Mick Woods

Michael 'Mick' Woods
'Mick' Woods (left) with athletes Mo Farah and Chris Thompson
Born	(1949-02-15) 15 February 1949 (age 68) (Great Britain)
Occupation	Former distance runner, sports lecturer, running coach

Michael 'Mick' Woods (born 15 February 1949 in Great Britain) is a former long-distance runner and a middle/long distance running coach. He is currently a coach at Aldershot, Farnham & District AC and sports lecturer at St Mary's University in London. As an athlete, Woods ran internationally for Ireland and ran in over 70 marathons, with a personal best of 2:20.12. Woods is now one of the nation's leading endurance running coaches.

Woods is based at St Mary's University in London. He has been coaching since 1986 and has been extremely successful, putting numerous junior athletes into European Championships, GB teams and even the Olympic Games. Woods is currently coach to many GB athletes including Olympian Steph Twell,10,000m, European cross country champion Emelia Górecka, and international athlete Jonathan "Jonny" Hay.

In 2003, Woods was employed by the UKAthletics as a performance coach. In 2008, he was presented with the English Athletics Association Coach Of The Year Award.

In 2014, Woods was asked by Athletics Weekly about his retirement and his response was, "I like seeing athletes come through and improve and I coach athletes to race. As I get older, such a busy lifestyle is becoming more of a challenge, but I do not envisage retiring. Athletics is in my blood”.