Bryan McCrystal

Intro

For someone who only started Triathlon last year Bryan McCrystal has certainly made an impact.  While the highlight maybe his 2009 National Series overall victory, there have also been many notable individual performances, like out-splitting Bryan Keane on the bike in TriAthy and out-splitting national level runners on the Beast of the East run.  What the National Series title really shows is consistency, something that is often very difficult for an amateur athlete to active.

Basic stats

Age	28
Height	6’3”
Weight	89kg – on race day
Tests	VO2 = 65% Power = 540Watts max
Years in triathlon	2
Best Result	Winning the 2009 National Series
Best Race	Beast of the East 2009
Club	Setanta Triathlon Club

What’s your sporting background?

BMcC:   Football, I played with Leads United for four years, reserve team mostly.  Then I came back to Dundalk where I played League of Ireland football.

What are your plans for 2010?

BMcC:   My plans for 2010 are both racing myself and organising a series of Duathlons in Dundalk.

Racing: I’m looking to step up to ½ ironman distance.  Antwerp 70.3 will be a major goal in August.  Domestically, I’ll be chasing the National Series again.

Race organisation: I’ve got a series of Duathlons, called the Sportsman Duathlon to organise in Dundalk.  We’re using part of the old N1 (Dublin to Belfast road), so the surface and road width are great.  The first three duathlons will outside Dundalk, but we’re planning a town center duathlon next August.  The cycle club closed down Dundalk for a cycle crit this summer and it was great.  What to do something similar.

What’s your typical training week?  This is an area where lots of people will be interested.  When I told people that I was doing this interview, I was told “find out what he does on the bike?”, “find out how he got so fast on the bike so quickly?”.

BMcC:   You may be disappointed with my answer, as I don’t actually do much above 8-10 hours.  During the season I try to get in nine session, three of each discipline.

Swim	Three session of 2km – 2.5km in length
Cycle	3h steady Sunday spin 90min midweek easy spin Turbo session: 60min with 5×8min at over 400Watts
Run	50-90min long run 30min recovery run Speed session with 1km or 1mile reps
other	None to speak of

Time for training is difficult for me.  My newborn son effected the time I had to train this year.  I do most of my training on my own for time reasons.  I know for 2010 and particularly with Antwerp 70.3 I’m going to have to do more training.

I use the testing centre in Trinity for my VO₂ and power tests, which feed into my training plans.

The question I’m most interested in is what do you put down your run speed to?  You remind me of a very promising triathlete Colm Cassidy, who now specialises cycling time trials.  He was close to 85kg but regularly pulled out very fast run splits, much faster than you would expect from a big guy.

BMcC:   I suppose the years playing football have a lot to do with it.  You’re always on the go during a game.  After all the years, I suppose it just comes naturally.

End

To see the course for the Sportsman Duathlon, follow this link.