Clatters Chatter: Who Am I?

I’m just a ordinary kid with a dream! Hi my name is Luke Clatworthy. I’m a 16 year old teenager from Nelson, New Zealand. I have an encouraging family and have two younger brothers. I also go to Waimea College and I love to play sports. These are just some of many attributes that tell the story of my life so far with sports.

Since I was 5 years old I always loved to play football and growing up in England I think just about any person would want to play football all their lives. I moved to New Zealand when I was just 7 years old with my mum (Bev), dad (Martin), and two brothers (Adam and Joseph). Since our arrival here, there has been no regrets, well except maybe some friendships. We are a football mad family, so as soon as we got here I registered to the Suburbs Football Club (a local club near me) straight away.

When I was 10 years old, I needed some money for some things I wanted as mum didn’t want to keep paying out for all my gear. So I got a paper round and deliver a 300 round, x3 a week. I used to get bored doing this, so mum used to time me and I used to run and get the round done in half the time. This is how I first got into running and I loved it.

When I was 11 mum entered me in a Duathlon. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I ended up winning my race for U16 and got third overall in the series. After this I always did them for fitness and enjoyment.

Now at 14, I had been approached twice by this Greg Lautenslager guy. Some running coach? He asked me to join his training group, but it clashed with other sports and so I had to make a choice. I decided to do one each, football on Thursday and run on Tuesday. This is when I first started training for running and my first event was the South Island championships. I placed 2nd in the U15. I was stoked. I have carried this running on and have done well placing 6th at Nationals the next year and various other placings. I left Greg in 2018 and moved on to triathlon – my next discovery!

I started to get into swimming quite recently and tried to get faster as I loved the idea of triathlon with swim, bike, run. Even though I had never swum much before and was pretty rubbish, I still enjoyed it and got progressively better. I got some help by some awesome people one of them being Britta Martin. She taught me some valuable skills and life lessons that I have taken on board to help me succeed.

Currently I am 16 years old and have met some pretty cool coaches. However for my next race I needed someone who could be really specific and had the time to coach me to a high standard, as I want to do well in XC nationals. This is when I bumped into Coach Ray on the internet and reading his reviews he looked really good. Judging by the training week that has just come through for my first week I am shocked at how much detail there is and can’t wait to get started.

My dream has altered now from a football player. I want to go and smash Ironman Kona.

“I want to be the best!”

– Luke Clatworthy (Clatters Chatter)