Saturday 26 November 2011

PLANNING AHEAD FOR A NEW SEASON



(above William Sichel winning the 8 day "no finish line" race in Monaco earlier this week)

Well it's been a while since I last posted anything,and I've been getting subtle reminders as to when I was gonna update the blog,so i said I'd better string a few lines together and let you all know what I've been up to over the last few months.

Since September I have been looking at ways to try and improve my performances.First major thing that stood out was my diet,so I got on to my Irish team mate Barry Murray at http://www.optimumnutrition4sport.com/
Barry put me to the top of his busy list of clients when he realised how shocking my diet was!!I was eating all the wrong things at the wrong times.Not getting in enough proteins or fats.I now know what to eat every day based upon the training sessions I am doing on a particular day and eating the right foods makes a massive difference to my energy levels.So that was the nutritional side of things sorted..........now it was time to look at my training and see what improvements could be made at that end.

Following a previous conversation earlier in the year with multiple word record holding ultra runner,William Sichel,I am delighted that he and his training coach Shaun Brassfield Thorpe have agreed to take me on.William and Shaun have a different approach to training,and have thrown in a mixture of new elements to compliment some of what I had already been doing.Before we started working together I agreed to do as they say and to stick to the plan.Check out Williams blog http://www.williamsichel.co.uk/blog/

World 100k championships 2012 in Italy is my number 1 goal.Everything I do with these guys over the next 5 months will be geared towards that race.I now have more structure to my training and every session I do has a purpose and is specific to what I am doing.We have only been working together for 4 weeks but already I can see improvements in my training.

Next up for me as part of my training for world 100k,will be the Clonakilty marathon on December 10th.
 http://www.runclon.ie/

After that it will be the Gloucester 50k on January 22nd with possibly another 50k race in february.
All going well that should leave me in good stead for April