No immediate return to general training at the Club (31st May)

Last week we held trial sessions at the club grounds with a small number of invited athletes to test our new pre-booking and attendance systems. It was also an opportunity to see how social distancing might work in practice. It went well, but numbers were small (three groups of three athletes with one coach each), so it was quite straightforward and we know it will be very different with much larger numbers at training. At the moment, under phase 1, the Athletics Ireland guidelines restrict numbers attending training to groups of four, three athletes with one coach, but from next week, that will change and larger groups will be able to attend training. It’s phrased as “small group team sport training”, which is vague and this week we expect Athletics Ireland to put a number on the size of the groups. If the group sizes are much larger than four, we may be able to recommence group training. The increase in travel distance to 20km will also see all our coaches return to training, which will be a huge help. However, it’s too early to throw open the gates just yet, so we’re asking members to continue to be patient while we work thorough the fine details. With a bit of luck we’ll all be back training at the club soon, but it all depends on the details released for phase 2. In the meantime, keep on running yourselves from home.