Glutton for punishment: Alan takes on Ironman challenge

Navan's Alan Duffy is taking on another challenge as he takes part in the Ironman UK competition in Bolton, England, at the weekend, competing in a triathalon. A couple of years ago, he took part in the Cycle Across America Challenge with Alan Heary's team. He is promoting the Ciaran Maree Cancer Research Development Fund with the triathalon. The race starts at 7am on Sunday morning with a 3.8km swim, followed by a 180km cycle, then by a full marathon, with a cut-off time of 17 hours. "I started the ball rolling in November with strength and conditioning training which was more or less all gym-orientated with some running to get the fitness levels up," Alan explained. "This consisted of about 15 hours training per week." Then, Alan started the tough long training at the start of February, made up of between 10 and 14 training sessions per week. "I tried to vary sessions to get a good mix of long, short distance, high intensity and low intensity and tried to get at least three of each discipline in every week. "The most interesting training was cycling from Navan to Killarney a few weeks ago - it took us 12.5 hours in total, including two hours of breaks, and the following day we did the Ring of Kerry which meant for the weekend, we covered a total of 500km," he added. Alan's local sponsors include the main sponsor, Ben Garry Hairdressing, as well as Beggy's Bar, Click, Match Fit, Vexiva Ltd, New Boliden Tara Mines and Dave Ode. The Ironman UK bike course will consist of an out and back section and three 30 mile loops. Each loop will have 2,173 feet of climbing, with the out and back section having 576 feet of climbing. The run course will contain 1,569 feet or 478 metres of climbing.