Coached Athlete Review – Ian Mulrooney

Well, what an amazing year!  This year I turned 60 and wanted to see what I was capable of!  My initial target was to do more running, with the aim of doing an Ultra. Along the way I had set target of running a Park Run sub 27:30 and did 26:50 in February. Then I wanted to do a 10km sub 60 at 60 – completed that in March 57:26. In between those, I went on a training camp with ChallengeTri… what an amazing trip that turned out to be. I swam more than I had all year, loved the bike and being back in Mallorca, the running was tough and then on the last day we did an “Event’.  Mine turned out to be a Swim 1km, Bike 40km and Run 9.22km – nearly a Standard Triathlon.  I’d not done that since I raced in Australia in 1990.  A bit of a shock… swim was good, bike was great and run was tough!  But and this was a big BUT, I thought I could do a Standard triathlon later in the year.  I had three runs booked in, completed the Adidas Terrex 25km Trail Run Mountain , then the The White Horse Half Marathon, both turned out to be 27km.  I was aiming to do an Ultra – the Hardmoors 40, but I decided against it as I hadn’t done enough miles.  Then took a big leap and decision and decided to do a 70.3 and have Nick from Challenge Tri Camp coach me! I’d done an event in Northumberland in 1989 that was close to that but nothing official.  I did two Sprint Triathlons along the way – Bassenthwaite Sprint Triathlon and Peebles Sprint Triathlon, plus Scaling Dam 10 mile run.  All building for the Ironman Marbella 70.3.