Blog extract from Sonia O'Sullivan as she prepares for the Great Island 10 mile road race #1

The Great Island 10 mile road race in Cobh is coming up on Sunday the 13th of April and all proceeds from the race go towards the Irish Cancer Society. There is also a 5 km fun run/walk option for anyone not up to the longer distance. More details in this earlier post.

One of those taking part in the race this year is the former World champion and Olympic silver medalist Sonia O'Sullivan. She has written a blog extract for the organisers as she prepares for the race and it is shown below...

Blog extract from Sonia O'Sullivan...With 3 weeks to go to the Great Island 10, I hope you have all put in some miles and starting to look forward to the race in Cobh on April 13th.

I have been training really well the last few weeks and starting to look forward to the challenge of a 10 mile race. It takes a bit more thinking about the early pace when running 10 miles as opposed to 10 kms and important not to get too carried away with the fast early pace down the hill at Ballywilliam as there isn't too much time to recover before changing gears to grind up the hills before passing through Ballymore, then it's rolling like a roller coaster before downhill to Cobh cross and then a flat run home .

I have been breaking my training down recently to include some hill running, faster paced running and a little bit of track work to help increase the efficiency in my running.

Every Sunday I have been running in a hilly forest, not too far away in a place called Ferny Creek. It

is a well known training place in Melbourne and everyone believes they gain fitness and strength each week from running the hills. I run for 90 minutes .

Monday is a recovery day and starts with a 50 minute swim at 6am then an easy 50-60 mins run with a friend and also our dog Snowy.

Tuesday is a session day, I like to work on my heart rate fitness on Tuesday and run 6x3mins with my HR just below threshold so working hard but not as fast I can and staying in the aerobic zone. This allows the recovery between efforts to be short, normally around one minute before starting the next 3minute effort. It's a good session as I set my watch to beep after 3minutes and then again after 1minute so there is no time wasted and I can run home after 24minutes of good running.

Wednesday is an easy 60-70mins running, then Thursday feels like a day off. I take Snowy for a walk in the morning then meet some friends at the grass track for some "speed" work usually some 200 or 400m efforts with staggered start for different abilities so it can get a little competitive and lots of fun. I have been training consistently at this level for 5 weeks now since my last road race over 10km in Mount Juliet in February.

I would like to think I am getting fitter and faster each week and I really hope that I enjoy the hills around Cobh more this year than in 2013.

I have one more week in Australia before getting on the big plane so I am hoping to have a good weeks training here before I leave, then a couple of easy weeks to recover and rest before the Great Island 10.