Chris McCormack @ Wildflower

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Chris McCormack is the current Ironman World Champion. McCormack has also won Ironman Australia five years in a row (2002-06), gone under the hallowed eight-hour mark twice at the Ironman-length Quelle Challenge Roth and won the Triathlon World Championships and the ITU World Cup Series in the same year (1997), a feat no other competitor has accomplished.

While a surpreme athlete, it hasn’t always come easy for ‘Macca’ - five times he tried and failed to crack the Hawaii Ironman, before finally securing victory last year. Now, he is very much the man to beat.

Check out this video clip from this year’s Wildflower, a 70.3 (half-Ironman) distance event that is considered by many to be the ‘Woodstock’ of the sport, thanks to its association with the Wildflower festival (although the race nowadays tends to overshadow everything else. It is one of the largest triathlon events in the world, with 7,500 athletes and 30,000 spectators attending each year.)

In this footage, Macca talks about the tactics he used to run with, and then break runner-up Eneko Llanos.

What impresses me - what blows me away, actually - is the sheer speed of McCormack’s sprint at the end of the race. Remember this is right at the tail-end of four hours of a highly-competitive race. McCormack went on to win in 4:00:33, beating Llanos into second place by an unbelievable 19 seconds - again, over four hours.

This translates to a difference in times of less than 0.14%. In a 100m dash, this equates to 9.72, the current world record held by Usain Bolt, winning over a 9.71 second-place - when Bolt set this mark earlier this year, the runner-up posted 9.85 (1.33% slower).

McCormack knew what he had to do and he did it. He quite literally powered his way to victory.

When I was running earlier today, McCormack’s final surge inspired me to sprint myself for the last three minutes of my session. I ran nearly flat-out, and amazed myself at how fast I could go. Okay, it was only a 25-minute workout, but just knowing that I could push a lot harder right at the end was a great feeling.

Even for a distance-runner, speed work is important. Pushing your body to its limits on a regular basis - even for 30 seconds or so - makes it easy to do so for longer periods. It’s common sense when you think about it - if you run consistently for 30 minutes a day over a few weeks, you’ll find it easier to move up to 45 minutes than you would if you never ran at all. You’re conditioning yourself to be stronger for the next level. Running fast for short periods of time will, eventually, make it easier to run fast for longer periods of time (if balanced within general distance sessions). As my running improves, I’ll be adding interval workouts to my training regime.

If McCormack’s victory doesn’t get you out the door - nothing will!