Pat Leahy is founder and head coach at SpeedLab with over 25 years experience coaching endurance athletes. He is considered one of the leading experts in preparing all abilities for cycling, triathlon and Ironman events.
He has been committed to achieving excellence in the field of fitness training and athletic preparation having helped a wide range of clientele. Complete beginner’s to professional athletes have reached their training and racing goals through sound scientific training. As a full-time cycling and triathlon coach, professional bike fitter and former pro Ironman athlete, Pat has utilized his personal experience as a competitive athlete and combined it with the advanced theories of European sports science and principles of modern strength, endurance and conditioning systems.
Pat has a strong background in physiological testing and fitness training having completed his BSc degree in Sports Science, the American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Instructor qualification and advanced YMCA personal trainer diploma.
SpeedLab adopts a 360 approach to helping their clients with all aspects of their event preparation – skills development, physical conditioning, equipment selection, equipment set up, nutrition and race day strategy
Pat is amongst a handful of about 10 people in Britain to train under the legendary Dan Empfield to attain advanced Fitting Institute of Slowtwitch certification in road and triathlon bike fitting. He has further advanced bike fitting certification with Guru Europe and Retul (SBC UK) and has performed over 3000 bike fits.
He uses Retul 3D Motion Capture as believes it to best technology on the market currently for his bike fits and has a full bike fit studio set up at Balance performance physiotherapy to combine his bike fitting expertise alongside the expert team of physical therapists to give cyclists the best possible advice on their position and any injuries they may be experiencing from their activities.
The last 15 years Pat has been dedicated to helping people train specifically for endurance events through fun motivating sessions and empowering people to train smarter. Get in touch directly with Pat for a friendly chat (+44 7944 801662) or through the contact page.
A professional bike fit is the single most important investment you can make in your cycling – it ensures you buy the right size bike, dials in your optimal position on an existing bike, prevents injuries from misaligned position and could quite easily save you 20-30minutes over a 100mile sportive or ironman bike!
In the early years Pat ran a successful personal training business specialising in metabolic testing for fat loss and sports performance. Also as a former ITF TaeKwonDo champion and 4th Degree black belt he also ran several Taekwondo schools over SW London at this time teaching self defence, promoting health and preparing athletes for competition.
Whilst still teaching martial arts, but no longer competing himself he transitioned his own training towards Ironman triathlon. This allowed him to utilise his sports science knowledge to start testing different training methods on both himself and his earlier endurance clients.
His particular areas of interest to improve performance was using metabolic and field testing to attain correct training zones, using bikefit protocols to improve comfort and aerodynamics, and working with power to train and race on the bike. After 3 years triathlon racing Pat had gone from a 12.5hr Ironman to a sub 10hr finish, was competing for Great Britain and had attained a pro racing licence for Ironman and 70.3.