SCOTTISH POWER
An age-group squad run like an elite team? Genius! But with just one man at the helm, how much can really be achieved? The answer – a lot, as we discovered when we visited Edinburgh’s Hartree JETS…
Meet the UK’s most successful tri club, the HBC Jets in Edinburgh, and the man leading them to world AG domination
Joel Enoch is the busiest man in triathlon. A bold statement if ever there was one, but fully justified after shadowing him for two days up in Edinburgh, watching him coach a crack team of athletes. The squad is the Hartree JETS (Joel Enoch Training Squad), a 17-strong group of some of the finest age-groupers in the country.
Between them they’ve won a multitude of national, European and world age-group titles across all manner of distances and multisporting events. And Enoch coaches them all, on his own, with the same inidividualised approach as an elite team.
Each of the athletes, ranging in age from 22 to 67, has a full-time job, covering the entire professional spectrum – sales assistant, night-shifting firefighters, teachers, a vet, architect, statistician, a CEO… – adding to the logistical challenge. And all this on top of squeezing in his own training.
When we arrive at the Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh at 6am on a dark, late-August morning, there’s time for a quick hello but then it’s straight into training. Enoch stays poolside, distinctive in his bright red, back-to-front Chicago Bulls cap, as he oversees nine athletes on this particular Tuesday morning, each with their own strengths and race goal – Liz Richardson, 41, is off to the ETU Middle Distance Champs the following day to defend her title; three others are travelling to Cozumel, Mexico, in less than two weeks to race at the ITU Worlds.
Also at the poolside is Jamie Hume of Swimbeam training and manufacturer of swim training benches – one of which is being used between pool sets – who’s been working with Enoch for the last year. Joel’s also their performance director, providing the company with training plans and videos for their website. “He’s been a great guy to work with,” enthuses Hume. “I’ve really enjoyed watching him coaching because he has a great combination of technical knowledge and being able to keep it light and cheerful. You can see from this kind of session, the race realistic stuff he’s putting in and
using the swim benches – doing stuff other coaches aren’t doing. That’s why I think he’s getting such terrific results.”
THE JETS’ GENESIS
Following the swim session, a 1-2-1 with Richardson before she departs for Walchsee in Austria (Richardson would take silver) and a 1hr run set in the glorious grounds of Holyrood House, Enoch and I take up a pew in the Royal Palace’s café to talk all
things Hartree JETS. So to start with – how did it even come about?
“I’ve had the idea of doing a squad for a while,” explains Enoch. “As far back as uni, when I was studying sports science. But I ended up getting side-tracked into the nutrition world and I worked with Lucozade Sport for a couple of years. I came up to Scotland in 2011, and had started to get back into coaching – distance-coaching an athlete online and getting her to the 2013 ITU World Championships. I actually learnt a lot in that year.
“I talked to people from Tri Scotland loosely about this idea of a squad and then Doug MacDonald, the coaching and development officer for Tri Scotland, said to me ‘You should do it, we will support you!’ So I started to work on the idea in about February 2014. At this point I basically had no income. My wife Sian works as a nurse so her income could just about cover the bills, but she encouraged me to work on the idea.”
As a top age-grouper himself, Enoch knew about the amateur/ club set-up, and found that if an athlete gets into the age-group ranks they can become too good for the club, “so they’re essentially spat out of the top of the club system, as very few of them are ever going to make the jump to an elite system. You end up with these really good professionally-minded athletes, who train as full time as possible around their work commitments and their families, who aren’t getting anywhere near the level of support they need.”
But the reason why no one had set up such a squad was simple – money. “I knew I needed sponsors to pay for the running of the squad and that was where I was incredibly fortunate. Through circumstance I ended up talking to Mike Goddard, a local businessman and triathlete, and he was prepared to support the squad. I’d already found a kit, nutrition and a facility sponsor, but I still needed a few thousand pounds to actually make it happen.”
Goddard, also a member of the squad and one of the Cozumel contingent, agreed to be the squad’s title sponsor (as Hartree Estates). “That was the green light!” says Enoch. “Sian and I were moving house, so we moved, got the money and I started the squad two days later.”
Enoch started with 12 athletes, having handed out flyers at local events. “In the flyer I put down the philosophy of the type of athletes I wanted – professionally-minded, but who perhaps hadn’t had the life circumstance to pursue sport, or maybe they came to the sport too late. Then I had sit-downs with various athletes and tried to convince them to give it a go! I tried to say to everyone, ‘Come along for a month. If it’s alright for a month, come along for two more, and then three….’”
Only one decided it wasn’t for her, largely because she’d just