Lombard competes for Leevale AC and recently has been sponsored by Nike for his gear. Lombard won his first Irish track title in the 5,000m at this year's Championships on 10th August. This season has been a breakthrough year for Lombard. He began the 2003 track campaign with a Personal Best (PB) performance of 13.58.5 at the Dublin Board Graded Meeting in ALSAA on 4th June.

Ten days later he ran a massive PB of 13.39.54 at Eton. On the 6th of July Lombard lowered his 10,000m PB from 30.35.96 to 28.05.07 in Watford. The time was inside the B Standard of 28.06.00 for the World Championships.

Next up for the Corkman was the Grand Prix II KBC Night of Athletics meeting in Heusden, Belgium on 2nd August. Lombard, who turns 28 in February, continued his dream season finishing a superb fifth in a time of 13:19.22 - a 20 second personal best! More importantly he reached the Olympic A qualifying standard in the 5,000m. Lombard works fulltime as a solicitor for Arthur Cox in Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin. With the aide of the Irish Olympic funding scheme he will train and compete as a fulltime athlete in September. Joe Doonan, from Carrigallen, Co Letrim, coaches Lombard or, as he puts it, advises him. Doonan also coached Catherina McKiernan during her steak of four silver medals in the World Cross Country Championships.

Irish Runner.com: Was there a big change in your training programme that helped you get to where you are this year?

Cathal Lombard: I completely changed everything, literally everything I've done in terms of training, lifestyle, rest, recovery, diet, rehydration - everything was changed from the time that I met Joe Doonan in January of last year [January 2002]. I got introduced to him by a mutual acquaintance, Gerry McGrath, who's involved in athletics here in Dublin. I met up with Joe, drove to his house for a weekend up there in County Leitrim. We spent hours going through everything I did. Joe wasn't happy at all about it. He said, 'Everything I was doing was wrong.'

He put forth a basis on which he thought I could move forward. He gave me a structure and a schedule, which he thought would fit into my lifestyle of someone who works fulltime and looks after everything himself. He felt that the training I was trying to do was not the best training for 5,000 metres or 10,0000 metres. But also, it was really draining me all the time, leaving me tired and vulnerable to illness and injury. He looked at everything I did and completely change my entire training schedule and my entire lifestyle. You have to realise that training takes a lot out of you. On the weekends now I'll sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I'm more conscious about replacing proteins, carbohydrates and getting the rest and recovery. I feel now that I don't have to be training hard all the time. Now I take a step back, back off and take a rest day every two weeks or even every ten days. I need to look after myself and appreciate that the human body is a delicate piece of machinery. You can't just continue to push hard all the time and burn the candles at both ends.

IR.com: Prior to working with Joe Doonan, did you pound yourself in training every day?

CL: I went from a mileage-based approach to quite low mileage approach concentrating a lot on plyometrics, gym work, sprint work and drills. He introduced a lot of things I wasn't doing before. He puts a system of progression into everything that I do. There would be a start point and an end point and you would know exactly what steps you were taking in between to get to that end point. Everything is very structured in terms of developing a particular type of training from Point A to Point B. Joe takes a very scientific approach to everything. There's a reason for doing everything. In a particular workout like my long efforts through the winter the length of the interval would progressively get longer from 5-minutes perhaps to up to 9-minutes. The recovery would also progressively get shorter. My initial workout might be 5 by 5 minutes with 3 minutes recovery. By the end of the build-up I'd be doing 5 by 9 minutes 90 seconds recovery. Some guys just go out and do 5 by 5 minutes, every week for 8 weeks but there's no progression within that.

There's also progression in plyometrics, drills and gym work. I had tried some of these in the past but I never approached them scientifically like Joe does. Another example is morning runs. A couple of years ago I was doing a morning run everyday except on a long-run day which would be quite long, maybe 20 miles. Now, when I'm working hard in the winter I would now only do two morning runs a week. My long run is a maximum of an hour and half. Now during the summer I'm doing very little mileage, just 50-60 miles a week. There's no morning run at all and my long run is probably 60 minutes.

IR.com: Do you plan to run a marathon or has that changed now that you achieved the A Standard in the 5k for the Olympics?

CL: The plan was that I went to London with the intention of running the halfway using it for two purposes. The first was to see what I could run over a half-marathon distance. Secondly, to go to London with a view to going there the next year and finding out the whole set-up of a big city marathon. Looking at the course, how everything is organised and finding my feet there. I went over in April and ran 63.09 to halfway and I found it a very positive experience. I really enjoyed the whole set-up and had a good performance. My intention was to go back there next year and go the full distance. Things have changed now that I've got a definite Olympic qualifier. It is unlikely that I'll do it next year but it's definitely in my plans for the future. I think I will achieve more in the marathon than I ever will on the track. I feel I have great potential at that distance. Obviously, it's something that you don't know 100% what you'll achieve 'til you go out and do it because that event is so far beyond all the track distances. It's an entirely completely different event. I'd be very confident that I could do something really good in the marathon around 2.10 or 2.11.

IR.com: Did you begin this season saying, 'I think I'll chop more than a half-minute of my 5k time' or was running as fast as you ran a surprise to yourself?

CL: Running 13.19 was a bit of a surprise. My times prior to this season weren't a true reflection of my potential. My 5k best should have 13.45 or something like that but every year something would go wrong for me and I never really achieved anywhere near my potential whatsoever. I was delighted and slightly surprised I ran 13.19. I've never had an opportunity before this year to run in races of that quality either. I don't think that a lot of people here understand that you can't run 13-minutes or 13.30 in a 14-minute race. You can only run times in races where it's set up to run fast. You need the right pace makers, the right weather conditions and where there's a good crowd and a fast track. It isn't possible for me to go up to Santry here today and run 13.19! I don't think my PBs prior to this year were true PBs as such. A lot of people have gone to that track in Hechtel and produced performances above themselves because that race is conducive to producing fast times for 5,000 metres. It's a great little track sheltered with a forest all around it. It's a small stadium but it is absolutely packed. It was my first time running on one of these Mondo tracks as well.

CL: I went there with the intention of winning but looking back on it with a fair reflection, I just wasn't in brilliant shape. A lot of things had gone wrong for me before Christmas. I had been a little ill before the Inter Counties, and then I picked up a hip injury and then another small illness before Christmas. When I went down home [Cork] for Christmas I was in really bad shape. I got eight solid weeks of training before the Irish Cross Country Championships. I had put in the groundwork but I hadn't come far enough to be able to win it. Martin McCarthy was in peak condition on the day - there was nothing I could do. The time just wasn't right for me. I needed another four, five or six weeks. By the time the London Marathon came around [April] I was in really great shape but not at that particular time.

IR.com: I asked Cathal the question, 'did it register that you'd be an Irish Olympian immediately after or perhaps during the race at Heusden?' I expected an answer like, 'It was great feeling or it was grand, oh, what a thrill.' His response surprised me and his feat was more amazing giving the pressure he'd put on himself prior to and during the competition?

Cathal Lombard: I was thinking that every second during the race. Apart from the first and the last laps I ran 64-second laps the whole way because that's 13.20-pace. The A Standard for Athens is 13.21.50. I ran 63 for the first lap and then 64 all the way. That was my intention. I thought the race would be set up for that and it was which was good because it meant I didn't have to do any work on my own. I was just sitting in being carried around. It was a question of holding the pace. I got to 3,000 metres in 7.58 [63.74 pace] and I knew I was on for it. I was hurting in those last three laps but all I was thinking is, this is everything, this is what you worked for the last ten or eleven years, you have one shot at. You have to find something that you've never found before.

IR.com: Finally, what advice would you give to all the 13.58-5k runners out there aspiring to the make the Olympics?

Cathal Lombard: If someone is working or studying fulltime, they have to be very disciplined in their approach. They have to think like a professional athlete. They have to think like the Paula Radcliffe's of this world. Just because you are living and training in Ireland, don't approach things any differently than the best people in the world. Think like a professional and be professional about what you do. Approach everything, every small little decision that you make 24-hours a day, approach it like a professional athlete.