The Mark Ellis Blog

The indoor season of 2019/2020 was an interesting one for Lexie - it started with a change of coach and saw her take a greater focus on Hammer throwing as well as continuing with her Shot.  It has been a huge change for her, much more intense training and with older athletes too.  It's fair to say that it's taken a bit of time for her to get used to it, but she's a toughie and she's worked hard to establish herself in the group and worked hard at training too. That persistence and focus has certainly paid off over the indoor season.  Her pb was sitting at 10.22m with the Shot and that was from back in June 2019 at School Intercounties and she hadn't thrown close to that for quite a while.  The indoor season aim was to medal at the Northern Indoor Championships and regular readers will know that Lexie has a history of coming 4th at the Northern's and she's done that twice.  Her Shot technique has been changed a lot and the power was improving across the Win...

The challenge over the indoor season for Philippa was that lots of things changed - the move up to the U20 age group saw her to take on new challenges, especially as the hurdles went up in height for the first time in 4 years plus the Shot Put got a kilo heavier. It's fair to say that the hurdles were the biggest challenge and not so much in the height, more in the spacing.  A lot of work went in over the winter on the hurdles and her first race was at the Northern Indoor Open in Sheffield on the 7th December where she clocked 9.27 seconds - not a bad start.  The 4k Shot experience had started a little earlier with a 10.18m throw at the Gateshead Indoor Series back in November.  Back at the Northern Indoor Open, Philippa threw 10.42m in the Shot to give her a new pb. As we moved into 2020, the main competition targets for Philippa were the Northern Indoor Championships and the Scottish National Indoor Championships.  There was also a Combined Events feel to the...

There's been a lot of time spent in Leeds recently whilst Philippa is on her Youth Talent Pathway course with British Athletics & one of the contact days being on a Monday gave a bit of a gricing opportunity. There's been a lot of negativity on the Northern rail franchise and it will transfer to become a directly operated railway in a couple of weeks time. So, with a few hours to kill & an £8.10 West Yorkshire Day Rover ticket in prospect, it was time to head off in search of Pacers and wherever the mood took me...... The first trip was from Headingley into Leeds on a late running Knaresborough working which was particularly busy. Once I got to Leeds, it was a decision on where to go next - there was a Knottingley departure that I thought might be a Pacer but turned out to be 158, so I thought I'd try something new as 195123 was sitting on a Manchester Victoria departure via Bradford. Ideally, I was wanting to head to Huddersfield for a trip towards Sh...

The World Transplant Games came to Newcastle/Gateshead and I was delighted to volunteer, both as a general volunteer plus as an athletics volunteer on the competition days at Gateshead Stadium. The Transplant Games is a special event and none more so as we know a Transplant athlete. That athlete is Louise McLellan and we first got to know her back in 2014 when she joined our training group. Now at the time, all Wor Bri (who coached us back then) told us was that we had to be careful as she'd had an operation. The bit we only found about following Louise appearing on GMTV in the build up to 2015 British Transplant Games, was that the operation had been a heart transplant ! So since then, Transplant sport has always been on our radar. F or the first three days of volunteering, I was based at Gateshead Stadium with the duties on the first day involving directing competitors and spectators at the Archery & Football competitions which was interesting, although the Archery wa...

Appreciating that it's a couple of weeks since my trip on one of the new LNER Azuma's, but it's still worth writing a few words on as it was an impressive experience. For once, I was lucky as this was the last train to get out of London during the power cut that brought Kings Cross to a standstill for some hours. It was noticeable that the train switched from electric to diesel power during the first few moments of the journey, which just shows the flexibility that the new trains bring. I'd read about the acceleration and braking on the Azuma and this was exactly as I'd read as they really do take off. In a way, I'd been fortunate as the work trip I'd been on had featured trips on GWR 802's so it was good to compare the two. The interior in the Azuma is much better than that in the GWR equivalent and the seating is much more comfortable. It's a much brighter interior too and one very handy feature are the lights above the seats that indicat...

As is customary at this time of the year, it's time to look back at what the kids have been up to on the track and field as well as having a look forward to what 2019 might bring. Following tradition, we'll go in child order, so it's Dominic first.  2018 has been a year where there's been another club as he's now an athlete (as well as coaching) at Warrington AC following his move to the North West.  He's done a lot of officiating again in 2018, including UKYDL fixtures for his new club as well as the usual stuff in the North East.  He's also started his Level 4 qualification on the track and is having a dabble amongst the start team. Meanwhile, on the track, there's only been a couple of performances this season and that was the Great North Run plus an outing in the Cheshire League.  The highlight has to be his 3.77m long jump, which was actually a pb, beating his 2015 performance of 3.46m in Houghton's senior team.  He does though maintain hi...