Adrenaline Junkies: Liam Dolan

Liam Dolan doesn’t do it for the money, he doesn’t do it for the spotlight; he does it for the kicks. The way he sees it, if you’re going to go to the trouble of swimming almost two and a half miles, cycling 112 miles and running a marathon one after the other without a hint of a break in between, you might as well enjoy it.

For Liam is one of the few hardy people in Ireland who travel the world to compete in the most ultimate test of endurance known to man: the Iron Man triathlon.

“Some people say to me before a big race, ‘What’s your goal?’ but my number one goal is always to finish the race. I don’t go into a race with times in my head, the first thing I want to do is finish it and second thing I want is to enjoy it. That might be a copout but I’m not doing it for a living so if I’m not enjoying it I’m as well off not doing it. Finish the race and enjoy it and everything else is a bonus.”

You’d think that a man who finished second in his division at the Austrian Ironman last year and competed in every triathlete’s dream event, the invite-only Ironman Hawaii, would have been at it for years. In fact, Dolan is relatively new to the triathlon, having only taken to it in 2004, with sibling rivalry providing the initial motivation.

“My first triathlon was in 2004 in Blackrock in Dundalk. My brother said, ‘we’ll give it a shot’, so I went in with the sole aim of beating him and with about 100 yards to go I passed him so the bragging rights were secured”. The initial race piqued Dolan’s interest and he began to compete in a few more events, culminating in a runners up finish in an event in September 2004. He was hooked.

I couldn’t even remember seeing them and they were standing there wearing big leprechaun hats and a tricolour wrapped around them! I remember at one point during the run I looked down and I wasn’t running on road anymore, I was running on blue carpet

A subsequent move to the US for work purposes was beneficial from a training point of view. With little or nothing to do in Mormon country in Idaho, Dolan got serious and began to dream of greater things while out in training in the freezing cold, picturing running down Ali’i drive in Hawaii, the final stage of the gruelling Ironman Hawaii competition.

He got there in 2009 and fulfilled a long term ambition in the process. Hawaii was Dolan’s World Cup Final, the dream that got him through the four kilometre swims at six in the morning before heading to work and the 120 mile cycle afterwards.

“You know when you’re a kid and you go to America for the first time and everything is just like it is in the movies, like walking down 5^th avenue in New York. That’s what it was like for me in Hawaii. It was just incredible”.

A far cry, in fact, from a previous experience in an ironman competition in Austria, where although Dolan did incredibly well to finish second in his division, there were times when he became disillusioned and indeed delusional. “About 30 kilometres into the run I was so low, I didn’t even care if I finished or not anymore.

“It’s weird, a good friend of mine was there doing the race as well and her parents were there and they were saying to me afterwards, ‘Oh, Liam, we saw you at the finish line and you kind of ignored us, and I was like, ‘What are ye on about?’.

“I couldn’t even remember seeing them and they were standing there wearing big leprechaun hats and a tricolour wrapped around them! I remember at one point during the run I looked down and I wasn’t running on road anymore, I was running on blue carpet”.

Dedicated is one way to describe my schedule, anal is another!

As you can imagine, fine tuning yourself for such an event takes an incredible amount of preparation, but Dolan manages to fit the hectic training schedule around a full time job, which consumes his time from 8-5 Monday to Friday. He readily admits that this extreme form of multi tasking isn’t easy.

“Dedicated is one way to describe my schedule, anal is another! It’s tough, you can do the work and training but it leaves feck all room for anything else. I’m lucky I have no children, I don’t know how people that train as hard as I do cope with kids, they must have either very forgiving partners or they must be the worst parents in the world! The training is hard, but the lifestyle is harder because of the amount of stuff you miss and the sacrifice you have to make.”

Although the 6am starts are sometimes painful, Dolan, 30, will keep going as long as he is enjoying himself. And it seems as if he’s not the only one, with triathlon becoming a popular hobby around the country in the last few years.

And before you rule it out for yourself, consider this: Dolan claimed to be ‘fat and terrified of water’ when he was a child, only took up swimming when he was 24 and competed in his first triathlon at the same age. As they say in the world of the Ironman, ‘Anything is possible’.