Sonia ag Rith

Plenty of people have been telling me how much they like the Euromedic Sonia 5k tshirts but don't forget you only have till tomorrow night to get one. You can also get one in black and yellow - the same colours of my local club Ballymore Cobh. I will be down in Mahon Shopping centre from 10am tomorrow at the Farmers market if you'd like to come along and say hello

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Almaz Ayana won a brilliant world 5,000m final at the world championships in Beijing yesterday. It's 20 years since I won the 5,000m in Gothenburg and I'll be celebrating that run in Cobh on September 19th with a 5k run (aged 16 and up) along with some excellent kids miles beforehand. Everyone will get a replica medal of my world gold. Log on to www.sonia5k.ie/cobh/ to enter and join me for a great night.

Sonia O'Sullivan - World 5000m Champion, Gothenburg 1995 Sonia O'Sullivan of Ireland winning the World Championship 5000m at Gothenburg in 1995 ahead of Fernanda Ribeiro of Portugal and Zahra Ouaziz of Morocco. Com...

Sonia5K
just under 2 weeks to go to be in with the chance to cross the finish line and be rewarded with a
World Championship Gold Medal

Not so long ago I was presented with the Replica Gold medal at the launch of the sonia5k.ie in Dun Laoghaire. What surprised me most was the weight of the medal, a bit like when I take any of my Championship medals on a school visit the thing that surprises everyone is the weight of the medal. This is something I never really think to much about as generally I will think about the preparation and training, the injuries and obstacles along the way that got me to be in a position to run my best and be rewarded with the World Championship Gold medal.

I did a lot of my training in teddington, UK in the lead up to the World Championships, a few days before I flew to Gothenburg it felt a little bit like being in a holding path that can often happen as you fly into Heathrow airport. All my training was complete there was no more fast sessions to do all the work was done I had to just maintain fitness and relax as much as I could. The relaxation often involved going for 2 gentle 5 mile runs through Bushy park, with Marcus O’Sullivan, Frank O’Mara, Bob Kennedy & Steve Holman who were also in Teddington waiting to travel just 2 days before their first round race. It was just one flight from Heathrow so we wanted to maintain a similar routine and just fly in and avoid too much of the hype that can surround a World Championship event. Its strange I can clearly remember those morning and evening 5 mile runs, we didn't have an exact measurement but 35minutes surely covered 5miles, we avoided the routes where you generally did some fast sessions or where you might be able to calculate what pace we were running. There are a number of plantation gardens in Bushy park where you have to enter gates within the park and weave through a maze of little paths. Marcus o’Sullivan used refer to these runs as the secret garden loops.

The aim of these runs was to get some fresh air, loosen up the legs and maintain some semblance of a training routine and generally pass the time in those slow days when waiting to race just like those extra minutes circling Heathrow can feel like hours, similar to those last few tapering days before a championship can really drag on as you try to conserve energy and absorb the training from all the weeks prior to the big Championship event.

When I think back now it all felt so natural and simple running 80 miles a week and feeling like i was hardly training, last week I ran 80km the furthest I've run for awhile and I'm sure very little at anywhere near the pace of those very easy runs in Bushy park back in 1995.

An article on Jumping The Gun on the training I did as a junior athlete. All the distances were estimates this was before the garmin or similar measuring devices. Particularly the 10x 200m in 28. Hope there's not too many out trying to match that !!

Sonia’s junior training secrets Sonia O’Sullivan kindly gave us a few weeks of her schedule as junior when she was growing up in Cobh in Cork in 1986 aged 16 years of age. Sonia was coached by Sean Kennedy before going to Villanova. She would return from her scholarship under his guidance to finish

Sorry I've not posted anything on here for awhile, though I have been following the track meets across Europe and the USA as the weeks speed on through the 2014 athletics season.

It's been a revelation to see the performances of young athletes particularly Thomas Barr breaking the Irish record over 400m hurdles and really notching up a world class time that that will make him feel at home in any International race and that he belongs in the European Championship final . I have been paying particular attention to European athletes as I will be working with RTE for coverage of the European championships from Zurich in just under 8 weeks so still plenty of time for training and racing.

Good to see Sarah Lavin, taking the baton from Derval O'Rourke and qualifying for her first European senior championships. Paul Robinson has been in good form over the mile and came ever so close to breaking the Irish record last week in Ostrava.

Also Mark English has shown he will be competitive in Zurich, finishing second behind David Rudisha, Kenya in the New York Golden league event but notably ahead of Polish athletes Lewandowski and Kszczot who are sure to be amongst the medals in Zurich.

Even though the season seems to be in full swing already there is still a long way to go before the European championships, as long as athletes are fit and healthy then the fine tuning and sharpening will keep them occupied over the next few weeks.

This weekend the European Team Championships will give a good indication of form from the Irish team and also a good look at the athletes they will face at the European championships in Zurich. The Irish team is very strong and it is great to see this commitment from the athletes . I believe it was 1994 that I ran in Tallin at the Europa cup on a very old track, I'm sure it will be a much nicer stadium 20 years later.

Speaking of 20 years ago, earlier this week I went to bed as the 2000m world record holder uncertain if I would still hold a world record the next morning, as I am currently in Australia lots of sporting action takes place while I am sleeping.

I was a little nervous getting up on Wednesday morning as even though records are there to be broken, it would be nice to reach the 20th birthday of my 2000m WR which incidentally takes place this year on the same day as the Cork city sports.

As luck would have it, I had many people around the world cheering for me while Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia was chasing my world record. I knew my sleep was being disturbed must've been all the positive vibes directed towards me . It was a pleasant surprise to wake up and still hold the 2000m world record maybe I can look ahead to at least a 21st anniversary celebration now.

What was really interesting for me was the difference in pace of the 2 races, my lap splits were much more conservative early on as I believe I always backed myself for a quick last lap, I never really worried about the last lap just getting to that point in the race. Sometimes we start too fast in a race because we can but of you can spread the intensity then the lactic acid build up is reduced and thus you allow yourself to be ale to lift again for the last lap and really drive it home. Also I think when I was chasing the WR it was 5:28, so I had a slighter slower pace per lap to aim for.

I need to listen to myself a bit more as recently I have definitely been starting a bit too fast when taking part in races for my local club Glenhuntly....I keep thinking one day I will work this out, just need to get the body and mind to co-operate.

I am really looking forward to getting a good look at the European athletes this weekend and how the Irish athletes measure up, not quite the European championships yet but a very good indicator of form and test to see what can be improved or just maintained over the next 7 weeks.

Lots of early season races going on in warmer parts of the world before the 2014 athletics season really gets going. I thought I would have a quick look back at when I was running fast and what May looked like for me 20 years ago. Nothing too spectacular just basic training but this led to an amazing string of races later in the summer of 1994 . Early days in May plenty time to rescue a season and achieve great results down the track.