Ironman Success – What it Takes

Goals Are Not Reached By Themselves

Kinetic Revolution Head Coach, Neil Scholes discusses what it takes to reach your performance goals:

1. Patience

For example I waited 8 years before even giving Ironman a go. After being in the sport for about three years I knew that I was not a naturally-gifted athlete. It was going to take a bit of time and patience to gain the fitness required.

Recently, I have seen a huge influx of very new athletes signing up for Ironman, within their first year of entering the sport. Unless these athletes come from a very strong aerobic background, focusing on the development of durability, they are likely to be without proper preparation.

These athletes often fall into the trap of a shotgun approach, overly emphasising intensity during their training. This typically leads to injury and/or burnout, which derails consistency and long-term progress. Of course, there are plenty of athletes who do qualify with this approach, but I would argue that they are outliers; exceptions to the rule, gifted with good genetics. However, a more patient approach would promote even greater long-term progress for them as well.

2. Sacrifice

Are you prepared to make some serious sacrifices for about one to five years, depending upon your naturally born talent level?

I feel very confident that I could put just about any human on the Worlds starting line, given five years of proper training AND the necessary sacrifices. This is no easy task, as athletes are typically parents, employees, Scout leaders, (or in many cases those and more!)…and constantly being pulled every which-way.

I typically make a list of the sacrifices that will be required of athletes seeking that elusive Worlds slot, and recommend that they discuss each of these with those who will be acting as their support structure. This is an excellent way to determine whether or not the athlete does, in fact, have the necessary infrastructure to “go all in” with training.

3. Consistency

This ties 1 and 2 together, and is the absolute key to long-term progress. Consistency in training is absolutely paramount. Never miss more than two to three weeks of training as part of a planned down period each year.

We will actually plan weeks where you will do no training – and believe me when I say these will be tough. Aerobic progress and fitness, in general, respond well to continued stimulation. De-training happens very, very quickly. For this reason, avoiding injury is absolutely imperative. Injuries do nothing but put you on the couch, undermining consistency, and therefore long-term progress.

4. Expectations and Pacing

We must know what you are capable of. This is extremely important from both a mental and physical standpoint.

Too many athletes go into their races with the hope, or dream, of qualifying. Any athlete who toes the starting line, having made all of the necessary sacrifices, should have the HOPE of qualifying. But, when it comes to pacing their effort, these same athletes need to be very realistic of what they can expect of their bodies, based upon what they have been able to accomplish in training. It is not uncommon to see an athlete who WANTS to go 10:15 in Ironman but is only CAPABLE of going 10:45, over-pacing the bike, having trouble with their nutrition, and not coming within an hour of their “goal” time, thus being extremely disappointed in their efforts and the sacrifices made along the way.

Frustration is taken out on the preparation, when the appropriate target should be the athlete’s expectations and pacing. Developing a pacing plan and setting appropriate expectations are not rocket science. Using your training indicators, you should be able to predict, quite closely, what your finish time, and race execution strategy should look like. This is the primary reason I use the app TriCalc (I know people love their apps!) and also the triathlon calculator. I think they prove valuable assets in managing expectations and setting up a reasonable pacing strategy.

5. Fueling

There is a reason that they call it the fourth discipline! Race fueling allows everything else to be effective on race day (ie, fitness, durability, equipment, etc). For shorter races such as a sprint tri in race, fuelling is obviously less necessary. I raced the Navy Tri recently coming 2nd in the male Vet category with NO nutrition whatsoever. My race lasted 1hr 7 minutes and you can probably go up to 1hr 30 with no nutrition.

However, races longer than 1hr 30 require specific nutrition plans to be developed, tried and tested over the months of training. Without an effective nutrition plan, you are only planning to fail.

Two time world champion at Olympic distance triathlon, Siri Lindley, didn’t use race nutrition, showing what an individual specific element of preparation and execution nutrition and fueling is.


6. Body Composition

Day-to-day nutrition to tweak body composition for race day, and improve overall health and recovery. This is, again, about making sacrifices and requires the removal of the “I’m an athlete and can therefore eat anything I want” attitude that many have. You will find many athletes who have the fitness required to qualify, but just carry around too much weight on race day, ultimately slowing them down to the point of missing a qualifying slot. We will work on this and I WILL make you fill in a diary for a week where you write down everything you eat and when. The reason it is a week long diary is because anything shorter is easier to bluff!

Conclusion:

You will notice that Higher Being-given talent is not on the above list. It is mentioned, but 95% of triathletes were not afforded this blessing. I know of a good number of athletes who have that quality but never qualified because their preparations lack at least one of the above factors. Given the huge aerobic nature of the sport particularly at the longer distance, almost anyone can train themselves to the necessary fitness levels. You will also notice no mention of specific workouts, though this is what everyone likes to talk about.

Qualification is more about the big picture (macro level stuff), than whether you are doing mile or half-mile repeats.