Jari Hemmilä

The European championships were held in Barcelona just last week. Among the best nations were for example Russia, Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

The Nordic nations didn´t do that good. Finlands track & field -federation had hopes for three medals, but only one was achieved by Tero Pitkämäki at the mens javelin. There were good performancies at our team. Well done Janne Ukonmaanaho, Jonathan Åstrand, Mikael Bergdahl, Niclas Sandells, Petteri Lax, Otto Kilpi and 4 x 100 meters relay team.

In many mediaforums there is now a debate about what to do to get some success for our athletics. Some say that Finland needs coaches from abroad or that coaches should co-operate more. Both of these statements are accurate at some level.

Many well known people have said that our athletics need more mental praparation, which might as be true: it is well known fact that mental preparation carries an athlete like longer that poor concentration. At Barcelona I saw one peculiar issue on this mental side, and those moments happened right after the competitoin when athletics were interviewed by YLE-reporter.

The answers were like "I don´t know why this and that happened" or "at the moment I don´t want even think about highjumping". For some reason, at least from my perpective, there was no joy present at some performacies. Just normal weekday 8 am to work and 4 pm back to home.

But back to this mental training. I ran in our national team between the years of 1980-87. I can remember well that this issue about the mental preparation has been up and awake some many times. The thing that makes me sad is that our generation of track & field -figures are taking the same line as the older generations.

There was one good writing at Helsingin Sanomat on monday. I write more about that later, but main issue in this writing was that Finland with its 5,2 million people can´t be good in every event. This writing basically said that we should make decision what are our events. Ice-hockey is one event, because there are not that many countries involved, but what are the other events.

Like I have written earlier, I´m doing 3-4 jobs at the same time. The reason for this is, that some years back I was the editor-in-chief of the running and skiing magazine and that magazine was ended very suddenly almost three years ago. I was without work for a while.

When one reaches the age of 40, it becomes harder to find a job. The older you get, the harder it becomes. That was also true with me, so I became a member in a working community. That system works well. The secretary of that community takes care of the social payments, taxes and salary. My responsibility is the get work from the open market.

During the normal week I´m working six days. My only freeday is sunday. Last saturday, before the work, that is around 8 am, I ran hard workout. The distance was 19 kilometres, and during it I did one 5 minutes and five three minutes intervalls. I that I should have recover myself, but instead I went to work.

Then on sunday, when the heat was around 25-28 celsius degrees, I ran 36 kilometres. Good workout with the speed between 4.10-4.30 for each kilometre. I was very satisfied because of my run. But because I had no time to sit down and be still after my intervall workout on saturday, the heat and lack of recovery really hit me on monday.

Monday I took day off, as it was planned, and tuesday I ran only around ten kilometres. Yesterday morning was again fine with 15 kilometres run and 700 meters of swimming. Last night I met a frriend in Helsinki, so no workout this morning which wsa unusual.

So the heat was too much, but the real reason of my tiredness lies in my overdoing. Last saturday I should have ran a little less, like three times five minutes or four times one kilometre. My mistake took three days away from my trainingdays.

So often I´m amazed of my stupedity. As an experienced runner and coach I should know all this, but it is easier to give instructions to other runners, whom I coach, that to do it myself.

During the rest of this week my training goes as follows: today easy 10 kilometres. Tomorrow morning 14-16 kilometres easy (4.10-20/km). Saturday 18-20 kilometres with 30-40 minutes steady state -run. Sunday belongs to the long run all the way over 30 kilometres.

I wish good workouts for everyone.

Very often I have written that I´ve been a runner all the way from the year 1973. So many youngters got excited about running because of the success of the Flying Finns. Juha Väätäinen, Lasse Virén, Tapio Kantanen, Pekka Päivärinta and Pekka Vasala showed us all how to train and how to reach success at the Olympic games.

From that year on running has been inside my soul and it will stay there for the rest of my life. Like two days ago I ran 36 kilometres without even thinking about the distance. Running is one of those three things I need mentally to make my life worth living.

At this moment I still like to train runners. Expecially this statement is true when it comes to train those runners with a good motivation. They seem to enjoy their training without the problematic thinking which says that I must train instead of I like to run. I like to run is the basic philosophy behind all the training.

At the moment my trouble lies elsewhere: I´m not anymore interested enough about the track & field or other events. I don´t the reason behind of my frustration. It has sometihng to do to the notion that more or less the whole idea about competiton does not interest me anymore that much.

There are also some other matters that I have found to be behind of my lack of interest. First of all, I´m surprised that so many track & field -athletics are sort of pushed away from the possible coaching position without never asked their ideas about how to train. Part of the modern day jargon is to talk about the use of the quiet wisdom: some of the people with proper historical knowledge should be listened by younger workers in order to reach their potential all the way in their field of work.

Another aspect is the lack of co-operation among the coaches and runners. 2-3 times I have tried to start ”training movement” in my homearea, but I have failed. There is one group with good co-operation and by this I mean the runners and coaches of SFI (Svenska Finlands Idrottsförbund).

Third and perhaps the most important reason is that modern day Finnish runners and coaches are not listening the words af wisdom or selfcriticism. I don´t have all the answers when it come to training or competing. But every summer I´m wondering that how hard it is to run under 3.50, 8.30, 14.30 or 30.00 at the distances of 1500, 3000, 5000 and 10.000 meters. There is a fine line between competitive running and running to be in a good shape, and some of the Finnish runners don´t seem to realize the difference.

So have I reached the end of my interest for sport. I know it by the end of this track & field -season. I still like to watch competitions at least for some level, but more than ever I know that running itself is so much bigger matter than competing without passion.