The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Morrison keeping athletes on track during lockdown
ATHLETICS: Veteran Fife coach juggling virtual sessions with governance role
Lockdown isn’t holding back retired St Andrews professor Ron Morrison, who is currently locked into virtual mode juggling his activities as a coach and as president of Scottish Athletics.
Morrison has a lifetime of involvement with athletics and jokes: “I was born a Shettleston Harrier.”
His dad, the well-respected David Morrison, started with the club in 1933, going on to set world records as a veteran.
Morrison junior contested his first race aged 12 in 1958 and went on to hold numerous positions in athletics, leading to the setting up of Scottish Athletics as a professional organisation in 1992 and serving as president from 1997-99.
Morrison moved to St Andrews in 1971 and joined the newly-formed Fife AC in 1975.
The honorary life member of Scottish Athletics and UK Athletics Endurance Coach of the Year 2018 talks about his dual roles. Q How is virtual coaching going and how many athletes are you currently coaching?
RM: There’s a group of about 40 people, mostly Fife AC athletes plus some St Andrews University runners. Q How is that training structured? RM: We work over a 16-week programme consisting of a block of four (hard, easy, quite hard, easy), this builds rest and recovery into the programme. There’s some flexibility but on Tuesday and Thursday everyone does the same thing – 1km followed by 400m jog, 4 x 400m hard, 400m easy, 1km, 400m easy, 4 x 400m hard, 400m easy, 1km warm down. Basically it’s interval training as advocated by Arthur Lydiard back in the 1950s. You’ve done it yourself, a long Sunday run and two sets of interval training during the week and other runs in between. When Andrew Lemoncello (Fife AC Beijing Olympian) was at Florida State University, I went out there to meet coach Bill Braman. It was like talking to myself, everyone follows the principles Lydiard laid down. Q How do you keep in touch with your athletes?
RM: I email the programme to them. It’s the same for everyone but sometimes I will go over it with an athlete and tailor it to their particular needs. I get the feedback via their diaries. Derek (Paralympian Derek Rae) writes a specific diary. When he’s training at altitude in Kenya or Flagstaff, Arizona, we change the programme. Q Are the group members able to maintain links with fellow athletes?
RM: We are holding a group quiz next week via Zoom. Also, Derek has a gym at his house and will lead a strength and Q conditioning session via Zoom. Q OK, now on to your other key role. How does a virtual president of Scottish Athletics function?
RM: Well, at least I don’t have to travel to meetings in Edinburgh three times a week, but we do have meetings via Zoom and Microsoft Teams. We’ve been working on the very successful virtual races developed by events manager Alasdhair Love. Q How are other staff roles? RM: Unfortunately, we’ve had to furlough seven staff. Mark (Mark Munro, chief executive) has made predictions for the year ahead. We have lost money from events, we hope that athletes will continue their membership. We have to work within the guidelines from the Scottish Government and devise a framework within what they say. We’ll have to be innovative, for example, you could have a shot put competition keeping to social distancing rules. There are a number of performance staff supported by the Sports Council in turn funded by the Scottish Government – £10 million a year. I feel a vaccine is key to all of this, but that takes 18 months to develop and test. My feeling is that we will be ‘virtual’ for quite a while. I have seen more people out running/ jogging than ever before. I think there will be people continuing with their running when the crisis ends and looking to participate in events like the hugely popular 5km parkruns.
RM: Yes, I agree, the virus seems to have brought people together. Anne and I sit out in the front garden with a cuppa on a nice day and it’s amazing the amount of people that stop to chat. I also feel that coronavirus is a big warning just as Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted back in 2015. Q The Tokyo Olympics is the biggest sporting casualty right now, what are your thoughts regarding the Olympics?
RM: I’ve no worries with the move to next year at all, but if we don’t have a vaccine I fear the worst, we could then be into another Olympiad, eight years would be a long time to wait. That would be crucial for the likes of Laura Muir, not so much for Eilish McColgan who would have more time to develop. We have to be clever in what we do, mass events are out right now, even events like the East of Scotland Cross Country League this October are probably not going to take place. Could we organise events for kids who are less susceptible to the virus? But what happens if they are asymptomatic and take the virus home with them after an event?