Ironman Training

[Ali Bongo]

Hi

This has probably been asked about 1000 times here....

I am looking for an IM training plan that is geared towards having real life whilst training but gives enough work to get you round.

I have looked at some of the packages available (Dominator) which claim to to this but the apparent reduction in volume seems to be counteracted by much higher intesity which is far more likley to injure me (I regularly tear calf muscles and have knee probs when doing speed work).

Essentially, I don't want to have to swim enormous pool sessions every week and clock up masses of running miles when all I want to do is survive the swim in tact and will run walk the marathon.

Don't mind putting in bigger hours on the bike as I think this is where I will really crack my IM.

I have a good endurance background (4 marathons, several OD and one half IM to date) so not afraid of hard work, just want to have a life before IM and also avoid injury but do enough to finish comfortably inside the cut - off. Is this too much to ask

[TRIumphant]

Buy yourself BeIronFit, it's got three plans in there, "Competitive", "Intermediate" and "Just get round". All are time based plans, so you don;t go out for 100 mile rides, or 20 mile runs, just 5 hour rides and 3 hours runs. Easy to schedule in your diary then. I followed it, as far as I could around life, work etc, and got the medal without any real issues.

PM me and I should have an Excel file of the Competitive I can forward to you.

I only went for the Competitive, as then I knew of things got tough, or life got in the way then I had two other plans to step back down to.

[grant.smith]

Hi,

I have been looking into this myself, at present I'm rather smitten with http://www.endurancenation.us/. They freely give you all the information which backs there strategy. There off season plan is around 8 hours a week. No swimming!

All I say is, give all there stuff a read. It's very interesting.

Hope that helps

[Ali Bongo]

Cheers guys, responses much appreciated

[Hewey]

while I didn't use one of their plans, endurance nation have got lots of good free info on their website, and their emphasis on race execution worked very well for me at the forestman this year. When it comes to the day how you tackle the race is just as important as how much training you've done.

"Be ironfit" is good too, as is "going long" by Joe friel and Gordo birn

[grant.smith]

Anyone know if there is much difference between Be Iron Fit 1st and 2nd editions?

[didds]

I'll just reiterate a few points I made in a similar thread about 70.3 training.

At any IM there will be few thousand competitors, who between them probably used hundreds if not thousands of training plans. For the vast majority of them, whatever plan they used, they completed the race. A good deal of those were in all likelihood generic (ie not athlete specific) plans from a book, a website, a mate or made up on the fly.

What a plan cannot provide you with is motivation to actually get out there and train - that has to come from you.

Whatever plan or approach you take though, it has to work for you - and this is where your initial query really counts. Look at the peak hour weeks ... can you find that amount of time? If you _almost_ can then you are probably OK. If the several peak hour weeks call for 20 hour weeks, and you honestly know that you can only find (say) 13 hours [ and that should include any prep or traveling time ... and hour drive to the lake is a 4 hour training commitment for your IM swim distance practice] then you are going to struggle. If nothing else at some juncture during your prep you will be needing to find time in one single week for a 90 min swim, a 6 hour bike and a 3 hour run - that's 10.5 hours and you've only had three sessions!

That's not to say its not doable in other ways - but you HAVE to be able to find SERIOUS amounts of time MOST weeks to make it work. It probably doesn;t matter if you miss the occasional session... or if you have good experience in one discipline you can probably reduce the load on that one. But if you are only chugging along at 6 hours a week average then you are probably setting yourself up to eitrher fail, get injured, or have a totally miserable experience.

good luck!

didds

[Ali Bongo]

Cheers guys and thanks for your best wishes Didds

There is no doubt that time will be an issue for me, although I am realistic about the amount of work I need to do, I do want to have a family day at the weekend. So this has to be factored in. My real goal is to get round, so the intial query is basically to see how much I need to do to do this. I have completed a half IM in 6:30 on fairly minminal training, but realise this is a totally different ballgame!!!

Fortunately I am moving to a rural seaside village in a few weeks so OW swims and good bike / run routes are on the doorstep

My real worry is that I get injured from overtraining which has been a big problem with my marathon training in the past so I need to get things balanced just right.

Thanks to TRIumphant's recommendation I have bought Be Iron Fit from Amazon this week as it looks to be exactly what I need - I did find "Going Long" very good but I lose the will to live when I sit down to devise a plan based on the huge amount of info in the book. There is some good stuff in there though.

[Ali Bongo]

Just finished reading Be Iron Fit as recommended by TRIumphant - have to say it is a brilliant guide to Iron training - like having a mate take you through exactly why you should do things in the way he suggests - no complexity or science blinding you - highly recommended.

Also has a 'get you round' programme, for those of us who just want to finish, that peaks at 10 hour weeks and has worked for hundreds of people apparently.

Thanks for the recommendation mate - worth its weight in gold, and only £8.50 on Amazon!!!

[Shaggy]

Seeing as it's been mentioned I'll chuck in my tuppence. I used the endurance nation stuff, liked the sound of it so much from the free read that I bought the outseason plan and stuck to it over the winter. It was working so well I then got the 12 week IM plan for outlaw. (Me and a mate went halves to spread the cost, and I could have worked out what to do myself from their info.) I would recommend it and will be following it again over winter and next year.

Really liked the plan, my running times and bike TT times have fallen dramatically. (Running went pop with achilles tendonitis though )

Last year Bolton IM 13hr16
This year Outlaw 12hr05 - over an hour faster on the bike, and feeling fresher too.

Cheers
Ade