Introduction,
I have
worked for CPM International for around 19 months and am lucky enough to be a
part of the highly successful Royal Mail campaign and as an added bonus my boss
Neill Hughes is a fellow Ironman. I have been asked to write a monthly blog by
the Marketing and Media team detailing the journey towards one of my major long
term sporting goals, the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. Before I
continue I wanted to provide a brief background on who I am and what makes me
tick!
It's fair
to say I have always been the 'sporty type' even from a young age I was highly
driven and in particular the training aspect. I had no problems getting up at
6am before school to go running or cycling and this led me in to the world of
football. Football became my life from the age of 8 until my late teens with
the highlights being asked to train and play for Bolton Wanderers and Chester
City, I even played for the Army Cadets England squad. Once I fell out of love
with football I had several years without any competitive sport and then by
chance stumbled upon Karting, but due to the sport being extremely expensive I
moved away from this and joined my local cycling club (Warrington Road Club).
After a season of training with the club I started looking for a challenge and
after reading an article about Ironman I found the sport of Triathlon. I
entered a local Duathlon (run,bike,run) and after nearly dying on the run, I decided to join the local triathlon club
(Warrington Tri) for help and guidance in 2009.
It is
here I met my now coach and very good friend Paul Coulter (www.thetrimarket.com), I have continued to train with
and be coached by Paul since I met him and would not of developed at the rate I
have without his support and guidance. I hope I have gone some way to repaying
his support by qualifying for the 2010 Age Group (short course) World
Championships in Budapest after only my 5th Triathlon and more recently
finishing just outside the top 100 in my first Ironman in Bolton
2011.
My
intentions are to write a monthly blog providing an insight into the sport that
has made me immensely proud of what I have achieved and above all else that I
love doing day after day. I want this to be an interactive process and I will
be including photos, training sessions etc. If in some small way I am able to motivate or inspire somebody to take
up any one of the sports involved in Triathlon then I will be extremely
happy.
So to
the task in hand, in order for me to qualify for the World Championships I need
to obtain a qualifying spot at my main race of the season, IM Wales in
September. The course is challenging but to be honest there are no easy Ironman
events however the standard of competition will be very high.
Training has been very easy
with volume only around 8-10 hrs per week, with my decision to transfer my race
entry from IM UK to IM Wales (5 weeks later) I have held off starting too early
as not to build early season fatigue. The current training week has basically
been 3 x swim sessions 4hrs, 2 x bike
sessions 3.5hrs and 2 runs 1.5-2hrs and as ever my short daily commute to and
from work adding around 2.5hrs a week. I have
unfortunately had 2 full weeks off training last month due to a chest and lung
infection but hopefully that's the illnesses out of the way before the real
training starts. I have a few races I want to enter which I feel will help
prepare me for Wales and once I've sorted
them out I will go in to more detail in
another blog.
I
will sign off this month’s blog with a quick you tube video that shows what Kona
is all about.
