Inter Counties XC 2012

I raced the UK inter counties cross country champs at the weekend. The top 12 from every county in the UK including Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have all pre-qualified so the standard is pretty crazy. It's not just that the fastest guy is so quick, but its the fact that the guy coming 200th is pretty rapid too. It was live on Sky Sports and one of the lads who was watching told me that you could see me a lot on the tellybox. The reason I run races like this is to raise the bar for me and to see how quick the top guys are.

I robbed a few stills off the telly. That's me in the day-glow Orange vest representing Hertfordshire. Growing up in Dublin in the days of Barney Rock and Hill 16 dreaming of representing my country was always a goal. I just never expected it to look so orange :-(

I finished in 154th place which is the lowest position I have finished in a race since my very first 10k in Richmond Park in 2003. But it's a fair result all the same. The top 200 guys are all sub 33 min 10k guys. That's the level of XC here in the UK. Johnny Brownlee came 5th though shattering the comforting illusion that none of the guys ahead of me can ride a bike. Good luck to the world against the Brownlee's in the Olympics; they're gonna need it.

Spring Ballbuster 2012

Over 300 athletes gathered on a still misty morning at Boxhill on Saturday for the early season duathlon classic, The Kinetica Ballbuster Duathlon. The formula for the Ballbuster Duathlon is pretty simple; it's an 8 mile lap starting at the top of Boxhill. You run the lap once, bike it three times and then run it again. It's probably my favourite Duathlon course (and I have done a long list at this stage) but it doesn't favour runners as much as the distance suggests because the bike course is pretty epic.

I started a bit cagey as there’s often some new faces (quick runners) at this race who push the pace early which I was hoping would happen. You never know who’s there but nobody was taking it on so I just went from the gun. One guy came with me and I didn’t feel we were going fast enough so I pushed on from about mile 4. I’ve raced here three times and I’ve never not been first into T1 so I was pleased to get out on the bike on my own again.

The key to the bike is smashing the first lap while you have a clear road ahead of you and putting time into the other guys. Then you have to keep on charging for the next two laps without losing much time weaving through the traffic which is stuck behind other athletes a lap down. I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch for the 20^th anniversary edition of the Ballbuster where we had 9 former winners present.  We were all asked what we thought was the key to winning this race and the answer was amazingly uniform. Everyone said you gotta show some kahunas on the bike! The time on the bike flies by for me as it’s extremely challenging through all the different sections. But if you want a fast split you got to commit. I fell off the bike (literally) in 1.05 which is pretty quick for this course and race straight down the hill to run the last 8 mile lap.

For the whole day I was playing a little mind game with myself which I called ‘Where’s Sam?’. Sam is actually a real guy, Sam Baxter who won this race last year and he was on the start list this year. I was pretty sure he hadn’t started but all through the race I was constantly telling myself that he was coming to get me; that I wasn’t pushing hard enough. The legs felt surprisingly light with a good turnover and it felt pretty quick. I was keeping an eye on my watch the whole time as I wanted to break 2.40 which for many is the gold standard in this event, so I flew up the hill to finish in 2.38.21. Job done and I took the win by 10 minutes.  The reason I was watching the time is because I have a list of the 10 fastest ever finish times from every Ballbuster since 1997and I wanted to get my name on it again. Here's the updated list...

Emerald Racing

I was announced this week as being a member of Emerald Racing which is Ireland’s brand new pro triathlon team and the full team line-up for 2012 has a lot of big names involved.  Included in the team are Martin Muldoon and Joyce Wolfe, the male and female Irish Ironman record holders, US based Robbie Wade the 8^th placed finisher in the Elite European Duathlon Champs in Limerick 2011 and Bryan McCrystal the Irish 100mile TT record holder and second placed finisher at Tristar 111 Estonia. The team also boasts the multiple podium scoring pro triathlete Eimear Mullan, Owen Cummins the winner of Tri Grand Prix Kilkenny and 3^rd pro at Ironman 70.3 Galway, European Age Group Duathlon Champion Mark Nolan and two world class Triathlon Ireland Elite triathletes in Amy Wolfe and Conor Murphy and of course me, the world's 15 ranked Long distance duathlete! There's some real class athletes in there so I'm happy to be associated with the project.

Follow the adventures of the team on their travels around the world hunting for gold at…

Email: emeraldracing@ireland.com
Website: www.emeraldracing.net
Twitter: @emeraldracing
Facebook: www.facebook.com/emeraldracing

2012 update...

It's been ages since I last posted so I have a few bits of news to catch up with. The 2012 season has begun (run-wise) and I've done a couple of run races and have my first Duathlon in a couple of weeks.

In January I came 8th at the Herts County Cross Country Champs and qualified for the County team for the Inter-counties team. That was one of my season long goals completed in the first week of 2012! Inter-counties is on Mar 10th and is usually live on Sky Sports and will be my first time in a county vest. It ain't Dublin blue though, it's Orange :-(

I also did the South England Cross Country Champs which is a great event for tri/duathlete's to do if you want to see what running is all about. The standard is mind-bogglingly high and I reckon the top 150 are sub 35min 10k men. At 15k it's the longest XC Champs in the UK and this course down in Brighton was a pretty brutal test. I came home 80th and all the guys who I consider peers or rivals were behind me so I'll need to raise the bar. Here's another awful picture of me running XC. I haven't seen a good one yet after about 30 races...

I spent 10 days training out in Lanzarote and banked some serious miles and broke my bike land speed record three times with the new high score being at 89.3kmph or 55.5mph. Top bombing!!! I think i did about 800K on the bike and maybe 160k running and bronzed my knees a small bit which is not bad at all for February.

I ran Wokingham Half Marathon today in 1.11.44. After going off too fast last year I made sure I didn't make the same mistake again by going off too slow this year. The first mile was perfect in 5.22 but then the pace of the group dropped majorly and it was pretty late before I realised it. At mile 6-7 I gave myself a serious talking to (there may have been some shouting) and then MTFU to bring it home in 1.11.44 which looks far too much like another 1.12 than I'd like it to. Reading HM is in 6 weeks so I'll go for a 1.10 there. I know I have the form as my speed/HR data from today suggests I have the capacity to go a lot quicker.

I also have another project which is about to get off the ground. It's a little bit of a secret but I don't think my involvement has gone unnoticed by most!! I'll blog about it later in the week anyway.

ITU World Powerman Duathlon Champs 2011

It has been a personal goal to race at an elite level for Ireland in the ITU World Long Distance Duathlon Champs an event that hasn't been held in the last three years. So when it was announced that this year the event would be held at the World Powerman Champs at Zofingen I was extremely pleased to be put forward by Triathlon Ireland as our representative.

The first rule of Powerman Zofingen is... You don't talk about Powerman Zofingen. All season I've been trying to get info on this event from my fellow athletes but nobody would divulge anything. "you'll have to see" was the common reply but it was clear there is a hidden mystique about this race.
The opening run goes straight up a hill and into the forest which is a taste of things to come for the next 190k of constant gradient changes where maintaining any rhythm is the biggest challenge. I ran 32.23 for the opening 10k run and came into T2 in 16th position among some very strong bikers which was exactly where I wanted to be.

The 150k bike route features 9 climbs including the infamous Bodenburg climb three times. The bike leg was very tactical with most of the men's elite field stretched out in pace lines which were only broken up on the climbs. The Bodenburg is a very tough climb. It's not long at about 4k but the gradient literally changes every 25m which is it's unique personality and I'm pretty sure it got steeper on each lap. I got two fast laps done but went through a bad patch on the seventh climb after dropping a gel and then taking two of an untested brand at a feed station in town which clearly didn't go down well and I started to feel nauteous. I laid off the nutrition for a while but got it together for the last 20k of the bike coming into T2 with a bike split of 4.10 and in 20th position in a group of 3.

The 30k second run starts with a steep 3k climb out of transition. I don't take long to get into my running stride but it was incredibly steep and therefore seemed pitifully slow but I was quicker than the guys around me. I picked off a couple of places but started suffering stomach cramps so had a couple of stops in the forest and lost a minutes because of that. I decided stopping again was not an option and carried on in a Catherina McKiernan London Marathon '98 fashion. It ain't pretty but it's a race and I don't mind getting messy if it's the fastest way to the finish. But I certainly wasn't planning any handstands at the finish.

I was still taking on gels and drinking coke so I was still getting nutrition in and running fast. In the end I came home in 17th with a fast finish and a total time of 6.47:47 which in any other year would be worth a top 10 finish and is a very respectable Zofingen debut. I raced hard, managed a couple of crisis situations well and never stopped racing while many others suffered and either fell behind or dropped out.

I think I can make at least 5-10 mintues worth of simple improvements for next year based on the experience alone. Plus maybe another 10 with the right work done over winter so I'm already making plans for a sucessful return next year.

This race is an incredible challenge. Before racing it I thought of it as the Ironman of Duathlon but it's nothing like an IM course so if you're interested in a big challenge then Zofingen is a certainly that. And it would be great to see more Irish athletes at Zofingen testing themselves at this iconic event.

I'd like to thank Triathlon Ireland for their belief and support. Shorter Rochford cycles for the P3 power. Compressport UK for recovery. Optimum Velocity for the future and Mark H my employer for being understanding about time off.

A big thank you Fritz my homestay for being so accomodating and helpful while I was in Switzerland. And Monica for feeding me (whoever knew mashed potatoes were the worlds best recovery food?!).

And also a big thank you to Phil Parsons for handing out nutrition and support on the day. You were an immense help.