I always feel like the summer has started when the first Aquathon on Bray seafront takes place. There's three of these races and they basically fall in the middle of each of the summer months. The previous weeks training wasn't great in that I just couldn't hit the times on the intervals that I needed to hit. So was told by coach Gary to run the first lap really hard, and see where you're at after that. I sort of knew it just meant race hard because it's not like you're going to slow up on the second lap. There were a few lads and lassies that I was hoping to put in a better time against. Usually i'd...
So for my last attempt at breaking 5k I prob didn't spend too much time worrying about what actually splits I was doing but this time I'm paying a lot more attention to the times, and they're not great. For example Thursdays session was a 3k time trial to see where we are at. Ideally I should be able to at least run 3k in under 12 minutes at this stage. So we did our warm up and then went out to run the hard 3k. You never really know how you're going until the 1st k. So the watch beeped and I felt like I had gone really hard and was praying it would start with 3mins something....
So it's prob been my best week training wise in quiet a while. The two missed sessions were the long Run which was a big one to miss and the bric run off the bike. I also swapped a training swim for a race on the Saturday. It was my first time this year getting into the sea and without a wetsuit just togs. It was pretty cold but because it was a race you just got on with it. Finished 125th place. It's a handicapped race so I was off on 3:45 mins after go, it's short enough race so trying to catch people off that time is beyond me. Having said that there's some really good swimmers going...
So having failed to break 20 minutes for 5k it was back to the drawing board. What have I changed to try and break it this time. I've got help, I didn't just get a plan off the Internet. I've Gary Crossan giving me a hand with a program. Straight away we worked out the problem. One of the first sessions was 3* 1k in 3 mins 50 seconds with 90 seconds recovery. I couldn't even go sub 4 for 1k........how did I think I could string 5 of them in a row!!! I'm only running 4 days a week this time. The last plan had about 6 days a week and I always missed about 2 so commit...
So after following a 6 week training plan that promised to get me to sub 20 minutes I wasn't able to produce the goods on the day!! Where did it all go wrong? When I arrived in Shanganagh I recieved a call from one of our biggest supporters on the blog, Liam Dillion to say he couldn't be bothered turning up to see my 5k attempt even though he only lived 5 minutes away. That was a huge blow to the team that in truth we never really recovered from. Now I'm not the type of person to blame someone else, but if I was to blame anyone it would be Liam Dillion for his lack of commitment to the...
