My Personal Challenge for 2012.. Wish me luck!

In 2011 I competed in my first ever Adventure Race; the Connemara Adventure Challenge, a 31km multi-discipline race. While I had always been interested in team sports, I had a deep-seated hatred of running, had a bike that weighed a ton and had never sat into a kayak before the race itself. Through 4 months of training I remained motivated by the determination that I would succeed in finishing the race, nothing more and nothing less.


Training took the form of a regular 5-8km run in the Phoenix Park and the occasional 10k cycle, while much of my gym time was spent in the weights room, with little regard for the cardio machines. Come May 7th 2011 I was ready for the challenge, and I met it head-on – albeit with a not so blockbuster time of just under 3 hours and 48 minutes.

Since the euphoria of completing the race faded, the motivation to maintain the cardio fitness through winter faded alongside it. It is only now, as the first month of 2012 draws to a close, that I have decided I need to see a year-on-year improvement. I want to compete in the 2012 Connemara Adventure Challenge and I want to do so in a time of 3 hours and 15 minutes – cutting a substantial 30 minutes off my previous best. On paper this seems (relatively) attainable, but how will it work in practice?


The race consists of 3 disciplines, a 12km mountain run, a 17km cycle and a 2km kayak. The first area I need to work on is the running. In 2011 I was regularly running, with a little difficulty I might add, a consistent 10km in training. What I wasn’t prepared for, and what drained every ounce of energy on the day, was the concept of hill running, essentially running up one side of a mountain and down another, in the marshiest, muddiest conditions you can imagine. No amount of training on the flat, well manicured trails of the Phoenix Park could prepare me for that. I suffered, and suffered badly.

If I am to succeed in cutting 30 minutes off my 2011 race time then mountain running needs to incorporate part of the training. My leg muscles, and particularly my calf muscles, need to be stronger and capable of moving at pace over rough terrain. Flat running just won’t cut it. Luckily on my part, I have recently moved home to a neighbourhood at the foot of the Dublin mountains, leaving me no excuses (in theory).

My plan is this. Four mornings each week I will commit to taking our Black Lab/German Sheppard cross for a run in the local fields. While this is on flat ground, the terrain is extremely wet and muddy and is a good substitute for the mountainous terrain of the Connemara course. At present I am doing 4 laps of the field (about 2.4km total), along with 120 push-ups, 30 squats and 30 lunges. When I hit the gym I am going to need to increase my leg workouts and push this harder than I have in the past. Then of course, I need to bite the bullet and take my running game to the mountains. The Hell Fire Club is my target. For those who don’t know it, the Hell Fire Club in the Dublin Mountains is a 10km mountain trail that is renowned for it’s stories of secret societies and haunted past. If I can manage to maintain a steady pace in the mountains and start hammering down my times, then I will be in with a chance of achieving my goal.

Tackling the other 2 disciplines of this race, the cycling and kayaking, are another days work. At this stage I don’t want to get overwhelmed and once I work the running into my schedule I will build on the other aspects of the race. For now it’s time to put on the running shoes and hit the gym. Wish me luck!

You can follow my progress here on Warrior Forums or on ChallengeMonkey.com