In my very first post here I copied a short paragraph from a booked called ‘Who dares runs‘ by the über fit Gerry Duffy. Gerry is someone I admire for his desire to always try harder, go one better or just push himself a little bit further than he did before. In both ‘Who Dares Runs’ & his second book ‘Tick, Tock, Ten‘ Gerry mentions the requirement to step outside ones comfort zone as a way to improve your lot, the only way to get better is to step up a level. That’s where I got the name for the blog from…

Anyone that knows me, understands that I’m very fond of my comfort zone. I like all my ducks in a row and I’m not happy when one of them steps out of line. But in saying that, the last couple of years has shown that I’m willing to take on a challenge and once committed to it, I will always give it 100%. From the OT 5k to Dublin City Marathon in 9mths and various other bits and pieces in-between I’m happy to say that I tried and succeeded in many things.

I really should have noticed myself getting injured when training for the 2013 Limerick Marathon. Basic pointers like not being able to walk pain-free after runs and regularly missing training sessions were pretty obvious pointers, but I kept going and finished it. Not only that, after hobbling around limerick with a bad case of Plantar Fasciitis I then did my first triathlon in Athy a month later. It was a sprint distance, it was ok, I was sore and I probably shouldn’t have done it.

After TriAthy, I didn’t compete, run, train or do very much for 9months. Except swim. I took on the SwimIreland ‘Swim for a Mile’ challenge in January 2014 with the aim of going from a ‘100m and stop’ type swimmer to being able to swim 1600m (1 mile or 80 lengths of my pool) all in one go. I enjoyed the training, a first and I’ll write more about it when it’s over, but what happened was that I can now swim 2000m, in my lunch hour, 3 times a week. Who knew?!

Well that then threw up some serious problems! I had aways targeted TriAthy 2014 as my ‘come back’ event – I had entered the sprint distance triathlon for the end of May 2014 (750m swim, 20k cycle, 5k run) if I did it when I was injured, I can definitely do it again and sure the River Barrow will carry me most of the way downstream!

But now I can swim 2000m in a pool, surely I can conquer the Olympic distance triathlon (1500m swim, 40k cycle, 10k run) now? Uh oh, there goes the comfort zone.

So, with a considerable amount of swimming under my belt, practically no road cycling experience and my last run in anger more than 9months ago, I have entered not just TriAthy Olympic distance in May, but sure while I’m online, I entered the Dublin City Triathlon (yep, the olympic one) for August as well.

If your interested, and I hope I’m interesting enough, this is where I’ll tell my weekly training story…