Damian's Training Blog
Training for IM France

Still no sign of me in the pool.

I’ve been threatening to get in for a swim but still no luck.

This weeks training actually went really well. Aparts from the lack of swimming I have now begun to run and I’ve continued to chip away at the bike so I’ve finally got two of the three balls in the air. Plan is next week to finally get the swimming going too.

The big news this week would have to be the Bray wheelers race on Thursday night. All winter I’ve been training hard with John Darcy (team turlon coach) Razor Ryan (our climber) Liam Dillion (our descender) and coach Tony Martin has been giving us some good advice. But the three of us in particular would have been training hard on the bike. I always look up to both Liam and Paddy as an inspiration and whilst none of us would ever be great at Triathlon I take pride in knowing we’ll give it our best shot. That was until Thursday night, Paddy wasn’t having a great race……these things happen. But without having an injury or a mechanical fault he pulled out of the race. Changed my whole mindset on Razor Ryan………..I suppose the old saying is true never met your heros.

Got out for three good bikes this week. Got a good bit of training done with a fellow Ironman Nice competitor Conor McGowan. We went for a long run on Thursday morning, which kind of got me thinking about run strategy. In my head I was thinking just get out on the run course and give it socks for as long as you can (last year as long as I could was about 5k). This year I was hoping to do the half marathon before the wheels come off. On thursday I ran about a minute per kilometer slower than I normally would but I felt very comfortable the whole way around. I might try and slow down my pace a lot on the runs and see how I go, my only problem is if I die as badly as I usually do then due to my slow pace at the start the run could possibly take even longer than it usually does……..god it’s hard to know what to do.

I haven’t swam in over 3 weeks and for some bizare reason I’m not that worried. I just feel if I can get a bit better at the bike and the run I’ll get some sort of a time on the swim. It’s strange too cause I would prefer the swim out of the three events the most.

Today we had a great old cycle about 130km and almost 2000 meters climbed I got home and went out for a run and felt very comfortable running 6k off the bike. I suppose I’ll only really get a gauge on where I am on the bike when I do the Wicklow 200 this year.

Anyway a very good weeks training. I have never put in as many hours as I have over the past 10 days or so. Hopefully it will pay off in France.