“It is quite common in Ireland to blame the American route, that the coaches run us too hard or you’re gone off on the drink, people disappear, but people forget that it is easy to get lost, especially coming back from the States.”

Most of his teammates joined professional teams in America upon graduating, Craig Engels for example having joined the now defunct Nike Oregon Project. Others joined the likes of Hoka Northern Arizona Elite, Reebok Track Club, Saucony Track Club and Hoka One One New York New Jersey.

Tobin, however, found himself back in Clonmel, lost, lonely and unsure what he was going to do. He was certain he was going to run. That is his chosen profession. What was not so certain was who he would run with, and how he would fund it.

The next steps after coming home

Coming home from the States people would ask him what was next. If you ask any recently graduated student, you are often met with evasive answers while the student grapples with big life choices and situational changes. This is particularly pertinent for students who don’t have a city base, whose family homes are in rural places with little to no access to people to train with at their level.

For athletes exiting the American collegiate system this transition is particularly challenging. In America, saying you are a full time runner is met with enthusiasm, people back you and are excited for you to join a team and chase your dreams.

In Ireland though, the same culture does not exist, and so outside of immediate friends, family and other athletes, Sean found it quite difficult to explain a career choice that involved making no money. He would tell someone that he was trying to qualify for the Olympics and they would ask “but what do you really do?” Sometimes he would rather just say he was a student.

“You come home after a good percentage of your life, and everything was looked after for you in college, and you’re trying to figure out your own rent and to adjust to running outside of college.” It is common for non-athletes to take their time figuring out their professional career, taking a year after college to do so.

But it seems athletes can be held to a higher standard and if someone is not performing straight off the bat, people can be quick to criticise. If one thing is clear from talking to Sean, it is that life is not straightforward and it is not as easy as just coming home and transitioning smoothly. “You meet other guys who have been through the system and they’re completely lost still”.

On a road to nowhere

In summer 2018 he was racing and hoping for some performance but nothing was clicking. “It all fell to pieces” and he ultimately found himself with his parents in Clonmel, at his wits end, no professional set up, and running out of options. All his friends had moved on and that was difficult.

“Socially it was very tough, it got to the point where going down to the coffee shop was a big deal, just very nervous, very lost. You’d be afraid to go out as people would be asking you what you were doing and you don’t really have answers you know.”

Then, a chance presented itself. “It was like something out of a movie, I remember sitting in bed saying please just give me some bloody sign, and then I got a message from Feidhlim, and there was the opportunity.”

They agreed he would join the Dublin Track Club. “Feidhlim has been wonderful to me and he has been around for years. He is the one coach that put himself out there in positions, he has travelled and linked in with guys like Nic Bideau, and lived in London trying to make it as an athlete, he has done a lot. He is willing to learn and listen, he is so hungry.”

The group has developed and expanded since then, and “it has a lot more meaning for me now, it’s about developing the Irish system.”

Photo: Liam Kelleher

The importance of the right environment

Tobin mentions when he was training in Falls Creek, Australia, there was literally “nothing to do.

The house didn’t have wifi or anything.” Sonia O’Sullivan told him that during her time there they just read books, and one thing she said that stood out to him most was that “you almost have to re-adjust to civilisation when you come down off the mountain, and it’s true.”

“You’re so used to it being so quiet and silent, and everything is so loud and noisy. That is the lifestyle you want for running.” Dublin is not quite the same, but that is not to bash Dublin, “we obviously will make things work here.”

In the Dublin training group, few are full time, most are studying or working with flexible arrangements. “We have to create something ourselves, we can’t just expect the same model as Kenya or the US. As athletes we need to be educated in terms of how can you be a full time athlete and create an income, what job opportunities for someone who is in college and can make money online say.

“There are a lot of opportunities to make things work.” He refers to the Melbourne Track Club who also built themselves up, and when they need money the race. “They work hard and they don’t complain.”

Keep it simple

The life of an athlete is relatively simple. But the simple things are the hardest to secure: housing and food. It’s fine in college, but once you graduate into adulthood you need independence from your parents. If you’re from Dublin it is much easier, of course, the cost of living in Dublin is just so high if you are renting.

It is also hard to hold down a full time job and then ask for 6-8 weeks off to go to Australia to train. Sean has held odd jobs on and off, for example in his local coffee shop, Coffee Works, while he was injured, but as the miles crept up again this was not sustainable either. He considers himself very lucky to be supported with Richard Donovan, he couldn’t be in Dublin without that support.

Brendan O’Neill had a big influence on Sean’s decision to stay in Ireland. He noticed that athletes struggle with visas in the USA, then they’re home, and back and forth. It can be all over the place and “suddenly it turns into a three year cycle of trying to find your feet. He said I have to find a rhythm, he was the one that convinced me to stay home and make it work, get settled for a year at home and then the second year is not as bad.

So this is really the second year home, having my own place and being a little bit settled. It has been huge, having my own room.” Having stability, rather than living between places and out of suitcases has been a very positive development.

Funding athlete lifestyles

The funding system here is strange. He lives beside the National Sports Campus and sees the boxers going in, always together for training, “a proper national squad, where as the runners are scattered everywhere. I don’t want cash or whatever, I just want a house and food, as an athlete all you need is your food and your housing.”

“Imagine if Athletics Ireland had invested in houses over the years.” It would be very helpful for someone coming home too, if they could offer a base for six months while they find their feet and figure things out. “Sometimes the simple things go over people’s heads.” It seems that private sponsorship is a better model, evidenced by teams around the world, but it is missing in Ireland.

“As a group, anything that is stressful is always financial, thats a big thing that is stopping athletes going after it. If you look at the people deciding to have a real go of it, they decided to go abroad.” For example, Síofra Cléirigh-Buttner has joined the New Balance team based in Boston which is coached by Mark Coogan.

Tobin chasing down Great Britain’s Marc Scott, a member of the Bowerman Track Club, at the European Champs in Tilburg last year.

Clearly not a lack of motivation

What is clear in the transition from college to professional running is not a lack of motivation or ambition, but the very basics. People can be very quick to say that athletes are burnt out “but really it is just that life hits you, do I get a job, what do I do, et cetera. You can be pulled a lot of ways. And the more you go through the running ranks the tougher it gets.”

The Irish funding system is rewards based, if you compete well on a world stage you will get funding, but “if I finish top 8 in the world I don’t need that then, I needed it to get there. And even this year trying to qualify for the Olympics, if I qualify then suddenly I will be given more funding.”

This is not actually conducive to promoting and supporting Irish athletes development. Sean notes that he is in a very good position, probably better than most in the country because of Richard Donovan’s support and is keen to express that he does not take that for granted.

What can athletes do to help themselves?

“It is something that as athletes we can be very ‘take take take’, we need this we need that, and it is figuring out how can we actually give back to a community or a sport, what can we do to benefit others.” Coaching is the obvious first option of course, Sean coaches the DCU endurance group.

Other athletes have successful coaching businesses. The coaching also gives him a bit of perspective with the variety of levels involved, “we can forget how we got here too.”

Athletes need to look for opportunities to earn money doing online work. In terms of options to do things like grinds, Sean says that he did “an athlete’s degree” at Ole Miss, he wasn’t really study focused.

“I neglected academics and that was a hard lesson for me. As an athlete it is a great opportunity to self educate, read, learn new skills, it is a wonderful opportunity.” He realised a bit too late that he liked studying economics, so now a lot has changed in his mindset and approach to academics.

If he were to go back to University he wouldn’t choose a place purely based on its name, more so on the courses available and professors teaching. He regrets it, “I was given a wonderful opportunity that I tossed away, school is expensive.” But one can only learn the hard way, and if he returns to education he has made it more difficult for himself to get into a programme, but “I understand to make the most of that time now.”

Photo: Athletics Ireland / Sportsfile

Nothing is guaranteed

This sport is hard and cruel, “Feidhlim reminds us of that every day. This is not easy. You can do everything right and not be rewarded. Look at me this summer, I learned that the hard way. I put in one of the best years of training I ever put in, thought suddenly I was going to go out on the track and have this outstanding season, and bang, leg just gone.”

He raced two 5kms on the track with his leg hanging off, and ran personal bests but they were “nowhere near what I could have done.”

After John Travers running 13.28, “I buzz off the idea of the Irish doing well, if I can run 13 and twenty something that’s great now we have two irish guys doing it.” Look at Scullion and Pollock going 2.10 and 2.12. And not to forget the people behind the scenes, “I don’t think anyone is safe”.

When people assume someone is off to Tokyo “that boils my blood because no-one is guaranteed anything. I am not guaranteed anything.” This was the caption of Sean’s strava during the week, it points to an athlete working hard to make it work, and grateful for what he has.

Bláithín is a middle distance and cross country athlete who has been known to accidentally run into trees. She is in total denial about having to work for a living – you can follow her attempts at run-commuting to work on Strava.

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The post Sean Tobin is taking nothing for granted appeared first on Fast Running.

As a teenager the school coach had the idea of sending a school team to the Penn Relays in the Distance Medley Relay. They wanted Feidhlim Kelly to run. “F*ck it for a free trip to America, I can run 400 metres,” he recalls saying at the time.

Kelly, who founded the Dublin Track Club in 2016, originally aspired to be a soccer player. He ran 2:01 over 800m when Dick Hooper of Raheny Shamrock told him he could be a good athlete, but despite best efforts, he never broke 1:50.

Kelly recalls watching the Ajax Academy videos as a young soccer player. He had a dream of someday being a coach, driving kids around, having his own Ajax Academy. One day his prayers were answered, he thought he was getting a trial for Ajax. It turned out to be an Ajax cleaners flyer. He didn’t make it in soccer, but he certainly is living his childhood dream of developing his own academy. All he needs now is a van.

Kelly did try to be a professional athlete, he trained in Teddington, London with Sonia O’Sullivan, Bolt, Farah and others. In Kenya, Brother Colm wrote out a “bit of a schedule” at one stage for him.

“I was trying to be a professional athlete but I didn’t know how,” he says. “I did a sh*te job of that.”

There he got an insight of the level Sonia O’Sullivan worked at, even at the end of her career. Sonia and Catherina McKiernan were hard women, not scared of the cold and rain, they would be asking for more and you need to hold them back. They got the basics right. He witnessed what champions are made of, the ruthless and the mundane, the ability to train and run every day.

Live simple

Living the simple life means you go to bed at 10pm, you get up for your run at the same time every day, you turn up ready to work, you do your stretching, you take our recovery seriously. Eliud Kipchoge is a prime example. Irish athletes, in Kelly’s opinion, won’t do the basics yet they worry about the big pieces. The principles are simple, but they are hard to follow.

Kelly asks what is the point in this pursuit? But that is a deeper question, what is the point in anything? Commit to something, it doesn’t matter what, collect stamps if that is what you’re into, but commit.

Photo: Andrew Coscoran

Feidhlim draws an interesting comparison between a practising Catholic and a priest. You can practice your religion, go to mass, do all that is required as a lay-person, but taking the step up to full immersion as a priest is a different level of commitment. The same applies to running. You can say you are training hard, but you’re not really, “you’re not doing the business”.

Forget about drugs and doping, at the moment we can’t even hit minimum standards. “I want Irish distance running to reach the standard it reached before, a decent level, and if we fail, we will go down fighting,” he says passionately.

“The Dublin Track Club are raising standards, whether they like us or not,” Kelly adds. He hopes that people will be inspired to beat them.

Strength

Kelly’s training programme is largely strength based and he cannot overstate the importance of consistency over a long block of time. Using the Lydiard model and taking inspiration from Percy Cerutty’s lifestyle, the group workouts can be seen on their Twitter and Instagram pages, as well as on Strava.

Team member Andrew Coscoran has a gift for video making and does an excellent job of creating a buzz in his videos.

Photo: Andrew Coscoran

It’s kilometres on Tuesdays, threshold Thursdays, and some sort of hill session on Saturdays. Kelly likes to watch the group progress over the weeks in a similar training pattern.

When asked if they ever sharpen for races or if he sends them onto the track on strength, he laughs and says yes they do sharpen, but it is clear that there is a firm commitment to the principle of “if you’re fit, you’re fit”. Two days after his tenth place finish at the European Cross Country Championships, Sean Tobin set down a European Indoor standard in the 3000m at the NIA live meet.

He thinks that too many people train too fast and too hard. If he could buy Jack Daniels running formula, it would be strength based. Training hard teaches you to hurt but not to improve your cardiovascular fitness. The key is in the consistency. If you have a good or bad race, what do you do the next day? You run. The sessions are not necessarily hard in themselves, but the load is relentless.

Environment

Tobin is committed to the Irish base for the foreseeable future and is using Feidhlim’s connections with Melbourne Track Club (MTC), coached by Nic Bideau to further develop his career. Kelly spent a block of time training there himself to learn.

Kelly feels that nobody in Ireland wants you to succeed, people will tell you every reason why you won’t. Society is driven to make you think you need a job, a house, tick boxes, a work-life balance.

Forget life balance in a running career, if you want to be anything great in athletics you need balance in your mind. In his view, you have plenty of time to enjoy the finer things in life, to earn money, to drink, to socialise, but you only have one chance in athletics when you’re young, so athletes need to be given the opportunity now.

Dublin Track Club

In terms of his own training group, the Dublin Track Club, the lads are learning. In its short lifetime, the group has already seen some runners come and go. Kelly doesn’t like wasting people’s time. The key is that you come to train.

Photo: Andrew Coscoran

People say he is lucky with his athletes, but he adds that you create your own luck. He knows he is lucky to have people like Sean Tobin and Paul Robinson linking in, but it’s also an opportunity for them.

Leaders like Tobin and Robinson, as well as the likes of Shane Healy and Gary O’Hanlon all help to create that atmosphere and environment that is so crucial.

Kelly sees athletes looking for instant gratification and results, and he is teaching them that it takes years of consistency to make it. It requires a lot of patience and sticking by athletes through the troughs. You can’t cram athletics, it’s a long game.

Backing

He notes that they don’t, as a group, have any great results yet, but time is key. And money, I asked? You don’t need a million euro to coach full time, but you do need enough money to get by, and it would be nice to be able to buy a cup of tea out. It’s better that athletes are developed here, yet we refuse to invest in ways we can help them.

When asked about potential funding opportunities, he responds heatedly that everyone wants to back a sure bet and that is the problem in Irish athletics. People won’t support him now, but if you never back anyone in your life, if you never take a risk, you will never get rewarded.

And of course, nothing is sure in athletics. In the meantime, they are getting on with it, with essentially a production line from Belvedere College coached by Ronan Duggan leading the men into the DTC.

Ireland is expensive. How are you supposed to make it here as an athlete? Kelly tries to remove the barriers. On the subject of funding, he says: “It’s nearly embarrassing saying you are looking for sponsorship, but yea, on one level you are looking for support.”

There are people out there who can provide support. He stresses that he isn’t looking for a free pass by any means, but offers the example of being able to rent a house for the team at a fair rate. In the meantime, he puts up athletes where he can in his own home. Without the longtime support of his own parents in this endeavour, this would not be possible.

Time

If he could have one secret ingredient that he is missing, what would it be? Time. Time to train, time to put in more as a coach, time is money, time to attend more sessions. And a bit of backing. It would be great to have a people carrier. No fuel money is passed between members, those with cars pick up and drop off those without.

The payment the athletes make is that they are committed, loyal, and they do their work. It’s a simple game, but it’s not easy. Feidhlim works his day job around the sessions. The group comes first and everything else fits in around that.

There is one female, Iseult O’Donnell, in the group. Is he looking to expand? No, it’s better for men to coach men, and women to coach women. As a man, he knows how men think and how to cultivate the right environment. Women are entirely different and require a different set up, and he thinks that women need to step up in terms of coaching other women.

Photo: Andrew Coscoran

His goal is ultimately to develop great Irish athletes and be one of the best coaches Ireland has ever had. Six athletes associated with the group were in the top 13 at the National Senior Cross Country Championships 2018. Six competed at the European Cross Country Championships.

He hopes to have a few athletes at the Tokyo Olympics and thinks one of his guys might finally break John Treacy’s marathon record of 2:09:15. Kids should try to link in and train with the group, there is no recruitment process, it’s an open door if you’re willing to come down to the session and work.

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked him the why, fundamentally, what does he get out of this?

He referred to Brother Kevin who runs Dublin’s Capuchin Day Centre, feeding thousands of people every year. It’s a vocation for Brother Kevin, much like coaching is a vocation for Feidhlim.

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The post Dublin Track Club: In conversation with Feidhlim Kelly appeared first on Fast Running.