The last time I wrote a diary entry I was in Ostrava preparing for the 300m against Jeremy Wariner the following day. It went pretty well. I came 2nd in 32.47, which is another Irish Record. I had hoped to run under 32.5 so it was objective complete to an extent. It shows that I am a lot stronger than I have been in previous years and the fact that I now can put my head on the block in a 300m against the World Champion without much thought shows how far my confidence levels have come. It was an interesting race. As I half expected, I ended up in the lane outside Wariner. I think he went off a lot quicker than I expected and I responded to him between 50m and 150m. As a result, I went through 200m in 20.55-20.60 which was a bit quicker than I had wanted to.
I have finally started my summer race season. It’s been a long time coming! I did a few low-key indoor races but it’s really been over 9 months since my last meaningful race outdoors. I started with a 100m race in Malmo on June 3rd. I had a decent field but nothing crazy and was probably slight favourite to win it.
Unfortunately, the wind played a little bit of havoc with most of the events and I ran into a very strong headwind of -3.7. I won the race though and my time of 10.82 wasn’t too significant because of the wind. I am never too much of a fan of running into strong winds because of my running style. The most important thing about the race though was just the fact that I went through my race warm-up and got the feeling of racing again. You can train so hard for months on end but when you go out to compete again it can all feel very different. I suppose that’s one of the reasons that I like it too much there are so many factors that come to play for race day.
To Read the rest of Paul's Diary Entry go to runireland.com
I am just back from my training camp in Portugal. It was set up by Athletics Ireland and had a good turn-out from some of the top athletes, including 6 Beijing-bound athletes - myself, Derval O’Rourke, David Gillick, Joanne Cuddihy, Fionnuala Britton and Olive Loughnane.
Training went extremely well over there. I just seem to be going from strength to strength at the moment and some of the sessions in sunny Monte Gordo reflected this quite clearly. Before I headed off to Portugal I took a much needed easier week at home in Ireland. As usual, I split my time between Galway and Dublin and this has been working out quite well to be fair. I was quite rested again by the time we flew off but I knew that I would need every bit of strength for an intensive 2 weeks.
To Read The Rest of Paul's Diary Entry go to runireland.com
