So, Ironman Switzerland it is
then. After almost a 12 month lay-off,
Ironman is back in focus.
Switzerland. My very first. 2009. Where
the addiction and fascination with the sport really took off. “No more” I cried during the last lap of the
run. “Never again” and “stupid sport”
were also heard during the long run in to the finish. “What’s the point of this sport?” was
repeated in darker moments.
This will be Ironman number 12.
Entering Switzerland has me fired
up again. Training. Focused training, oh how I’ve missed
you. Reading. Listening.
Watching. Can’t get enough
Ironman and triathlon talk at the moment.
Plotting, oh the plotting. Making a schedule where I can fit training
in, where it fits in with the family, where I can still spend time with Lynn,
where I do not neglect everything else. That’s
the challenge, right there. It’s easy to
become obsessed and let it take over everything. The hard part is to recognise this, and
adjust accordingly. The family are on
board, positively encouraging. Not
turning their encouragement sour by over-doing it is the key.
Filtering. Deciding on the approach to training, particularly
during the winter. Train slow in the
attempt to build solid endurance, an aerobic engine? Include more intense sessions with a focus on
improving power and pace? Researching
different scholars of the sport.
Different viewpoints, different approaches. That’s the fun, right? Coming up with an approach, a method, that
works for me, that fits with my lifestyle.
Goals. Where to begin? How high do you aim? How big should the goal be? What will fire me up? What will get me out of bed in the early mornings
or keep me training when all others have gone to sleep? On the other hand, do I really want a big
performance goal? Is part of the joy
just the fact I can do this sport, whilst also living a normal life – with a
wife, three children, a business. Do I
need to reach for a sub-10 hour goal? Do
I aim at getting closer to the top age groupers? Do I use 2017 as a progression year, to have
a crack at the big one in 2018? Or am I
happy participating and seeing what I can do with what I’ve got? That’s a tough one to wrestle with. When the reality kicks in, and there are other
priorities to deal with, will these fit with my race goals. How do I adjust?
The answer, in part, is smaller
goals perhaps. Not necessarily race
related, more progression and training related.
A goal of four runs per week.
That’s a small, achievable goal isn’t it? Done for the next 40 weeks though, and that
frequency and consistency transforms me into a much better, more robust Ironman
runner than I’ve previously thought I was capable of. Power on the bike is pretty low in comparison
to good age-groupers. Increasing power
on the bike by 5 watts per month. Sounds
straightforward, achievable. Easy to
digest. That’s 50 watts of extra power available
on race day. Build speed on the
swim. Fast 50m and 100m efforts. A 1.05 all-out effort translates into
comfortable 1.20 cruising pace. A sub 60
second swim in a gala is still in focus.
That’s 50m training efforts at 30 seconds. Can these goals be done? Can they be achieved at the same time? Will achieving bike power goals impact on the
swim intensity? Don’t know. Set them, aim for them, recalibrate them as we
go along.
Lots of thinking to do. Lots of information to digest. Lots of dreams to have. Lots of training to do. Ironman Switzerland 2017. Exciting times ahead.
