Name: Brian Monaghan
Nationality: Irish
Background
Working in IT, married to Maggie, with 3 beautiful kids and having been very active in sports from a young age (football, swimming, etc.) I had a goal of completing a marathon before my 40th birthday. 5 or 6 years ago, I started training for my first marathon and it snowballed from there. I love a challenge, outside of work and family life and I believe “The Race” is the next one for me. I’ve just got to find a way to tell the wife and kidsJ!
Experience
Once I completed my first marathon back in 2007, I knew I wanted more. I took up running regularly and trained for the next Connemara half marathon which I completed, promising to be back to complete the full marathon the following year (2009), which I ran in 3h29m. Several half marathons and 2 more Dublin marathons later, I decided I needed something different – triathlon looked like it might do the trick. Since 2010 I have completed 2 x IRONMAN Lanzarote and 3 x half IRONMAN (Galway, Athlone, Kerry). This year I have signed up for my first adventure race in November in Westport (Sea to Summit).
During the past 2 winters I’ve been training on the bike with Paralympian and World Champion - Catherine Walsh. Catherine and I are regularly seen, on the tandem, around North County Dublin covering average training sessions of 90K plus most weekends and this contributed to my IRONMAN training no end. I have also completed several cycle races within Ireland – Tour of Meath (160k), Ring of Kerry (180k) and the Wicklow 200. The RACE - Bring it on!