After an exciting career as professional and Elite Ironman triathlete with 18 successful Ironman Triathlon competitions and 5 participations in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii and Florida, I have returned to my passion of marathon and cross-country running!
While I have concentrated on my swimming style and my cycling speed for the last 8 years and therefore spent most of my time in the swimming pool and on time trial cycle races, working hard to meet the PRO cut-off times, I have not had to make much effort to keep my running times at international PRO triathlon standards.
It was in April 2010, after a very hard and painful rehabilitation from an accident in a training run, when I made the decision to leave triathlon-, cycling- and swimming racing behind me and return to long-distance running.
Since then I have worked very hard on my running pace and I have successfully completed the Berlin marathon in September 2011 in a qualification time for a PRO start in New York. I continued working on my rehabilitation with the help of a personal trainer and a sports physiotherapist at the Core Cambridge Sports Performance Centre and managed to return to Elite running racing in middle distance (in UK Great Eastern Run 2010 and 2011).
In parallel I have made the decision to share my experience in professional sports with other athletes. Since my qualification as level 3 personal trainer in Soho gyms training academy in London in May 2010, I have trained and coached several amateur athletes in their preparation for sports competitions and even during their competitions. I have been invited to give workshops at Swimming clinics of the Elite Swimming School of the Solo-Chanel Swimmer Ed Williams. My biggest achievement recently though was my promotion to Platinum Personal Trainer by Fitness Agents at LA Fitness Cambridge.
This year I have competed the third time in the Cambridge Boundary Cross-Country MarDr. was still able to finish in the top three of the women’s race.
I clearly see my future in road running though and so I am going to compete the fifth time in the Vienna marathon and the Austrian National marathon championships this year on the 15th of April. I will then decide whether to continue with marathon racing or change to middle distance running racing.
Silke Pichler