Sometimes I wonder what’s kept me in this demanding sport
for over 25years. Lots of people have come and gone over that time. I’ve seen
hundreds come through our club in the last 18yrs. People come into the sport,
tick the boxes that are important to them, and they move onto something else.
I would say what has kept me interested, and kept the
passion strong is probably several things. One has to be the sunrises, I love
seeing all the sunrises that so many people sleep through. Training is almost
always an early morning activity.
Another motivator …

On Saturday night the 3rd of December I watched
Bear Grylls in his survival show eating maggots he’d found in a dead animal to
survive in an alpine area. I couldn’t imagine myself eating maggots but in a
life or death situation who knows what we’d do?
I don’t often have the opportunity to watch his show, I find
it a bit far fetched. Here’s Bear out there surviving with a full film crew
behind the scenes. But it was the night before the West Australian Ironman and
I had time to kill. If I wasn’t racing …

There’s no point in practicing bad habits. I often see
athletes out running when I’m on my way to the pool or out for a ride. Two
hours later I see the same athletes still running. Or should I say plodding
along, dragging their tired bodies along with the most inefficient form you
could imagine.

What they’re doing is practicing exactly what they’ll do on
race day as soon as they get tired. They unconsciously tell their body, this is
the way we run when we’re tired.

There’s a much better way. Simply never run with bad form.
Never …

Sandy and I had the dirtiest training bikes in the club, they were a disgrace. They creaked when we climbed, they barely stopped us when we braked. They needed help.
I usually service them myself, I owned a bike shop for ten years and did thousands of bike repairs. But I have a habit of overcommitting myself, and not having enough time to do all I plan to do.
Anna came to train with the Cycos, one day she asked if her partner Jimmy could come on a weekend ride with us. …

So often athletes training for long course races get so used to being tired, they no longer know what it feels like to be fresh. When I had a bike shop I’d sometimes have guys come into the shop who are training themselves for the Ironman. Often they’d have a look in their face like they had watched 48hrs of TV straight. Or like they had just driven down from Mt Isa with a broken windscreen.
There’s a belief out there that more is better, when it comes to Ironman training. …

Lets face it, training can hurt at times. That’s no secret. But have you ever stood at the sideline of a marathon and watched the winners run past. Most of the good ones, show no pain. Remember video coverage of Lance Armstrong climbing the mountains in the Tour de France, he didn’t look like it was hurting. But if you look at the power figures he was producing, it had to hurt. Lance was very good at accepting the pain as part of the game.
The world class marathoners are very …

If Lance Armstrong did what he has done in his cycling career with only one, what would be possible if we used our own to their full potential. Imagine the possibilities if we discovered that we had one more?
I ask for weekly feedback from all of my athletes. Some like to get real technical, some I have to squeeze the information out of them. The feedback is a really important part of our coach/athlete relationship. As soon as someone sends me their feedback, I copy the important bits I want …

 
I’ve been coaching Ironman athletes for around twenty years now. One of the crazy things about them. Many are not as smart as a dog.
I’ve always had good dogs. They’ve always been females, and either Australian Cattle dogs or cattle crosses. Many years ago I bought a book on dog training. It’s simple stuff. To have a good dog, one who’ll defend the family, stay up all night watching your property, and do what you tell them. All you have to do is treat them like a dog. A …

There’s an imaginery path between where you stand right now and your ultimate goal. It’s a narrow path and it’s not straight. It has a few twists and turns along the way. It has some uphill sections and some easy downhills. There are lots of pot holes and dangerous deep holes you can drop into. 
Along that path, the weather is not always going to be sunny and warm. If you only move forward when the weather is good, you won’t make the progress you would if you accepted the weather as …

Right now many of our athletes have done their major races for the season. Some are about to do their’s in a couple of weeks.
Then comes the “off season”. Depending on the stage of development of the athlete, some should be spending the off season filling their diary with miles.
Others who have 5-10 Ironman finisher’s shirts in their closet, maybe it’s time to build a bit of speed. You really can’t build your basic speed during an Ironman buildup. You need to have the “pace” before you start the long …