Diary of an Ironman 19 weeks to go

It’s getting close to our official start to the Kona buildup. In three weeks we’ll start seriously building the base. I’ve just entered my wife and myself in the Gold Coast Marathon. We’ve been training for this as out “off season” event.

I mean no disrespect to the serious marathon contenders, but for us it’s just a reason to get out of bed in the dark and go running. When I say we’re not training for Hawaii just yet, it’s a bit misleading. We’re building a running base on which we’ll build our Hawaii Ironman performance. We’re very aware that Hawaii is a “runner’s race”.

Once we start seriously building our bike base, there’s just not enough energy left to build the run base at the same time. Our strategy is to do the running basework now, and then once we start building bike mileage up we can maintain our run with fewer runs per week. With my wife at fifty years and myself at sixty-one, we’re not able to stack the volume of training in that many of our younger friends can.

We need bigger gaps between our bigger workouts. In fact we need to do lots of little things better than many of our younger friends can get away with neglecting. Our attention to diet/nutrition is one of the reasons we’re not suffering some of the injuries some of our competitors are. That combined with our cautious approach is the base of our training plan for the next nineteen weeks.

We have always drunk plenty of water, but recently we’ve experimented with increasing our fluid intake by another twenty percent. Being careful to keep our minerals up with extra sea salt. We’re finding less aches and pains, better training performances. We’re both swimming faster, last Sunday we did a three hour run and have walked away without sore muscles. Both of us have got out of bed this morning, 48hrs later, a bit tired but still no sore muscles.

Using the compressport socks, puting skins on right after the run and refuelling with Endura Opti before our coffee shop breakfast all seems to be adding to the recovery improvement. During the three hour run we used two flasks of Endura, Sandy used two gels and I used one. Our fuel efficiency is going very well.

The week is still 3 x 1hr swims, 2 x 45min runs and one long run, 1 x 40min windtrainer workout with power cranks — that’s all, it is off season  

Next weekend we’ll be in Sydney for a coaching seminar I’m running with Pete Jacobs. We intend to help the athletes who attend avoid some of the pitfalls we’ve fallen into along our way. Pete is the Australian Long Course Champion this year and placed second in the Australian Ironman. He’s training for I think his fourth Hawaii Ironman.

Between us we have around forty Ironman length races and our view of the preparation for an Ironman comes from two different angles. Pete’s from the perspective of a professional athlete, racing at the front of the field. And mine from a coach who has coached over fifty athletes to Hawaii and have raced there myself eleven times as an age grouper. We do have many common needs, but we have many differences as well. I look forward to answering the questions of the athletes searching for the best path to follow.