30-39H Irish & Championship Record (PB) for 2k and 500m Gold

Gonna grab the timeslot as still waiting for Video and Photos to upload - they will be on by tomorrow if not in the next hour.

So where do we start - well how about with the baby deciding that last night was a good time to teeth ... till 2:30 in the morning - bless her - at the end of the day you can't get that upset with your own flesh and blood when they cry from pain - still as I was up at 6:30 another day would have been better :lol: 2 hour drive (thanks Pamela) to Limerick and then checked in - bumped into the gang (Jonathon, Joe, Jason & Helen, Gerry, Anita and Andy, Maurice and Jackie to name but a few) and then it was warm up time - plenty of machines and all in decent order so through the 5k warm up not feeling too bad. Onto the race machine - front and centre - about 2 feet from the crowd :lol: and then it came READY - ATTENTION - ROW and we where off!!

Plan was to settle fast and sit on 1:32 from 100m to 1200m in and that's what I found I was able to do - crossed the 1k at about 3:05 bang on schedule and then at 800m to go I started to squeeze on - that also went well - no dead feelings in the thighs like Bristol - and I started to pull the average down - at this point Alex Dunne from C2 had taking up cox position and started feeding words of encouragement -

"40 strokes to go - put on the pressure - 20 strokes - 6:05 is on here"

For some reason (maybe the lack of oxygen) I couldn't work out what the split would mean in the time and I got a little confused :lol: but just kept hauling down on the chain and at about 100m to go the lack of oxygen really started to bite - but I managed to keep going .... well apart from the last stroke and the handle came to heavy and dropped - looking up I saw the meters tick down from about 7m left - damn it ...

Pain Face :lol:

 

 

Struggled round to do a cool down and then popped off for lunch with the Mrs and baby plus the gang - and then back for the 500m - I don't train at this - I had no idea what time I could do - 1:20 seemed like a good target - I knew one guy in the race would start hard and after the false start on the first attempt at starting we where off - sure enough I found myself in second or third - I didn't mind - I knew I could sit on 1:20 and so I did - the other guys faded at about 300-350 and through came the wulf for the finish.

  

  

 

 

 

 

All too brief an interlude and we (PaddyPower) went back for the team relay - no practise - no tactics - no idea :lol: but we managed a third place behind two very stong uni teams so a good day and great to meet so many people and as always too short a time to talk.