Gerry is a Level 4 Certified Coach and a very well known in Canadian track and field circles. During his career as a coach, Swan has developed more than 25 athletes that have represented Canada internationally and has served himself as a coach on a number of international teams. His most notable athlete was Brit Townsend. During her career under the guidance of Swan, Brit established six Canadian records and placed seventh in the 1500 meters at the 1984 Olympics.
Training tip:
• Make your warm-up run an integral part of your training. In other words, if you do a 15-minute warm-up run, divide it into three parts with the first 5-minutes run easy, the next 5-minutes run at a medium pace and the last 5-minutes run at just below threshold pace.
• When increasing the difficulty of any particular workout, consider carefully all of the components involved (volume, intensity or speed, length of rest interval and what you do during the rest period i.e. jog, walk or stand still). As a general rule, increase the difficulty of the workout by changing only one component at a time.
• Take care to not include several consecutive anaerobic workouts. Although mature, well-conditioned and talented runners may be able to handle a cycle that includes consecutive anaerobic workouts, for younger runners this can cause extreme tiredness and possible breakdown.
• Know what event you are peaking for. Do not try to peak for early season meets but use these meets as a gauge of your progress and perhaps include running more than one event. You may have two meets (or series of meets) during the season that you wish to peak for. Count back 10-days before the important meet and over that time span decrease, on a workout-to-workout basis, the intensity of your workouts.
