Name: Joe Chawke
Years involved in Athletics: about 35 years
Other sports participated in:a bit of Hurling and soccer.
1. What is your earliest running memory?community games in 1978.
2. Where do you draw your inspiration from?In my earlier years Mike McDomhnaill/Tom Brouder/Tom Ruddle who were all great training partners and gave me great advice ,later on Rob deCastella (Australia) and Neil Cusack and at present mainly other athletes like Carmel McDomhnaill,Mike curley Cunningham and Cathal O Connell.
3. What do you consider your biggest accomplishment in athletics ?Winning munster novice road in Ennis in 1991.
4. What do you currently /did you do in your training that are/were keys to your success? Long easy runs in base phase and 14/16 400metres @3km race pace with 45-60 seconds recovery in racing phase.
5. How many miles on average did you run per week? At moment about 25 but back in late 80’s early 90’s about 60.
6. Do you prefer road racing, track or cross country?Road .
7. Favourite race distance?4 miles
8. Favourite race location/ race event to take part in? Dromcollogher road race back in late 1980’s especially but still great traditional race with nice route very fast first mile downhill with a few testing hills on second half!!
9. What is/was your diet like? Diet good mainly, try to have some protein with each meal and eat healthy most of time!!,I have a take-away about once every 2 weeks ,love biscuits/cake but limit to once a day!
10. Who was/is your training partner or did/do you train solo? Mainly solo but always have training groups when I do intervals or long runs, I am lucky to have had a great group of runners from West Limerick /Dooneen over the years.
11. What is the best advice that you were given? Pat Duffy back in 1987 ,he advised me to run intervals a bit slower but shorten recovery ,I got almost immediate results !!
12. Do you have a saying or motto that you live your life by? If you believe ,you can achieve./yesterday is history ,tomorrow is a mystery.
13. If you could run with any person, past or present, who would it be?Mo Farah.