Paul Kennedy wins the Lacey Cup on March 1st and has since taken two more victories, including his first general classification win (Photo: George Doyle)
Having signalled his intent on the opening day of the season in Munster with victory in the Lacey Cup, Paul Kennedy has since taken a commanding win at Rás Maigh Eo. He made the breakaway on both road stages and won the TT to claim his first stage race win.
The 45-year-old told stickybottle he believes he's in his best ever form and credits new coach Cian Keogh, after he changed the Limerick man's training regime. Indeed, the changes to the training were so significant Kennedy feared it was a major mistake and doubted Keogh’s methods.
Ultimately, he stuck to the process and, having started the season so well, he said he's now delighted he maintained his confidence in Keogh, himself a top rider, and his training ideas.
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"I'm going better than I ever was, and that's with less hours training," Kennedy said, adding deciding to move to Keogh as a coach was the single biggest reason for his improvement in form.
Kennedy, a former hurler who took to cycling in his 30s, has always been a very strong rider. And though he has done most of his damage against the watch, he has an impressive list of road race wins - both in terms quantity and quality - to his name.
But he said he feels the strong and reliable diesel engine that has been the basis of his success now seems to have more poke.
"The training is completely different than before, it was always volume before,” he said, adding when Keogh wanted him to drop the volume and increase the intensity, he was very unsure.
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“I went to Calpe for a few weeks (in winter) and I messaged Cian at the start and said 'Cian this is way too easy'. And he said 'relax, just follow it, trust the process'. And I did.
"It was fewer hours but better quality sessions, he's really tuned in. It's more about race simulation and VO2 max efforts. I always thought the more hours you do the better.”
His training is now built around 90-minute rides, which made his cycling much easier to fit in with work and family life.
"I'm very busy at work, so it was ideal. An hour-and-a-half would be a standard session in the evening now... Doing efforts, 40X20s.
"The way Cian describes it... I was always a diesel engine and now I have a small petrol tank as well, for more explosive stuff.
"He identified that the minute he started coaching me and we've been working on that since. No coach I've ever had focused on my weaknesses, it was always my strengths that they focused on."
Keogh said the approach to training was "about improving power when fresh, but also being able to reproduce it under fatigue."
"With Paul, the issue wasn't his engine, it was handling the chaos of racing at the times when he struggled," he said of Kennedy.
"So we specifically target his identified weaknesses and train them in both fresh and fatigued states until they become more manageable, whilst still maintaining what he is good at."
