I know it is hard to say that a special time on a IM is the shame limit depending on what sort of training you have done and what sort of experience you have before starting with triathlon etc but I would like anyway to know some sort of suggested time for accepted time on an IM.
Lets say that you train 1-5 hours/week for 6 month before a race what would be an accepted time, 12 hours?
If you train 6-10 hours or 10-15 hours, how much would that accepted time decrease.
What is your experience of level of time compared to the IM time?
I’m sure everyone is different but training 1-5 hours a week and expecting a 12 hour finish seems like a lofty goal to me. Personally, I think anyone who can finish an IronMan is awesome but thats just my opinion.
I don’t think there is one accepted time, not even given the training hours you mention. There are so many variables.
I have goal times for each IM I do. They vary depending on my training for that particular race, my actual fitness, the course, the conditions on the day etc etc.
I have 3 times in my head at the start of each race (not just IM)
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the planets align (glassy smooth water, tailwind all bike ride, downhill run, get my nutrition right etc) and I go even better than I ever hoped for (except that I actually hope for a slightly ridiculous time). I’ve only ever had that happen once, and that’s when I did a PB in a marathon by over 20 minutes, completely unexpectedly!
-
A realistic goal time that I’ll probably be close to, based on past experience, but just a few minutes quicker, that I still have to race pretty close to my ability on the day.
-
A miserable time I’d accept grudgingly, if say I had cramps on the run, or over heated or it was killer windy on the day or whatever. It’s the slowest time I’d consider to be acceptable. I’d never pull out of a race simply because of a bad clock time, but I’d certainly be considering it if I got closer to the worst projected time.
For me, for 20 years now, I’ve been chasing sub 12 hours as my ‘planets align’ time. I’ve also been quite annoyed that twice, for different reasons, I’ve managed to go 13:02! In 1998 with almost no training, I struggled to 15:15 on a killer windy day when my back blew up and I limped through most of the marathon. I was in tears as I crossed the line that day. Still, even with a completely crap time, I was still proud of myself that I was able to keep pushing for THAT long, and that I was able to suffer way more pain and suffering than I’d ever given myself credit for.
good time? bad time? it’s all how you look at it. finishing is good, finishing is better, finishing in a satisfying time is great and finishing first is the best! 
don’t worry about time. Just do what you can do, to the best of your ability on the day and be happy with what you achieved, not disappointed in what you failed to achieve.
There is no ‘accepted’ time for an IM. At best, there might be some general norms for say a 25-39 yr old guy with some background in run/bike and a certain amount of time/commitment to training. But I think those would be quite specific.
If you break 10hrs, that’s a pretty studly time. Women going under 11 are fast. 50+ might be in the 11-15hr range.
17 hours.
Tell me how old you are, what gender you are and how many training hours/week you’re putting in, and I shall provide you with a totally unqualified and subjective judgement on what would be a respectable time for you*
*My method for doing this will be to estimate the time I would do at your age and level of training, and then subtract an hour…
If you can even finish an IM before the cutoff on 1-5hrs/week training I would be surprised, but you definitely are not going 12 hrs (assuming this is your first).
The only “shame” I see is if you don’t try (tri) at all. You look back and regret not giving it a go. Now that’s a shame!
I am pulling this straight out of my butt and it probably smells that way, but…
I’d venture to guess that a 17 hour finish time would require no less than 8-10 hours a week. Time gains would then follow some sort of inverse exponential function of increased training hours that approached a 9:00 finish time. The entire function would move up and down based on age, years experience, cumulative lifetime volume, gender. Then there is my own discovery, the Wrecks-Factor. If you plug in the numbers and turn the crank I guarantee you will get your exact finish time. I’ll be publishing my research in the back of Lava in early 2014.
In Australia if you finish over 13 hours the spectators are given cattle prods to poke you on your way down the finish chute. You will also be shamed mercilessly. Sub 10 will probably get you in the top half of most age groups.
That’s why we’re awesome at this sport and you yanks struggle. No ticker.
In 2011, I averaged 7 hours/week of training. I finished IMC in 11:04. However, from January through April, the majority of my time was running due to training for Boston. I didn’t really ramp it up until May, but from May to August I averaged 8.5 hours/week. The longest week I ever had that year was 11 hours. The shortest was 2, but I was hit by a car that particular week. I was 32 at the time.
For this year, I hit it much harder, averaging 10.5 hours/week beginning in January (to now). I’ve had several weeks at 14+ hours with a minimum of 6 due to traveling. I’ll let you know Monday what time this yields.
I am pulling this straight out of my butt and it probably smells that way, but…
I’d venture to guess that a 17 hour finish time would require no less than 8-10 hours a week.
That’s a bit ‘blanket’ surely ?
For example, a friend of mine is just a genetic beast. Never does any exercise, not run/biked in about 10 yrs. He was curious about my training and set off to try to do a 5k (from cold, with no prior training or experience running…) and he knocked out a 21min 5k. Now I suspect he could do an IM in well under 17hrs with very limited training.
Myself on the other hand, I’ll need every hour of training I can sneak in 
I don’t know about that. If you can swim at all, I imagine the average guy could do it on way less training than that.
2 hour swim (3:29/100m). 30 minute T1
25km/h bike ride (7 hours). 30 minute T2 to relax
6km/h walk for 42km - 7 hour marathon
Add it up, and that’s 17 hours. The only rough part for the average person would be tolerating their bike seat for 7 hours untrained, and the sheer boredom. Or maybe I’m underestimating how hard it is to walk at 6km/h for 7 hours.
On topic:
For an acceptable time, it is wildly variable. A better measurement than your training volume would be what you can currently do. People could say “oh, you do a 2:30 Olympic distance, then you could maybe aim for ______ for IM”. Or you could say “I finish in the top 40% in most events with my current fitness level, so I’m going to aim to finish in the top 40% at my IM”. Then you could just look up what the 40%th person did the year before.
I know it is hard to say that a special time on a IM is the shame limit depending on what sort of training you have done and what sort of experience you have before starting with triathlon etc but I would like anyway to know some sort of suggested time for accepted time on an IM.
**Lets say that you train 1-5 hours/week for 6 month before a race what would be an accepted time, 12 hours? **
If you train 6-10 hours or 10-15 hours, how much would that accepted time decrease.
What is your experience of level of time compared to the IM time?
The bold above makes no sense, if you train 1-5 hours a week, depending upon your fitness level before the 6weeks you aint finishing under/near 12 hours.
Really confusing statements…
Those massive pelotons on the bike probably explain how Australians can log sub 13hrs with 6 hour run splits so often too… grin
If your a strong swimmer, you could swim maybe 1 hour a week and have minimal fitness and sandbag maybe a 1:20 like it’s a long warm-up, maybe stop and float on your back for a minute here and there even to rest.
So how fast coudl you go with just a peak of maybe 6 hours in a week? lets say 2 runs and 3 bike rides. 2 of those are 1 hour quality workouts and a 1 hour recovery run or bike. So that’s 4 hours total. then 1 longer run and 1 longer bike. You could alternate those every other week and get up to a 2 hour run and a 5 hour bike effort. I think 9 hours peak is possible, if you could average 8 hours consitently all other weeks. The key is those quality workouts. You might be able to go under 11 hours even.
To finish with only training no more than 5 hours a week? Probably, but you’d be walking almsot the whole marathon. So you’d have to go into it doing long tempo and threshold rides or somethign like that and no longer rides or runs and almsot no swimming. Maybe 30 minutse a week.
It would be an impressive challenge… but sounds insanely painful. I remember how much my first HIM hurt the week after. My one knee took 4 months to fully recover. It was a LOT less painful having trained 50% more on average. No knee soreness at all due ot adequate run volume leading up to it. Its’ also becomes a shorter race.
I’d put it this way. With minimal training, the distance itself becomes the challenge. With adequate training, it becomes a question of how fast. A year ago I had sworn off doing a IM because I wasn;t interested at going slower and training 20 hour a week and never seeing my family. But i then realized that I could do it on less training, and learned how to manage my daily schedule to make the training more invisible.
Crap, most on here could train discretely 5 hours a week without their family even knowing they are training. I can slip out on a Sat. morning and get in a 3 hour ride in before my wife and daughter are even out of bed. A couple times I slipped in, said good morning, slipped on my running gear and off to do a brick. Done before her 2nd cup of coffee at 8AM. That’s how you do it. Pick 2 days a week to sleep in and get a good 8 to 8-1/2 hours and the rest 6 to 6-1/2 hours.
Last year I finished IMLP in something like 13:40. I didn’t care about my time and would not call it good or bad, it just was. I did not train for it at all. I had only one “kinda long ride” of maybe 70 miles and nothing longer and only a handful of hours on the bike at all. It wasn’t IM training, but I did spend every day in the gym, trails, track or on the pavement running.
I set out to run 12 marathons last year (one a month) which I did. Even got 2nd place in one of them. Anyway, my point is general agreement that “anyone” can do an IM in under 17 hours with some kind of generic training. For me, it was all run training which = an arguably slow IMLP, especially the run (but there is a story attached to that and I don’t want to get into it, but it added probably 1.5 hours).
Still, I had fun. After a while I won’t remember my time, but I’ll remember being there.
1 hour a week would be tough for anyone. 5 hours a week would be doable for many and good athletes would surely be able to go sub 12 off of that.
I think of sub 12 as the standard when it comes to a pretty respectable IM time.
I know it is hard to say that a special time on a IM is the shame limit depending on what sort of training you have done and what sort of experience you have before starting with triathlon etc but I would like anyway to know some sort of suggested time for accepted time on an IM.
Lets say that you train 1-5 hours/week for 6 month before a race what would be an accepted time, 12 hours?
If you train 6-10 hours or 10-15 hours, how much would that accepted time decrease.
What is your experience of level of time compared to the IM time?
1 to 5 hours a week is not adequate training for an IM. Not even close If I were training 1 to 5 hours a week, I would not worry about an “accepted time” for an IM. I just would not do one. If for some reason I actually were to do an IM on ***that ***kind of “training”, the only shame I would feel would have nothing to do with my performance and everything to do with my failure to prepare.
But to be clear, there’s no “shame” in being time constrained from being able to prepare for an IM. And there’s nothing that says you have to do an IM in the first place. And there’s also no shame in doing sprint triathlons.
The point or racing isn’t to see how well you can do on inadequate training. It’s to do as well as you can.
I’ve got pretty good genetics for endurance sports and wouldn’t even be close to finishing an IM on 1 hour a week. Probably not even 3 or 5. It’s just not enough to get the body adapted to suffering for 12+ hours. This is especially true if you are coming right off of the couch and don’t have a background in endurance sports.
6-8 hours a week for the early part and a couple closer to 10 as the race approaches should make it very doable to finish. Some of the genetic freaks go around 9 hours. Look at darkhorsetri and his Boulder 70.3 time. Many others would be happy to break 12, 14, or the 17 hour cutoff.
Frankly, I have no desire to ever do an Ironman so my accepted time for my training hours is 0/0, or just undefined!