Sunday, May 10, 2009

Small Nations Championships... new P.B!!



Hi Everyone,

Its been a while since my last post and a lot of things have happened. In the Tour of Malta I had finished in 4th place overall and since then my preparation for Ironman have increased by a lot of hours. Training has been going reasonably well and I am very pleased with it. Now I have the last block of training before taper starts.

We had a fantastic race this morning. Our National Team (men & women) won gold in the Small Nations Championships. I finished 4th overall with a P.B. of 1hr 58mins 38sec. First time under 2hrs in an Olympic Distance and that is a very positive sign especially since last Friday I did 200km cycling as part of my Ironman preparation. It was certainly an unexpected result.

Swim was average, had a slow start and took me a while to get into a good pace. I covered the 1500m in around 21mins which is not that brilliant for me but I wasn't looking at a top result at that point in the race. On the bike I stayed with Tom Carrier (Luxemburg), who took 3rd spot in the end. We formed a group of about 6 cyclists. My brother and team mate Luke formed part of this group. With each lap I was starting to feel very strong. On to the run and my legs felt good. I kept a strong pace and tried to keep as close as possible to Tom Carrier. After 5km I was 18mins, towards the end i realised that a sub 2hr race was on the cards so I gave it all I had. In the end it was 1:58'39..... GREATTTT!!!

I finished in 4th overall and second Maltese. Keith (my brother) was 5th and Luke was 6th. We got the Gold Medal as team. The girls did a great race as well, getting Gold in the Team event, and posting good times. My girlfriend Johanna made it 5th overall and was a few seconds away from a PB... Fantastic solid race after six weeks sick in the beginning of the year.

Well done to all... and well done jojo! :)

Dermot