Casey,

Firstly congratulations on beating cancer and what you’ve achieved in the sport so far.

Having coached and worked with a huge range of athletes of all sorts of abilities I can assure you that you can complete an Ironman without having to complete long hours of training. Obviously if you can devote the time to do more it tends to help, but I’ve got athletes around on fewer than 10 hours per week. The one thing I’d stress with this if that for it to work well you need to be quite consistent – the odd session missed is fine, but not missing too many weeks as a whole. It is useful if a handful of times you can get a longer ride or run done, just doesn’t need to be every weekend. Three of four months of that and racing sensibly will get you around the course in 17 hours.

Good luck.

Andy,

Your comment got lost without reply during my holiday. I’d agree most of us never really reach are full potential for one reason or another, whether it’s time restrictions, motivation, our approach or many other factors. As for enjoying the race, I suppose the word here reflects my own state of mind: coming from having trained a lot and pushed hard to not training as much, but still trying to push as hard. that transformation isn’t so enjoyable, but I find it hard to let go during a race and so suffer more from a lack of fitness with respect to the pace I am trying to sustain. If I slowed more, then I’d not suffer as much and my enjoyment might rise. So I feel those pushing towards the front of the age group hurt, but not as much as those pushing beyond their level of fitness. Minimal Ironman training has to be paired with an acceptance that you can’t go as fast and enjoy the experience as much.

Definitely lots of different challenges within Ironman. For me I know I need to be able to race hard, so realising this, I’ve chosen not to race Ironman for a while, not while I’m not as committed to my own fitness. Instead I’ve opted for marathons where fewer hours can potentially allow me to perform at a level that gives me satisfaction.

It’s very much about finding a balance that works for you. Being realistic about how much time you actually have to train, what you can achieve in that time and what you want from the sport. It doesn’t have to be about fastest times, you can take pleasure in completing new races and different courses. In terms of mental strengths, it’s about knowing yourself and what will work for you.

Three hours per week? That is seriously minimal!

Thanks for the comment,

Russ

About enjoying the race – does an athlete that puts in 20 hours and goes as hard as they can ‘enjoy’ the race? or the result? in my experience – when i push as hard as possible i don’t really enjoy it during that phase, regardless of my fitness going in. i’ll go faster when i’m fitter, but i think most of those striving to race at their potential will do well to abandon the notion that it will be ‘enjoyable’ during.

Finally, you’re right – IM (and other ultra type events) has serious allure for a variety of reasons – one of which is as a personal challenge. To aspire to do an ironman on limited training is just another variation of this challenge. I for example love the challenge, but train VERY minimally by your standards, and have for some time. my goal is still to do as well as i can (given my situation) – i train hard and race hard, just a lot less of the former compared to most people. In my experience, a degree of mental ‘fitness’ is an essential component that is often overlooked, critical for success (on any amount of training), and harder to develop (again on any schedule).

The classic, “did I mention I’m training for an Ironman.” They have their appeal and have become me preferred race distance, even though recent focus would see me better placed racing shorter for a while.

On the coaching front I don’t really encounter many athletes looking for minimal hours, 10 is about as low as most tend to go in there assessment of time. But I realise that doesn’t fully reflect every athlete out there, plenty of completers who want a simple structure that isn’t too demanding and will ensure they can get round. It’s once they start throwing lots of rest days and recovery weeks they hit problems.

Oh, and if you enter an Ironman and don’t love the idea of training – that is definitely nuts. You need to want to train if you want to race long.

Russ