David Weir: I just can’t wait to land a knockout blow

Double paralympic champion continues our weekly diary in the countdown to the London Games
8 March 2012

Last Friday night, I was sitting at the Troxy in east London, watching my good friend Ricky Boylan in his fourth professional boxing bout.

I remember thinking as his opponent got into the ring that he looked like a bit of a brawler and I wouldn’t have fancied fighting him.

But Ricky won the bout in the opening round to go 4-0 in his pro career and it was brilliant to watch him in action. He has a fantastic management set-up that is getting him the right fights and I’m sure he’s destined for great things.

I met Ricky a few years ago and we’ve become good friends, occasionally training together. Boxers are the fittest athletes out there, the only others who come close to them are triathletes.

Boxers can do 500 sit-ups at a time while I struggle to muster about 20. I know how hard they work — my brothers used to fight and I’ve always loved the sport.

I’ve not really done any boxing as part of my training. Right now, my training is all about getting the miles in for next month’s London Marathon when I’ll be going for a sixth win. It feels like I say this

every year but this is the best field ever assembled. All the top guys in the world will be there with the exception of Kurt Fearnley, who has chosen to focus on the Boston Marathon instead.

What I’d say to the guys coming to London is that my training is going great and I don’t think I’ve ever felt in such good shape at this point in the year. I’m averaging about 80 miles a week in the chair.

Earlier this week I did a 22-mile push and the only way I know how to train is to exert myself at a hard tempo. I was pushing into the wind and that’s normally not my strength but I felt like I was flying.

My strength and conditioning work have gone really well this winter and in the last couple of weeks I’ve been able to transfer that into my training and I’m itching to get racing.

I’ve not competed since June/July time but I’ll be back in action on Sunday at Silverstone. I’ve got that, a race in Lisbon, some training in the Algarve and then it’s time for the London Marathon.

I took my racing chair in for a little service, much as you would your car, the other day. I’ll have it done again before London and a couple more times before the Paralympics to make sure it’s running as well as it can.

It was six months to go to the Games the other day but I’m not paying attention to the landmarks anymore. There’s so much racing to do, which is the way I like it, and my racing schedule in May, for example, is pretty mental.

My little boy, Mason, will be one by the time the Paralympics come around and it’s amazing how quickly he’s growing up.

We had a bit of scare with him the other day. He’s usually such a chilled, smiley baby that it was odd he was crying all the time. We thought it was teething but it turned out he had an ear infection.

After a day of antibiotics he was back to his smiling self. It’s a bit of a worry when that happens but thankfully everything is back to normal now.

Follow David on Twitter@davidweir2012

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