By Coach Brendon

If you read all the great articles on getting ready for your first Ironman, you could easily be overwhelmed by the process and what's required. Further it would be really easy to take all the individual advice in swimming, cycling and running and cobble together a program that is completely unrealistic and leaves you on the start line looking like a strip of well done bacon from your BBQ.

So I though readers might be interested in an executive summary of what's actually required to undertake your first Ironman.

The first thing that you need to know is that whilst most athletes get themselves fit enough to complete Ironman, what they often fail to do is prepare specifically and in particular they don't optimize their PACING to match their fitness or FUEL themselves correctly over the day to maximise the fitness that they have. It's a long day and you don't need to be fast to do a good job, you just need to be consistent and prepared by simulating enough to test that everything is ready.

So my first key point is that your preparation needs to focus on details that make the actual day run smoothly. So apart from fitness and pacing, the other key areas are race day nutrition, pacing strategies, efficiency and having reliable equipment (reads a bike that won't break).

Let's look at these in turn.

Fitness

The key thing with Ironman is having covered nearly the distances of each of the legs in training, SEPERATELY - so it's 3.8km Swim, 180km Ride and around 32-36km running. The run doesn't need to be 42km, indeed doing 42km in training leading into Ironman can be counter productive as it often takes too much out of you, a better strategy is to have run over 60km in a week, closer to 80km in a single week is a good bench mark to aim for. And the truth is that ONE session of this sort of distance is enough... BUT… you wouldn't schedule only one session in the plan because it exposes you to the possibility of not getting a session done. My advice to first timers - plan to take on the distance sessions 2-3 times leading in and then if you miss one, no worries!

Other than that, what's critical is doing a ½ Ironman and 2-3 swim-bike-run or bike-run simulations. Personally I think that these are less about the fitness and more about the pacing and nutrition. More on that later. The other key thing is timing of these sessions - they just need to fall 3-6 weeks prior to the event. That fairly much sets up the back bone of your training - in the lead up to the last 3-6 weeks you are simply getting yourself progressively closer to these levels. Too many people are hitting these levels 3-4 months out then wondering why they are falling off the wagon a month out from the event or worse, getting injured or sick and being unable to actually start. I should point out here that being sick or injured on the start line is the last thing you want so if your aim is to finish, don't push the training so much that you take a lot of risk of this happening.

Pacing

If you look through the results of any Ironman you will see the tattered results of biking too hard. We have a saying here at EnduranceCoach.com… "Don't join the 666 club - 60min Swim, 6 hour ride, 6 hour 'run'". There is nothing like standing around the 30km mark of an Ironman to see what happens when you 'smash' the bike. Now the great thing is that it's easy to avoid this. You can take your ½ Ironman pace on the bike and know that your average will be 2-3km/hr slower, go and ride at this pace and get the pace locked into your legs. If you use a heart Rate monitor you can also note the range that this is, then trial it over ½ to ¾ of race distance around 3 weeks out - if you can't hold it and feel comfortable at the end then it's too fast, simply slow it down a bit. Oh and sneak up the hills and make a point of spinning - for Port Macquarie most first timers should have a MINIMUM of a 25 tooth cog on their rear wheel. Trust me, you will thank me on the third lap in the hills.

Nutrition

There are some great product options for Ironman nutrition and no one product works for every one and secondly no one should rely on one single product. The key thing is to test, test and retest your nutrition, your stomach and small intestine are a sensitive body organ and under the stress of racing it can operate below par. On the flip side, it's also very adaptable (just ask yourself how it handles coke, pies and donuts) and over the course of 6-8 weeks can completely change and adapt to certain foods - that's why you need to use all your long bike, long run, bike-run and triathlons (like a ½ Ironman) to test your nutrition.

As a general guide aim for around 1g of carbs per hour for every kg you weigh. There are two easy feedback methods you can use: one is noting how you feel, the other is checking body weight change and taking a blood glucose measure. Compared to all the fancy equipment out there, a blood glucose testing kit will cost you less than $100 and will tell you if you are eating enough or too much - at the end of a long bike ride you want your blood glucose to fall between 6-8mmol/L. If you're below this you need to eat a bit more each hour (say add 5g/hr), if you're above you need to eat a bit less per hour (say take away 5g/hr). I've been doing this with a number of athletes around the world and we've been able to use that to really nail down a specific plan. Having said that, race day is just different and you simply can't leave it on autopilot, you need to watch for signs of your nutrition going wrong - these include bloated stomach, feeling hungry, feeling thirsty and / or nausea. Oh and if you grab a bottle of sports drink and it tastes strong, it is - your body has just told you!

Efficiency

It's a fairly simple equation, you have a limited amount of energy that you can put out over the Ironman distance (internal stores you can access plus what you can eat). If you can improve your efficiency even by a small amount you can either a) go a bit faster or b) not hit the wall before the end at the pace you have chosen.

What happens to most people in Ironman is that they get tense and their technique goes out the window, they get tired and the technique falls apart further - the two things that you can control during the Ironman in terms of energy efficiency is your relaxation and your technique. It starts in the swim, try focusing on breathing out and using a long efficient stroke (once the start mayhem has passed), then hold that but do so being more relaxed. Get on the bike and relax, especially the upper body, then focus on spinning in circles. On the run focus on maintaining a faster rhythm (use your elbows to set this), keep your head up and looking at the horizon and relax your hands, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Work on all these in training and in shorter races.

Equipment

If your aim is to finish Ironman and you are not 'racing' to podium in your age-group or qualify for Hawaii, then reliability of your equipment should not be compromised. This doesn't mean that you need to lug a 25kg bike around, but it does mean avoiding using equipment that's not designed for you. A classic example of this is using a set of lightweight carbon race wheels, they are not all rated for 80 kg riders. Secondly 180km is a long way and getting a couple of punctures is on the cards if you have the wrong tires. Go for a wider, slightly heavier tire - a 23mm option from one of the main brands is a safe way to go (Continental, Michelin, and Vitoria are three well known brands). In any case as with the nutrition test, test and retest your equipment, again a ½ Ironman is one of the best places to do this but also utilize 2-3 simulations or shorter triathlons in the last 8 weeks. If in doubt always ask the bike store about reliability of the equipment recommended. It's one of the reasons I like to recommend standard Shimano kits, standard alloy seat posts and handlebar stems, and avoid alloy bolts to lighten bikes they are notorious for failing in Ironman.

So then… get out there, maximize your preparation in all areas, and I look forward to seeing you on the start line at Ironman soon.

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