First IM was CDA in 2006. I did it in 11:30. I’m wanting to do another IM and break 10:00. Is it realistic to take 1:30 off an IM time? I’m curious how the 10:00 people train. How many sessions per week per sport? For my first IM I did three sessions per sport per week. It was probably too light on the bike and run. If you are doing a 10:00 IM, are you running 5-7 times a week? How many hours a week of training are you doing? Is it possible on 15 hours a week, or is 20 more realistic? Just curious. Thanks.
You’re going to see a lot of variation in how many hours people train and how many sessions. Without knowing you or your training, I tend to view a 10 hour IM as an achievable goal for many male athletes with dedication and consistent training. A more useful approach that finding out about others would be to look at your past race results and decide how you’d get your 10 hour IM, i.e. 65 minute swim, 5 minute transition, 5:20 bike, etc. Then develop, by yourself or with a coach, a training blue print to get yourself to those goal times.
What were you splits?
I would look at your splits vs. a group of 10-hour IM and determine where you are lacking. Take the average of their individual splits at CDA and one of your elements should stick out. Work on that aspect. The only tricky part is the run, which is really dependent on the bike effort.
I went from 11:45 at Florida to 11:07 at Placid just by working on my run. A far cry from 10:00, but realistically I figure I have another 20 minutes of run reduction, 5 minutes on the swim(I sink but unless eureka happens big improvement won’t come there), but up to 50 minutes in the bike.
Is it possible? yes
Can **you **do it? Quite possibly, but there is some genetic ability involved. The drop in time may take a few years. A good coach will escalate the improvement time.
My husband went from a 10:30 first IM to 9:09 PR. It did take him a few years of 15+ hours/week to achieve the big drop in time. In his case the drop was sudden, four years of the 10+ races to a 9:15 in his 8th IM. Since then, he has maintained sub 10 hours with 20 hours per week training.
This was back in the early 90’s, Joe learned by trial and error. With the great coaching available today, the learning curve could be shortened considerably.
I’ve met many IM triathletes that have experienced this sudden improvement after a long term training commitment.
It’s doable to trim an hour and a half, though certainly gets harder when you’re talking about the somewhat rarefied air at 10 and sub 10. I did 12:14 at Moo in '04 and 10:37 at IMFL in '06 (apples and oranges) with goal of 10:45 this year at Moo. I’ve never once trained more than 16 hours in a week but believe that consistent daily training over several years will allow continual improvement (hopefully, at least til I’m 50).
Yes you can. but it takes time.
Without going into the details and were your weaknesses are and what were your split @ IMCDA, the first step is consistent training.
The word training is not necessarily the best word, but getting out on a regular basis is going to help building that base that is so critical.
I did 11:40 @ IMLP this year for my first IM and I know (or at least think) I could have done it in 11h25 or so (wasted time during transition + did not eat enough during the marathon) but it does not matter since execution is part of the game.
I plan to attempt to qualify foe Kona in 09. So the reminder of 07 & then 08 I am going to focus on:
a) keep building that base,
b) “speed”
and c) probably I will not do an IM in 08 (I however tempted to do an Ultra 50-Miler, or maybe a local iron distance).
cheers,
Fred.
As Fred and Sue pointed out, you need consistency first to get your volume up in all sports to build a huge aerobic base.
But back in the “day” (Fleck and I refer to this as the early 90’s)…we raced our pants off at short course and got our speed up. I’m guessing here, but there are likely not that many guys that can go 10 flat who are not also going 2:05 at Olympic triathlon distances. At least this is the experience that I have based on people around me. Women are slightly different and can go 10 hours without being as fast at the shorter distance. One might argue that Lori Bowden and Lisa Bentley don’t change their pace much from Olympic to half to full.
But being fast at short course racing is still not sufficient…there are lots of short course studs that cave and implode once race distance hits ~4 hours…you also need that volume.
My recommendation is that you get your Olympic and half Ironman times down. First of all, it is more fun than mindlessly plodding towards an Ironman which is the trap that the current generation of the Mdot “I want my tatoo” cult fall into :-). You’ll need volume anyway to get your speed going, but you’ll also learn to go fast and race fast (note, Fred’s reference to wasting time in transition…if you race short course, you won’t be doing this…)
Dev
I hope so because I hope to shave 6.5 hours off of mine. Dev’s plan above is my exact approach, I am racing IMFL, but that staying with Oly’s and Half’s until I go sub 2:20 Oly and sub 5:00 HIM. I expect that will take me 2 years, but it will happen for sure. You have to know.
First… address your weaknesses
Second… raise your MLSS in all three
Third… build a big CTL before the race.