All That Glitters Is Not Iron

A lot of people are signing up for Ironmans. The spirit is catching fire. Honestly as a coach I scratch my head why people want to subject their lives to this kind of torture. Yes I know it is trendy, it is exciting, and it would be nice to have the tattoo or at least the finisher medal. Maybe you are ready for the next challenge or maybe you have jumped into something you have no idea what you are getting into.

In this post I am going to share some thoughts on Iron: All that glitters is not Iron.

Suggestion #1: Get good at short course racing first. I see a lot of new triathletes do one season of sprints/olympics and they are already signed up for their first ironman. Why?

Consider keep a short-course focus for a few seasons and see how good you can get. Maybe throw one half iron in per year but for the most part teach yourself to go fast before you bump up to ultra distance. Work your way up your age group standings and push those pr's down. Become feared on the local racing circuit. The training time is not nearly as demanding on your schedule, and it is fun.

Suggestion #2: Do fewer short course races the year of your iron distance. This unfortunatley is the necessary trade-off, you can't go to all the races that your non-ironman friends are doing. If you sign up for an iron distance, make sure the rest of your schedule reflects it.

You need to focus more on long slow distance training than on intensity. Long bike rides (3-7 hours; 70-112+) and long runs (3 hours/20+ miles) miles eat up whole days and weekends. If you go to a sprint triathlon you basically are throwing away a whole weekend just to get 1-2 hours of hard racing. Plus when you factor in a mini-taper and a mini-recovery you are wasting almost a week. That is a lot of time that could be applied towards endurance training.


Photo: At the starting line of my first iron distance, the now defunct Lake Geneva WI Extreme.

Suggestion #3: If you are going to do an iron distance take a good look at the "Indies." Yes World Triathlon Corporation produces a great race; an Ironman race is a smoothly oiled machine. But I will also tell you that there are a lot of things that are undesirable about their races: You have to sign up a year ahead of time if you are lucky to get in. They are expensive, $500+. Pre-race you have never seen so many intense, Type-A, intimidating people walking around. And the race course is very jammed with a 2000+ mass swim start, packed bike course, and repeat-loop run course.

Indies, on the other hand, capture much of the original spirit of the sport. The participant list is usually in the few hundreds not the thousands. The participants are more low key and there is not the "assembly line" feel of an M-Dot race. You get genuine gratitude from an indie ironman and not just for increasing the WTC equity value.

I encourage many of my clients to do indies and they always enjoy the experience. If you are competitive (perhaps after a few seasons of short course racing) you also have a chance to do well in your age group or overall at an indie iron distance triathlon.

Which are the indie iron distance triathlons?: Vineman, Beach to Battleship, Great Floridian, and Silverman. Links to these and others are listed here.