I did my first Ironman for two weeks ago (A flatcourse Ironman in Sweden called Järnmannen). The race went excellent 10:22 splits(1:08,5:19,3:54)
It was my first Ironman after two years of serious biketraning, 11 months of swimtraining, couldn’t crawl 15 meter when I started and two years of not so serious running.
I wonder how much I can improve in one year, my goal is 9:40 (1:00,5:10,3:30) is it possible? I’m thinking that the marathon would be easy to improve since I had only 800km in my leg before the race. I’m thinking 3:30, wouldn’t be impossible with serious traning. The swim should be possible to cut 8 min since I have recently learned how to swim, therefore I think with the current training I would continue to develope my stroke and strength.
My bikeleg will although require some extra training to maintain and in best case improve 9 min. I don’t think I can add more time to biketraining since I don’t have the time to do more than 7-6000km (as I did before this years race). Maybe I will be able to add more qualitysessions and therefore shave those 9 min off my bikesplit.
10:22 to 9:40 is a dramatical improvement. Not so many athlets manages to go below 10:00. It’s impossible tell you how much you can improve, but you have to be very fit to make 10:22, and then it’s more difficult to improve.
If you had 11:22 ->10:40 I would say Yes - but 10:20 → 9:40 is a much, much bigger gap.
It’s impossible to tell you exactly - but don’t be too dissapointed if you don’t reach your target. (I would go for 9:59 instead). Personally I started with 10.00 after 2 years serious training, needed 3 extra years to go below 9:40).
I think I will stick with ajo’s 9:59 since there’s no worse than failing. It also think it’s hard to come back and train when you don’t achive your goals, so maybe 9:59 is to prefer.
Your trying to gain the biggest improvement in swimming. I would suggest you search high and low for a good swim coach. A coach that can develop you over a year of training. You should be swimming under the continuous supervision of an experienced coach. I would not recommend an internet swim coach.
Hehe, maybe I should have mention that my goggles didn’t work during the race, so I had a really hard time to take the shortest way to the bouys, I think that atleast costed me 4 min or so.
Yepp, my triathlon-club have a really good swimcoach! So it may be do able… I don’t know
I am sorry, At least in my opinion, there is something worse than failing - not trying. If your goal is unreasonable and you fail you learned something. If your goal was not very high, and you easily make it you learn something, if your goal was right on, you learn something. If you don’t try, what have you learned or accomplished?
You can run much faster in less than a year by using Powercranks. Really. MUCH faster. Plus, you don’t have to beat your legs up by running more miles than you’ve already been running. Your cycling may take longer to improve upon, or maybe it will improve significantly. But, running? NO DOUBT about it, you WILL improve.
I don’t think anyone remember this thread, but hey I love follow-ups…
Well I almost manage to do sub 9:40. I did 9:47:00 (0:59:09,05:00:38,03:43). I had an excellent swim, great bike, but bigtime troubles on the run and had to take off some load seven times, spent some times on the toilets… Maybe I would have managed to do sub 9:40 with a good stomach, but hey that’s a part of the game…
Anyway do you think I manage 9:30 next year?
Goodtime: Guess my teamswimcoach qualify as a good coach since I break sub 1 hour on the swim!!!
Awesome 1st and awesome 2nd. How did you pace the bike on #2? You probably could have gone sub 9:40 easily if you could fixgure out what happened…pacing vs. nutrition vs. other? What do you think?
Always aim high! You never know what you’re capable of until you try it. However, I would concentrate on just improving the swim technique and use the extra swim training time to work the bike and run. I think that it is easier to get the run down 5 minutes then the swim so I would recommend working on your biking and running efficiency to go faster and maybe only swim 2 or 3 minutes faster since big swim jumps take more time.
Lose weight down to being “really lean” if you aren’t there now. Then look at Swim 1:08 is pretty slow for a low 10hr guy, with a big gap of 8-10 min for improvement. It is really hard to swim faster than a 57 or 58 without having a history, but around an hour isn’t that hard. Bike under 5:20 on a flat and not too windy course is still a pretty good time maybe you could steal another 5-10 min tops on a harder course there, and still have any legs for the run. Run, You have to really go good to run 7:30 miles for a marathon off the bike. Big room for improvement if you are one of the lucky few that can laugh at 7:30 and run 7:15s.
Did I miss your age? If you are 25 you probably have 10 years to get “good”
From what I have seen, most sports take maybe 5 -6 years to get close to their potential. So there you go have at it. G
Don’t let anyone convince you it can’t be done. One of the guys from my club went from 10:26 (IMNZ 2003) to 9:32 (IMOZ 04).
If you can put in the hard yards then it can be done. I’m aiming for sub 9:30 debut and have the full support of my coach. I know I can do it so long as I follow the plan and stay injury free. What may hold me back is race nutrition and learning what works and what doesn’t. I can appreciate getting it right the first time may be difficult.
Get that solid base training in get your body in physhical shape to handle it (yoga etc).
Congrads on your success, can you tell us a little bit about the training you did this year to achieve this improvement. What did you change from last year, or did you just do more of the same?
Well I don’t think the pacing on the bike was wrong, I had a great bike, but I drank too much sportsdrinks and to little water. So since my strategy is to solely survive on gels after the first 90km my stomach couldn’t handle it. More water instead of sportsdrink would probably have helped. I never felt really tired on the run, just out of gas since my stomach wasn’t able to absorb any carbo’s… But I manage do keep “running” on fat as energy-resource. With 5km to left I was able to keep one gel and actually paced up a bit.
dav_ros
Quite simple changes, I cut out all the junktraining pass and instead I have one LSD-bike (160-200km) and a session 75% of the LSD-session, similiar for the run one LSD between 1:45-2:15h and to that I added a pass of 75% of the LSD. Most weeks I also added a harder bikesession and an run-interval based session. For the swimming I only made sure I actually had god attendence-procentage to my clubs swimsessions, which helped a lot. And when I was out training I had a good focus whole season (yes it’s over for me this year, only one sprint to go), if I was training I were going long, with focus to get the distance. I.e I didn’t get on the bike unless I was going further than 80km.
And to all: Thanks for all the encouragement!!
Best Regards Dave — that hopefully will wake this thread up to live again next year and report my sub 9:30 Ironman
