I’ve decided to share my experiences for preparing to race middle and long distance triathlon. Over the past 6 years I have prepared myself for 5 full distance Ironman events and a good number of half distance races. Starting off with absolutely no sporting background and a lot of excess blubber I embarked on a weight loss and fitness regime.
Over the first 6 months this worked extremely well, losing over 2.5 stone and my fitness levels were well above the norm. But into the next 6 months and a lot of hours training I was seeing very little return for the effort that I was putting in. Up to this point I had trained predominantly on heart rate and had no real clue about structured training (I thought this meant just go out a lot and as hard as you can and you will get really strong!!) Unfortunately this wasn’t the case.
Once a week I would set off from the bottom of the Mountain Road and go as hard as I could to the top of Powers the Pot (then puke). My times had plateaued and for a few months I had actually gotten slower and at this point I’d thought maybe I had hit my peak.
Luckily enough Becky had signed us up for a long distance triathlon camp in Lanzarote, where I ended up meeting Nils Goerke who is a professional triathlete and a fantastic coach. On our very first spin together he could see a problem with my progression, and he quite simply put it to me “Mark you are riding too hard!!” Now this was all within the first 30 minutes of a two-hour spin and for a split second I was thinking…… WTF does this guy know? Sure I was poker faced, only breathing heavy when no one was looking, my heart rate was still 30 beats under my max (he couldn’t see my watch) and I thought, I’m well able for this! I was even managing to stay half a wheel in front of everyone .
He then made one comment I will never forget. He said, “Mark you must be professional, you are training at my race pace watts”. Really I hadn’t a clue what he had just said, I just remember a few of the group laughing to themselves, so I decided to ease off the gas and try to understand what exactly he was saying to me. Nils proceeding to explain to me that the device he had in his crank showed him the power he was producing on the ride and quite simply put it that if we were to carry on with that effort I wouldn’t make it through the day let alone the week.
During the week I was told that I was only going to get quicker if I slow down and that I was probably training 30% harder than I should be. We talked a lot about mitochondria, bone density, fat burning, fasted exercise, fast and slow twitch muscle fibres and the good old lactic acid, the list was endless. It was so much to take in. But what I was really interested in was his power meter, and always looking for the next gadget I asked him would this be a good investment? Nils again gave it to me straight “Get the power meter and your lactate tested, then train to your numbers and you will smash it in Florida”. Is it that simple, I asked myself?
It took me only a few weeks and I had rented my 1st power meter. It was an SRM and back then it was wired to the head unit and you needed a computer degree to use it. I quickly sent it back and bought a Quark, much simpler to use and connected to my Garmin watch wirelessly, and over the next few months I had some lactate tests and had hired Nils as my coach for the upcoming 70.3 and Florida Ironman.
It suddenly became so much easier to train and with the ongoing communications between us I was fast learning his approach to training, and it was easy to understand the sessions that he was prescribing. I remember well the 1st block of training, it was 3 weeks of pretty much the same stuff, the volume added up to around 15-16 hours per week. It was a bit daunting to look at but he assured me if I stuck to my numbers that it was going to be a breeze.
On the bike, my longest ride would have been 4 hours. Easy. He didn’t complicate things, aerobic 1, AT1 for short. This was not above 120 HR and 180 Watts and this he decided from my lactate results I got In UL. Now I’m pretty confident with my next statement that: “No one has rode 4 hrs this easy………CTC Spin :) and believe me it took me a few weeks to trust him on this one. I knew if I was going to get through the volume, I just had to stick to the plan. Now I’m not saying all of the sessions were easy as the shorter bikes would have had some dosage at race pace or slightly above and there would have been some change of cadence, all of which has its benefits and I won’t bore you about it.
I didn’t have long with Nils before 70.3 Austria but by then he knew what I should be aiming for, A snippet of his email to me a day before the race.
Mark,
Try to get as much rest as possible today!!! Don´t spend hours walking around the expo, coffee houses, etc. And if doing it wear compression socks. Tonight you should have pasta with light meat (chicken, fish) and no more salad after lunch. Try to focus on Sunday. I will send you the race nutrition details this afternoon and then let´s have a phone call tonight at 9.15h (it´s easy – my time is your time).
You will do great on Sunday!!!
As I remembered the phone call, I was to get out of the water and on to the bike, lock in my race pace watts and after 5 mins take a gel and not to worry about HR as it will be high from the swim and the excitement of the day. Nils knew the course and talked me through it step by step, I was told to ride smooth and don’t go hard on the hills, aim for around 230 watts average. I would be passed on the climbs but don’t panic, just stick to the plan.
That day I stuck to the plan. It was pretty much my 1st real triathlon and I crossed the line in 4:41 with a 2:27 Bike split. Pure text book stuff and better than I could have imagined! And truly this I had never expected…….Why……Because in my training I had barely seen this performance. On the day I had biked harder and managed to run a personal best half marathon after it all. WOW!!! The training really paid off.
On a proper high I got back to Ireland and I was really keen to start the Florida plan. Numbers and times were dancing around in my head, calculations from half distance to full distance, Florida bike splits, average watts vrs speed, watts per kg, who did I know that had raced there. I seemed to have quickly forgotten how much I was hurting and how hard it was crossing the finish line in Austria. I sent Nils a mail asking if I could get back to things straight away. His reply was “Mark your body needs to rest, you have a long way to go before Florida and you need to ease back into your training slowly”. We had a long conversation about the importance of staying injury free and healthy, 2 major factors often overlooked so I took it all on board.
Over the next months we worked on lots of easy volume and before hitting the business end of the training plan I retested my lactate. By this stage I had my own lactate reader and was able to understand very easy how much I had improved. Still I had to give it a lash up the Mountain Road for old time sake. It was incredible, my new easy pace was my previous threshold pace. Going into the final block of training my body felt like it couldn’t get tired, it was so well conditioned at this stage but raw speed wasn’t there. Any time I did any sprinting, I felt flat. This wasn’t really a problem for the event that I was training for, but still the final week’s sessions took care of this and I was able to push through the pain barrier and punch out all my given sets bang on the numbers.
In the weeks before the event coach Nils had everything laid out. He had raced here before so was able to well prepare us, Yes US. I’d trained all year, for both of the events with Brian McClusky who was my wing man. It worked really well for motivation to train with Brian, along with having the same coach, we did most of our training together. We were on slightly different volumes from bike to run, this was because he’s an old boy :) We had taken our own caddy with us to Florida, he was to do the driving, cooking, some motorbike pacing and generally help take the stress of the race away. We had definitely taken age group Ironman racing to a new level!
I’m pretty sure most athletes training for Ironman have the same obsessive psyche. I had taken a path that would assure I would get the most from my training and after a year and the right guidance I was able to compete in my 1st Ironman triathlon at the front of the race. I had managed to exit the bike leg in the top 30 and finished up in 88th overall. 5 minutes faster than Nils had predicted.
To date I have learned some valuable lessons in training and racing. In my next blog, I will try to explain what I think helped me to race at a high level.
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