Craig Mottram helps the Hawthorn Amateurs prepare for the City2Sea run

THE Hawthorn Amateur Football Club bolstered its performance in the City2Sea run last week with its players benefiting from a special running clinic with Australian distance star Craig Mottram.

s22pp999: craig mottram leads the hawthorn ammos on a training run

THE Hawthorn Amateur Football Club bolstered its performance in the City2Sea run last week with its players benefiting from a special running clinic with Australian distance star Craig Mottram.

The club had 25 players, partners and even sponsors running in the event, and they managed to raise nearly $12,000 for mental health charity One in Five.

And, armed with Mottram’s advice, the fastest Hawk finished in 1hr 04min and even the slowest clocked a respectable 1hr 28min.

Hawthorn president Patrick Clancey said it was an amazing experience having Mottram at the club.

“Being amateur footballers and having such a highly regarded professional come and train with us was great,” he said. “We got to see how he goes about it, the training he does, and how fit he is.”

Mottram put the players through their paces during the clinic, making them do a 3km run as a warm-up before educating them on correct running techniques and then pushing them with eight minutes of hard running.

He took the players through a warm down and gave them advice about their nutrition and the City2Sea race itself.

Clancey said, although it was a lot tougher than the squad’s usual training sessions, the clinic proved to be invaluable.

“Craig really helped. All the guys were talking about what they’d been eating that week, and they really took on board all the advice he gave in the build-up to the City2Sea,” he said.

The club will be hoping the clinic has an impact in terms of the players’ performance on the field next season.

“Craig does work with the Western Bulldogs, so he was able to give us advice on their running training, which was a really good insight into the elite level,” Clancey said.

“Our coach plans on implementing the running strategies this pre-season and we think this will help us enormously in terms of our endurance.”