Irish international race walker Brendan Boyce moves to Cork...

Brendan Boyce is an Irish International athlete from Donegal who recently competed in the 50k race walk at the Olympic Games in London. In humid conditions, he recorded a personal best time of 3:55:01 for the 50k which was almost three minutes faster than his previous best. In a race where 63 athletes started, Brendan finished in a very credible 29th place. At the recent Ulster Athletics Awards ceremony in Monaghan, he was named as Senior Athlete of the Year.

In an interview with the Donegal News, Brendan said about the last year......."2012 was a hard year. I had to work harder than most as I had to get my spot on the Olympic team with having to do the ‘A’ standard twice and then wait it out to see if more than 3 athletes got the standard. I also found out that I was anaemic about a month before racing in London, which put some doubts in my mind about the race. But I managed to pull on all the hard training and knowing that I prepared for this race for 3 years, which gave me the confidence to step onto the start line and get a result that I deserved.”

Having previously trained at the UKA national centre for race walking at Leeds Metropolitan University, Brendan has now moved to Cork to train under the guidance of top Irish race walker Rob Heffernan. When asked about the move, Brendan said........“The race in London has just acted as a catalyst for a new approach to competition. Up until now my training was all about going into races to get qualifying standards but now that I’ve achieved that goal I have to change my mind-set to winning. That’s why I’ve made the change from Leeds to Cork. Robert Heffernan has agreed to take charge of my training and I’m now based down there and train with him every day. My short-term goal will be to take in a few shorter races in the new year – 3k and 5k races – and then working on getting my 20k time down and hopefully get a qualifying standard over the shorter distance. I need to increase my base speed and anaerobic resistance over shorter distances, which should ultimately lead to improvements over the 50km distance.”

While his long term goal is qualifying for the Olympics in Rio in 2016, Brendan's more immediate targets are the National Indoors in Athlone in February 2013, the European Cup of Race-walking in Slovakia in May 2013 and the IAAF World Championships in Moscow in August 2013.

As a full time athlete, Brendan is currently looking for sponsorship as he prepares for Rio. He has his own website at http://www.brendanboyce.co.uk/

The full interview with the Donegal News can be seen HERE