It's been a while!!!

It been a long while since I've blogged anything, but I've decided that I should stop being lazy and start up again.

Why bother? I hear you say!

Basically because it makes me more accountable. I have a couple of goals which are now fairly firmly set (in a loose kind of way), and I figure that in order to blog you should really try and have something to blog about. Hence the restart!

I do however need to come up with a catchy new blog title, KieranMischewskiNZIronman2008 isn't really relevant anymore - its yesterdays news (so to speak). I'll ponder that for a while and come up with something spectular, or failing that just something more fitting.

So what have I been doing since Ironman New Zealand?

Well immediately following Ironman I was all fired up to do more. Thankfully after a couple of weeks that desire subsided, I don't think my marriage would last another Ironman, or at least not yet, and I do really like being married.

So I've spent a bit of time mostly running, with my main and most immediate goal at the moment being to get a PB (or PR for those in North Americia) in a mid year half marathon which I did last year. By the way a PB for me is sub 1 hr 45. 1 hr 30 is the dream goal, so I need to get a bit faster. This is going to feed in well to my half ironman buildup later on in the year, as I simply don't run fast enough, or indeed as fast as I could.

What I've noticed in most of my races is that I ever cross the finish line fully spent. I think that comes down a bit to experence, in that I haven't done a lot of running races (or races that end with a run as in triathalon) so have been holding back to ensure I have enough ounce to finish. This year I'm making a concerted effort to run HARDER. I'm doing this by upping the intensity for short (under 10 k) runs at the moment. The idea being to keep my heart elevated above my normal target zones and hold the pace. The result initially was a very tired Kieran. But as things have progressed the effort has become more managable, and the times have stayed quick (for me). The next step is to increase the distance whilst maintaining the effort.

However, to put a slight spanner in the works, I've just committed to a 100k charity race on the 28th May - two weeks away!(bike race that is - I'm not game enough to run that far just yet). Here's the story:

I work for a bank which sponsors a Resuce Helicopter trust in New Zealand, and every year they hold a fund raising drive which all the bank staff are involved in. In our area one of the things which they're doing is holding a bike race with distances ranging from 10k through to 100k. I am, of course, doing the 100k ride. The opportunity to do a fully supported ride on a work day was to good to pass up. The only catch is that I need to raise some money (by the way, if anyone reading this wants to sponsor a good course you can do so at fundraisingonline ). The thing is though this ride is shaping up to be far from social with a number of roadies working for the bank (apparently cycling is the new golf) making a bit of noise about making the trigeek suffer and crack ... we'll see about that!!!

So this has meant me suddenly switching back to the bike after a bit of a lay off. My heart rate on the bike is a couple of beats higher than it should be, meaning I've lost a bit of bike fitness, but I'm hopeful that this will come back fairly quickly. My aerobic engine is still working fine, so it should be sweet, and after all it is only 100k's! What's more I don't need to run a marathon after the bike so there's no need to hold anything back! The course hasn't been set yet but I fully intend to put the hammer down within the first 10 k's and see what happens(the race starts in a hilly area and ends in a flat area, so there's a good chance I'll be able to get away at the start, problem is I'll then have to do something like a 70k time trial with a pck of roadies following behind). Wish me luck, or better still sponsor me (or rather the charity)