The important thing to note is a minimal program should get you round. How fast or how well you get round is another question entirely. There are those with a good athletic history who may do pretty well off lower hours, there are those who won’t. If you’re new to the sport and have limited time to train you’re likely going to suffer in an Ironman. Risk of injury is probably increased (though that can depend on how appropriate your race plan is too); I certainly think you’re less likely to enjoy the day.

So all said if you’re determined to do it and absolutely can’t cross the 6-8 hour line what do you do? I would probably expect the athlete to do those hours week in week out for all 20 weeks with no taper. A taper if unlikely to make a huge difference to them. Sure we’ll lighten stuff off a little in the week of the race, but no more. If it’s at all an option I’d hope they could commit to an occasional bigger weekend.

What they need to be doing is training across the disciplines and only going longer occasionally. Assuming they’re new they are unlikely to have the time to run or bike as far as they will on race day. I would aim to have them run and bike long a few times throughout their program. Not in the same week for time reasons and it would impact the rest of the week’s workload.

If they can swim and are going to be comfortably within the cut off I’d minimise this. They haven’t got the time to invest in good training to make real improvements; it’s simple return on investment. One or two 30 minutes swims a week, then an occasional longer session for the endurance. One hard bike session of an hour per week and another longer bike session of two to three hours without dawdling. On the run, regular 30 minute runs around their race pace and a longer run around an hour occasionally longer. That’s a rough idea, but it would entirely depend on where they came from.

Enough of that will get them round, they’ll survive the day, but they may not perform as they hoped. History can play a part. I ran 3:45 in Kona after a couple of months without running. I wasn’t run fit by any means and suffered, but didn’t do so bad. For my first Ironman I averaged 2.5 hours running per week, but I came from a year of marathon training. I suffered on that run too due to pacing and nutrition errors.

I suppose really my main question is taking on a project like an Ironman with the mindset of what is the least I can do. I would rather see people opt for olympic or even 70.3 where the limited time would still give them good opportunity to perform. But Ironman has a lure and the distance is ingrained in some. You can tick the box off on little training, but I think it’s more satisfying to be able to commit fully to a project.

Russ

Its an interesting question ‘how little can you get by on’ and everyone is different. Even more interesting to think you could get by on 6hrs a week as that would only cover the long ride of most programmes in the final ‘peak’ phase…which is likely to be far less time than someone on a get round plan is going to be spending on their bike in the race…

Think I’ll stick to the plans your setting for now…