How to paint yourself into a corner.

Against my better judgement I've somehow been roped into taking part in the Waterford Adventure Race on May 21st. The Dungarvan and West Waterford Chamber of Commerce President Alan Ryan has a subtle if effective sales pitch. He was in on my programme (Noctor 'til 6 on WLRfm) to tell be about the race and before I knew it I'd been signed up and agreed to write a weekly training log for this paper.  How smooth is he?!  So what you're going to get here each week is probably a lot of whinging, culminating in hopefully me being the fittest I've ever been in my whole life by May 21st.

Entering this race is probably an early midlife crisis, but if it is, why couldn't I have chosen something more realistic, like a 10k run? The race is aimed at former GAA lads who can't take the hard tackles anymore so they're opting instead to punish themselves in different ways. I was the guy who hoovered the school while the other lads were out hammering each other on the pitch, so how I have ended up here I don't know.

The Waterford Adventure Race consists of a couple of runs totalling 14kms, 42km on the bike and a 6km paddle in a kayak down the Blackwater from Lismore to Cappoquin.  The runs and bike rides are mostly up the side of mountains. But I guess for every hill you go up, there's a hill down to compensate.

I started my training last Saturday week with a run around the Abbeyside block, i.e. Tournore to the Friary, in the New Line and back out the burgery to Tournore.  I've run it four times in total in the last week.  It hasn't started to get any easier yet, but I'm assured it will.  Also my times are more or less exactly the same for each run, averaging a very slow 10 minutes per mile.

On Sunday just gone I went for a spin with the Dungarvan Cylcling Club's slower group. We left the Square at just after 9.30am and cycled to Lismore, then the group I was with continued on to Deerpark, back into Cappoquin and back to Dungarvan. That was approx 60km in all.  I was fine until the Welcome Inn on the route back in. After that my legs gave up and I struggled up every hill.  I made it home ok, but if I'm going to go anywhere near the hills of the Vee on the race day I'll need to get some serious training in.

Martin Lacey of Clonea Strand Leisure Centre has kindly offered to be my fitness mentor.  I'm hoping to meet up with him this week to set a proper training programme for me to include some upper body work.  That kayak won't paddle itself!