HPT News : Dec 1

UTMB Kosciusko 50km :

Some great running down in the Alpine region this week and a Thursday race was a bit of a strange one. The day brought some cold weather too and in fact the race saw athletes running through channels cut into. snow drifts in places.

Congrats to Craig Dortkamp who took it out hard early and held on really well for his 5:49. This placed Craig well inside the top 10% of the field. An outstanding result !

Doug Parra chose one of the toughest races around for his first foray into Ultra running and came away with a strong finish in 9:17. This guy is a strong athlete and mentally and physically took on the challenge the only way he knows how. With a smile.

Unfortuntately Paul Humphreys and Dan Inglese werent able to finish the race but still punched out a solid 35km before they pulled the pin. They just weren’t able to get the km in in training that they wanted. We are all still proud of you guys for having a crack !

HPT Beer Mile :

Thursday, 18th Dec, 6pm - Waratah Oval

HPT Christmas Party

Sunday, 21st Dec, 3pm - Sunday Road, Kirrawee

Quarter 3 Athlete Reports :

Crumpy has started sending out the Quarter 3 reports overnight with all your training numbers. No “squad-wide” testing is taking place in Quarter 4 (other than for new athletes) as it’s not relevant to our needs right now.

Expect the next round of testing in Week 3 of 2026. A good reminder to keep your fitness up over the next 7 weeks !!

Communication :

A final thought for the newsletter this week is on communication.

In my 23 years of coaching I would say this has seen the greatest change of all the components of coaching.

We have so many ways of communicating with each other now and that is good and bad at the same time. Finding a clear path to your training thought process can be cluttered and messy.

You may not use instagram. You may not read emails. You might not be on the chat group. You may not use training peaks post-activity comments.

Hey … some people don’t even like to communicate ! They just like to put their heads down and train. They have enough communication in their lives with work and family and friends group chats !

This has lead me on a merry chase at times trying to individualise the delivery of my message.

There is no simple answer to this other than to remember that communication is important and can be mostly simple.

Here’s a few thoughts :

I’ll do more Instagram reels. They seem to work well currently.

Increase “coach’s thoughts” on Instagram stories

Be more targetted in Training Peaks comments. You dont need to put a comment in unless you feel it’s needed.

Schedule a call with me. Rather than lots of little interactions, a 20min call every 3-4 weeks might be smarter and more useful

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