triathlonphil.com

DoB: 28/03/1985

Weight: 72kg

Height: 182cm

Nationality: British

Favourite Food: La mexicana, claro ! The rest I wouldn’t/don’t argue with though…

Favourite Quote: If you really want something to happen, push the red button; the rest of them are useless – Homer Simpson

Favourite Place: On the top of any mountain or next to the sea, both is just perfect.

Favourite Music: Drum and Bass, Mexican Duranguense, and also Incendrie on www.youtube.com

A Short History:

From a young age I had a talent for running and at age 10 was convinced by my school teacher at the time, Mr. Cope, to join the local athletics club GEC (RIP). At this point I was a keen footballer, so time for training and match days between the two sports had to be shared. This went on for a while, but I realised that playing a football match in the morning and running for the club in the afternoon was unsustainable, so I decided to give up the former. From there I improved quickly, training among more senior athletes, led by coaches Mike Beech and Chris Bowman, which kept the competitive spirit churning.

3000m at Deangate

Upon joining the club my preference was actually for sprinting, but in no time I was convinced to move up to the more suitable 800m and 1500m events as I also possessed great stamina (one of my school friends once called me ‘The Human Duracell Battery’, at that age he was of course refering purely to my athleticism on the football pitch) and was still pre-pubescent which at that age makes all the difference. Time went by, at age 11 I was 2nd in the U-13 1500m Kent Championships, and the next year crowned victor with the 13th best time in the country. I also won silver in the 4×100 Kent Championships. In the U-15 category I became the 800m Kent Champion, and was also a gold medallist in the 4×400m relay team. In X-Country, I competed in the English Schools X-Country Championships after winning the Maidstone Championships, whilst at club level I was a medal winner at the Kent County Championships and for 5 continuous years (‘98 to ‘02) I represented Kent at the Inter-County Championships, regularly being in the top 2 finishers for the county.

A sporting barren patch then hit in 2003, where I took what some may call an ‘extended sabbatical’ from athletic competition, albeit with the odd game off football at uni. This period of sporting sobriety led me to reconsider my decision, and by 2007 I was training again with some vigour. Early in 2008 I decided that I was going to compete in Triathlon after having been inspired by my 2 older brothers, and bought myself a road bike. 2008 was a year where I improved markedly but haven’t had the time to dedicate serious effort to training, as was 2009, which is what is going to be the theme for 2010.

As for my aims for this year, they are to compete at a high enough level to be a genuine contender to get on to the BTF Olympic Foundation Squad, which will require a trainer, adequate facilities and a large amount of time dedicated to the sport (15-30 hours a week is the norm). To achieve this will of course be a large improvement from 2:24 as my best (and only) olympic time in ´08; in other words, a sub-20 min swim, sub-1hr bike and sub-33 min run are needed, but don’t sound out of the question. The swimming is coming on well, the biking is at the next level and Barcelona is a great place to train for running… for all of the sports, in fact ! As the saying goes ‘Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star’. A cheesy cliché if there ever was one, but you get the point. Here goes nothing…