I hesitate to challenge Slowman’s wisdom, but I was reading his recent piece about the winter months and one passage struck me in particular:
“I was talking to Tim DeBoom just two weeks before his third place finish in Hawaii (he would then go on to place second, followed by a pair of wins). He said something which is so very true, it showed insight, and it is to his credit that he realized it. His prior years’ Ironman races, as he was getting better and finishing higher, were not spent training for Hawaii. They were spent training to be able, finally, to be able to train for Hawaii. It is hard to do the training required to do an Ironman. You can’t do Ironman training your first year. You can train to finish it. But you can’t train to race it until, perhaps, your fifth year.”
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This seems to make sense, but doesn’t recent history contradict it? Craig Alexander won Kona on his second try, defeating several “veterans” of Ironman, after finishing in second place in 2007. Chrissie Wellington won on her first try and just a few weeks after her first Ironman event. This year, we saw Yvonne van Vlerken come in second on her first Ironman. Perhaps Wellington and Alexander are simply exceptions to the rule. Or perhaps they suggest that peak performance in Ironman can be achieved more quickly if athletes focus on the right things.
What are you talking about…do you realize how many years these athletes have been training and racing at a high level? Chrissie might be an exception, but she aparently spent a large part of her youth looking at the black line at the bottom of the pool!
Sure Alexander has been a top athelete for a while, but he’s very new to the Ironman game. Kona '07 was his first Ironman event. And how about Andy Potts. His longest run was 14 miles… Your point is my point. Perhaps it doesn’t take five years of gearing up for Kona to make a big push. Are you suggesting that Alexander has been putting in Ironman volumes all these years as a short-course athlete?
This seems to make sense, but doesn’t recent history contradict it? Craig Alexander won Kona on his second try, defeating several “veterans” of Ironman, after finishing in second place in 2007. Chrissie Wellington won on her first try and just a few weeks after her first Ironman event. This year, we saw Yvonne van Vlerken come in second on her first Ironman. Perhaps Wellington and Alexander are simply exceptions to the rule.
They may have been new to Kona but rest assurred these athletes have been training for many years. Wellington may be the odd exception and I mean exception( but I think she’s not giving the whole game away) as this is only her 4th odd year in the sport. Most contenders at Kona in the Pro ranks and in the AG ranks for top 5 spots have been training at an elevated level for a minium of 5 years( and even that would be an exception) and more than likley 10 years. Most of the Pros have been life-long endurance athlets in one sport or another since their teens.
So yes, DeBoom’s statements to Dan are correct - it can take 5 years of training just to be ready to do the training needed to perform at that level.
It’s perhaps the single biggest mis-understood thing in this sport - getting fit takes time. Getting to the level of fitness you are talking about here - maybe 10 years.
Gordo Byrn recently wrote a nice summary on his blog about how for him it was almost exactly 10 years of very hard, very long training that took him from an 11:00hr IM to an 8:29 IM with a 2:49 closing run. 10 years. And still, Gordo does not feel he has ever been ready to really race at IMH!!
Slowman was saying that you can’t go from couch potatoe to racing an ironman in 1 year.
Not that you can’t go from ITU racer to ironman in 1 year.
Sure Alexander has been a top athelete for a
while, but he’s very new to the Ironman game. Kona '07 was his first Ironman event. And how about Andy Potts. His longest run was 14 miles… Your point is my point. Perhaps it doesn’t take five years of gearing up for Kona to make a big push. Are you suggesting that Alexander has been putting in Ironman volumes all these years as a short-course athlete?
Yes I am suggesting that he has been pretty well putting in Ironman type “load”…not neccessarily hours, but volumeXinstinsity is on par if not beyond what the IM guys have been doing.
**Are you suggesting that Alexander has been putting in Ironman volumes all these years as a short-course athlete? **
I think that many would be surprised at the volume of training that it takes to be competitive at the ITU level. If you compare the training programs of say Simon Whitfield to, Craig Alexander, their would be more similarities than differences. It’s all about aerobic fitness and endurance - any race longer than a few minutes is.
Many believe their is this mystic with Ironman, particularly IMH because more than a few very good athletes have taken years to really have a good one there and some truly amazing athletes have never had a good race in Hawaii. But, there are just as many who go over their and lay down good to great performances right away - Wellington is a great example of this. Alexander would be another, as well as Luc Van Lierde, who put to rest that notion that you had to race 5 or six times at IMH to commune with the island or something like that.
Several years ago while attending a coaching clinic, a speaker with an exercise science background made the statement “10 years or 10,000 hours” is the time it takes to become truly proficient in a sport. Most triathletes are hindered by their lack of swimming ability, so I feel there is some credibility to the statement.