Mission complete!

It's been a long, hard and very eventful few months but in the end......... We got there! Here's a run down of my lead up to Challenge Henley

End of July 2011 - I returned from America feeling in fantastic shape. Training with my buddy and pro triathlete Pete Mallett had inspired me and along with some improvments in my swimming tekkers from our pool work, and running speed from our track sessions and nightime runs through Boston College and NorthWestern Uni Campuses I felt great. I followed this up with a 3km lake swim at Marlow. for the first time ever I was close to Harrison come the end which gave me a lot of confidence.

August 1st-14th 2011 - The first half of August passed far too quickly and didn't contain nearly enough sessions. A few decent runs were smashed, the lowlight however came whilst riding a loop of the Challenge Henley bike course. I picked up my first ever puncture coming down Pishill. I then failed to prepared which left me unable to fix it roadside. With no signal on my phone it took an hour to walk to the Crown Pub where the friendly barman lent me his phone and sorted me a J20 and some nuts! Luckily my girlfriend was able to drive to my rescue!

August 14th - 30th 2011 - So this was the time to step up the milage and hit the road hard. This I did, but interspersed with a week on holiday in Spain! That said some decent warm weather training was completed in sunny Alicante including some beach runs and an early morning run in Calpe bay.

I returned from Spain feeling refreshed and trained well, including some good sessions in the lake at both Marlow and datchet and some solid runs. The bike was beginning to become a worry with few miles completed.

Sunday 4th September - MAIDENHEAD HALF MARATHON

In preparation for Challenge Henley - Myself and Jon Childs (The Iron Lady) cracked the Purple Patch Maidenhead Half Marathon. This was a 'late doors' decision but one that proved to be a good one as the course was fantastic and the event was very run as ever by Chris and Claire.

After a solid start JC pushed on after 3 miles which left me to keep up the pace of subbing 1hr 30mins which was my target. I managed to do this and stayed strong through some dodgy patches around 7-8 miles. At 9 miles I was joined by an athlete from Maidenhead Athletic club, we pushed each other on fro 2 miles before he ate my dust as I picked up the pace for the last few miles. Picking up the relay marathon course for the last 2.6 miles was a real inspiration and helped counteract the heavy rain that drenched us. I was elated to come in at 1hr 28mins.

2 weeks till ironman....

The plan was to train at around 50% intensity for a week and then drop down to 30% the week prior to training. Unfortunately I suffered a berevement in the form of the sad death of my brother the day after the Maidenhead Half. This knocked my preparations into touch as I struggled to come to terms with this news. Doing the ironman was never in doubt, although the day before the race I was physically, but especially mentally drained. My focused had changed to just completing the ironman in memory of my bro. But could I do it? And could I last the bike course having only done a longest training ride of 49 miles? As the event loomed there were lots of doubts and emotions in my head........