to teach yourself what works for you because obviously these gels have a have the risk of making you sick um which is the last thing you want um you know you see them handing out boils or sweets during the race and oranges and stuff like that whatever you take on board if you decide uh make sure that it's palatable and that you can take it now I do appreciate that if somebody is out for four hours or five hours they're out for a way longer than an elite athlete is out for their two hours 10 or 20 or 30 um so there is a more important fueling factor there probably and the interesting thing getting back to the wall then is that the biggest dropout race in in these city marathons is actually uh amongst the elite runners because the elite runners are gambling with their pace a lot of the time so I think the general statistics say for example the Dublin marathon is about 96% of those who actually start the race will finish and the highest um ratio of dropouts will be among the the elites who are gambling on winning or getting a high placing or getting that time or whatever so if you've paced yourself right you'll get through it um so the fueling then is important but what I would say to you is just make sure you've got your fueling right um and then punish yourself a bit in training so that on race day whatever you're getting whether it's your mother turning up at 20 miles with with a gel or whatever that that's a bonus that you don't give yourself on training day so that you know that because race day you're going to be going a bit faster you're going to be caught up in the the adrenaline of it at all suck in those bonuses you know uh don't take on too much water because sometimes people obsess over taking in too much water and the the water log they've too much water on themselves which actually affects performance as well um so there's a balance life life there's a balance in everything I know there are other questions I did see some hands going up but we are over time and I think to be fair to the people who've come here and given us their time we better let them go home and have the next part of their day um and have you have the next part of your day so listen thank you very much the founder really appreciate your time