Friday 18 May 2012

Long time, no chat.

Well it has been a long while since I have done a blog, pretty bad at this I have to admit. hopefully I will blog a bit more regularly when I have more time on my hands now that uni is over and when I have some more things to talk about as race season is fast approaching.

The reason I have been able to write this blog is I  now have a bit more time as I had my last exam today so I am finished my second year at university, half way through my degree now, pretty scary how fast it has gone so far.

Now a full time athlete for a couple of months :) 100% of my time can be devoted to my training and recovery.

The last time I was on this was in Spain during Easter when I was on a training camp, which was brilliant,  everything went well and got a good solid block of training down coming into race season.

A lot has happened since then, with trying to keep up the training, my 1st race and also trying to get essays and exams over with. Really glad my exams are over and can forget about any sort of work for a couple of months.

So as I mentioned since my training camp I had my 1st race. It was British University Championships.
It was a good performance but not the result I would have liked.
I finished 3rd which I was really pleased with, medaling at British Uni's on my 1st proper attempt (only swam and biked last year as I was still recovering from my stress fracture).

BUT..... when I say I came 3rd....... that didn't last for long, I really ended up coming 6th overall. :(

The 1st 6 fasted finishers all got 2 min penalties for supposed drafting:(
Yes we were in a group of 6 going a hell of a lot faster than the rest of the field but drafting? we did try and keep minimum distance. What can you expect if you put some of the top triathletes at Uni in Britain 10secs apart in a pool based non-drafting race, when we are used to racing drafting ITU rules?

The problem was the motorbike marshal was beside us at all times throughout the bike course, never once asked us to move further back or even give us a warning but then added 2mins on to our finishing times. ..... aww well shit happens nothing we can do about it now.
I had a good race and was a decent 1st race of the season, regardless of the final outcome.

Last night I took a break from revision and raced Scottish 5km road race champs up at Edinburgh, had an ok race, running isn't exactly where I want it to be but its going in the right direction. Lacking a lot of speed as my training has been a lot of build running as my body still hasn't adapted to a heaving run training load just yet as I am still fairly new to this game.
I managed a 15.44 which I should be pleased with but I suppose I am just one of those people that just wants to always be going faster. If I could just double that for a 10km split I'd be pretty pleased ;) ... in time.

So thats most of what has happened lately, now onto the future ------>
I will try and get a list of my events up on the relative tab in the next couple of days, but a quick run down of the next month and a bit.....

I will be heading back home at the end of the month ready for my 1st Olympic distance triathlon (Dublin doesn't count DNF due to puncture) It will be ATHY OLYMPIC. looking forward to that, just mainly as a chance to get used to running 10km off a bike.

The following weekend I will be back over on the mainland for Blenheim Elite Triathlon, part of the British Super series. I heard recently the Brownlee's will be doing it, so should make things interesting (if that goes ahead).

And then the big announcement ..........

I have been selected to represent Ireland at the World University Games in chinese Taipei at the end of June, really looking forward to this :) as it is a massive trip to make it really worthwhile I will also be racing Osaka Asian cup race the following weekend (July 8th).
Exciting times, a major competition and my 1st ever senior continental cup. I can't wait. :)


..... And to think I was about to call this 'a quick update' ha, sorry for all the writing, got bit carried away.

apologies for no pictures either, no camera at the moment.

Take it easy.
Russell :)