Marathon Potential 2024 Team Announced

19 December 2019

The new Marathon Potential 2024 programme officially started on Saturday 14^th December 2019, bringing together the athletes, coaches and support team who will be working together across the next four years.

After an extensive selection, we are delighted to announce the names of the 11 male and 7 female athletes, and their coaches, who were selected to be a part of this programme:

Male		Female
Athlete	Coach	Athlete	Coach
John Black	Jim McGuiness/ Seamus McCann	Nakita Burke	Sean McFadden
Conor Bradley	Teresa McDaid	Jessica Craig	Raymond Adams
Kyle Doherty	Colin Roberts	Laura Graham	Ryan Maxwell
Conor Duffy	Emmett Dunleavy	Sarah Lavery	Gerry McCabe/ Catherine Diver
Eoin Hughes		Ann-Marie McGlynn	Colin Roberts
Christopher Madden	Mark Kirk	Fionnuala Ross	Dermot Kerr
Conan McCaughey	Mark Kirk	Catherine Whoriskey
Scott Rankin	Allan Bogle/ Brian Rankin
Craig Simpson	Sammy McAnaney
Gary Slevin	Dara Furey
Eoghan Totten	Richard Rodgers

The initial meeting of the Marathon Potential 2024 group allowed the athletes to get together for a group training session at the Mary Peters Track. These training sessions will take place approximately every two months and aim to create an environment where athletes will support each other, push each other on and also provide an educational element on how training works. On Saturday, they trained at specific paces and were monitored for heart rate and lactate levels to help understand the intensity and cost to energy systems at the various paces.

After training and lunch, Director of Coaching & Athlete Development, Jackie Newton, spoke about the aims of the programme before Elaine Riddell, from the Belfast City Marathon, congratulated the athletes on their selections and wished them well for the future, stating that the Deep RiverRock Belfast City Marathon are delighted to be supporting the project.

Dr. Gavin Breslin, Sport Psychologist at Ulster University, who has come on board as the Sport Psychologist for this programme, then spoke about self-determination and how every member of the group will contribute to improving together. He then introduced an app that his team at the University have developed for the athletes to monitor their wellness including sleep, physical shape, nutrition and mood.

Special Guest, Stephen Scullion, then took the floor and delivered key messages on planning ahead from where the athletes are now and where they want to be in the future, working out how they are going to get there, realising that it won’t happen overnight, recovering well and not underestimating the importance of adequate sleep.

Mark Kirk, lead coach for this project, then summarised and talked about the future plans that include a Warm Weather Training Camp in January. Full details about the aims of this programme can be found here: https://athleticsni.org/News/Athletics-NI-News/Deep-RiverRock-Belfast-City-Marathon-to-support-Athletics-NI-Marathon-Potential-2024