"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional" - A relevant quote I pondered during the long hours training in the Dublin Mountains over the last 6 months. I think it sums up the mental aspect of long distance training really well. Your arms and legs are sore from swimming, your back hurts from craning over aero bars on the bike, you haven't eaten anything solid in hours... and yet you're still running - after swimming and cycling. But you have a strange feeling, beneath the superficial pain and fatigue, there's a sense of achievement that nothing else but physical exertion can deliver.
Not to say that there's no mental lows with the highs - there definatly is, and if you don't keep your head in order, you can very easily convince yourself that there's no possible way you can go on. "The Wall" to marathon runners - it's not pleasent and there's nothing to overcome it but mental strength and determination, an absolute desire to not fail. When you do, the high is like nothing else on earth. Invincibility.

I completed 3 triathlons over the summer: Athlone (201st out of 1100), Grand Canal Dock (11th out of 300) and Brittas Bay (Olympic Distance - 1.5km swim*, 42km cycle, 10km run) (7th out of 81). There's few things more rewarding than feeling you've done yourself justice and lived up to your potential. The triathlons over the summer were a great opportunity to feel this way. I trained hard for them and I think this added a lot of enjoyment - to actually be competing with the leaders rather than just aiming to finish. I was sponsored to the tune of 1200 euro, which has gone to 3 charities - Focus Ireland, Self Help Africa and St. Catherine's Hospital, Wicklow.

Reading back through a training diary, in preparation for the triathlons since April, I've swam 29.85km, cycled 1948.2km and ran 101.3km. I tore ligaments in my ankle in June, tore my quad in July and caused an incalculable amount of wear to Irish roads. I kept up a life also - Hurling, Jiu Jitsu, work and Opera rehearsals (I like challenging stereo types - an MMA fighting Baratone) continued as unabated as possible. Ironically, I think doing all the other things probably made the long triathlon trainings possible. And vice versa - when you've been through a hellish 2 hour run, very little can phase you in a comfortable office.

I think it all comes down to limits inside your head. You'll rarely achieve what you believe you can't. When you stop limiting yourself mentally, you can achieve so much more. These are my conclusions, pondered upon when everything else hurts. I just hope I still remember them when my ability to do this stuff fades.

I will be taking part in two Triathlons in the coming month (one of which involves a swim in the Liffey!), and I hope to raise funds for two charities in the process. A standard triathlon consists of a race over a 750m swim, a 21km cycle and a 5km run.

The first is in Athlone on the 12th July. The swim starts against the River Shannon (the last part, mercifully, is downstream) followed by a bike course starting on Grace Road, continues out the rolling Roscommon roads to the village of Brideswell and then back towards the town centre for the run.

The second is the Focus Ireland Dublin City Triathlon. The race starts with the swim leg in Grand Canal Dock, beside the Liffey. The cycle goes around the Quays and out to the Dock Lands. The 5km run will start on aptly named Misery Hill, before going towards Ringsend Park, across the East link and back to Grand Canal Square via the quays.

I'll be raising money for two charities in these races.

The Athlone triathlon: Self Help (www.selfhelp.ie) is an Irish development agency engaged in promoting and implementing integrated sustainable development programmes in rural Africa. Their aim is one of building self reliance rather than giving handouts.

The Dublin race: Focus Ireland (www.focusireland.ie) work to help the situation of homeless people in Ireland. I believe this is a responsible way of helping homeless people in Ireland. Giving money to homeless on the street can, I believe, be counter-productive. Giving to them via Focus Ireland will help provide them with food, shelter and other needs.

Money raised will be doubled by Microsoft.


If you’d like to give sponsorship:

Focus Ireland: Focus Ireland have set up a sponsorship page for each entrant where you can sponsor directly (and securely) here (https://www.focusireland.ie/htm/fund... ).

Self Help: Contact me, sign a card and I'll get the money from you.


Training for a triathlon:

I began training about two months ago. I train 6-7 days a week. Two of these sessions will be “brick” sessions, doing all 3 disciplines, typically at weekends. The others will be one of swimming, cycling or running, along with a weights session. When you’re doing long distance running or cycling, weights become very important to stop muscle imbalances causing injuries over time.

I've concentrated hardest on swimming, gradually building up to 1km or so straight in the pool or the sea. I plan to train up to about 1.2km to allow for the fact that part of the Athlone swim will be against the Shannon. For the cycling training, I cycle in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains a few times a week. They’re a stones throw from my house. It's a great feeling, I must say, getting to the top of Kippure or some such mountain having spent the best part of an hour and a half grinding up it.

I think you learn a lot about yourself when you're doing long distance stuff - cycling for several hours. Mainly because you have time to think - and probably concentrate on the little things going on a lot more than with other sports.

With all the other stuff I do, the training wasn't that much of a shock. The biggest problem is that doing long distance stuff really lowers your abillty to sprint so I keep getting injured playing hurling. I've heard people saying this is the case before but I was sure it'd never happen to me. Hopefully there's a middle ground between with a bit more sprint training or the like.


For now - 1 week to go. This is going to be fun.. Mostly because it will be hard.

"There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going."

On Wednesday 20th December... The kids that think they own Bondi will be getting a pleasent suprise.


www.ReclaimBondi.com



Burned!