A New Start

I started to set this up back in December, but between one thing and another never got into the whole idea of blogging. My idea was to blog about coaching and the athletes I work with, back then it was just one, but now it has grown to seven that I work with on a weekly schedule. But first a little history about me.

Was born in Ireland, and lived there until August of 1995 when I took up a full athletic scholarship to High Point University. I am now a US ciziten but still like to call Ireland home and try to get home at least one a year.

My running backround started in the fall of '83 at the age of 16, up until then I played soccer, football and hurling which is the fastest moving game in the world and the toughest. Back then it was just something to do. I would say I started to train hard in the spring of 88 and run alot more races in Ireland from 5k to 10milers and place well in them. In 1992 I ran my first marathon in Dublin finished in 2:39.00. The next one was to be Boston in 93 and had such a good time I came back again in 95 but came and stay in Greensboro for two weeks before the race with my aunt and uncle who worked at High Point University The next thing I knew I was being offered a sholarship to run for them which, believe it not, I turned down three times before I agreed to come.

During my time at High Point University I was conference runner of the year twice in cross country, the university then moved from D2 to D1 and we could not compete at the conference level for two years. So I graduted in 3 and a half years. I volunteered for two years with Bob Davidson and worked with the distance kids, some may say I started the distance program, my first year we recruited Taylor Milne and Tommy Evans. During the track season I coached the winners in all the distance events from 800m to the 10k at Conference. In 2000 the University make a coaching change so I worked in Resident Life for the next four years.

 Then in 2003 I went back to school to get my Masters, again at HPU, in 2004 I started to volunteer with Wake Forest University track and cross country team, then in 2007 was employed full time. During the next three years I worked with some very talented athletes, but again to my misfortune in 2010 the university wanted to make a coaching change, so again I find myself looking and thinking what next.

 So in the mean time I have started to work with athletes that want to improve their fitness or run faster. They range form Molly Nunn who is 8 seconds off the Olympic trials down to people that want to run a 5km.

So the name of my blog "Dugganelites" come from a group that I enjoyed coaching while at Wake Forest, they were a group of walk ons, dare I say it but the head coach had no time for or did not want to make time for. So we use to joke of how it would be nice if some of these walk ons were to start beating scholarship athletes. It was not too long before they started to improve, the first step was to get them to believe in themselves; when you are told you cannot do something for a while you begin to believe you can't.

The first step was to challange them in workouts. I would have them do a workout that they believed they could not do but when they finished it, I would remind them of how easy it was.