Every time I had discussions with people completely out of triathlon and even more IronMan stuff, the first things they were saying to me was something like : « But you never take a pause that whole time during the race do you ? » I'm now used to answering them, despite their astonishment, « That was absolutely not a problem. No, the real deal was how to fit in the schedule 15 hours of training per week, and just as important, the associated recovery needed. » I have a full-time job, “fortunately” no girlfriend or kids, but it was already a rough mission.
If I had to define my one-year season in one sentence, I would definitely go for the one of Pat Riley, former NBA coach and player : « There are only two options regarding commitment . You’re either in or you’re out . There’s no such thing as life in between. » I guess this quote is even more true when it comes to long-distance triathlon. I won't go much into details here — that's the purpose of the next chapter — but IronMan training is all about consistency. The higher the goals, the higher the self-sacrifice needed. It's pointless to say that to achieve #SUB10 in just a year my whole personal life was about triathlon. The thing is that working out at the limits of your physical and mental abilities for months is an incredibly hard task. So if in the middle of your training session you have to think about or deal with distraction regarding life commitments and expectations, my thought is that you're entitled to fail, either by mental boom or injuries. I'm absolutely not a yogi or into stuff like that, but I understood that to make the best out of your training, your mind must be connected to your body. There’s a martial arts expression that when you arrive at the dojo : « Leave the outside, outside. »
If you fail to plan; you are planning to fail.
— Benjamin Franklin
So how do you set yourself up for a successful life / training balance ? We all have different lives, and I'm no one to say how you should run it, especially when I'm known as a radical type of guy. But I can say with confidence that whatever your profile there are 3 rules to follow :
- You have to face the reality of your life. Whatever the weekly amount of TSS work you want to put in your preparation, it has to fit with your schedule in a sustainable way. If you have to cut half of your planned workouts because you have other stuff to deal with, it will turn the whole thing to something unproductive and just ending up triggering you to oblivion. If you know you have only one hour available next Tuesday to run, you better plan a 70 TSS Fartlek session of 50 minutes rather than a 1h15 run of 70 TSS that you will have to cut off anyway. Remember that it's not about the kilometres you log in, but about the hard work you put in the fitness bank.
- You have to accept your genes. Over time I realised that I was designed to be an aerobic monster rather than a speed VO2 max demon. You can put me on the home-trainer for 3 hours and it'll go just fine, but send me over the treadmill for a 6x3 minute VO2 max session and I will most likely puke on your shoes. So my training schedule was designed accordingly with that precept. I would rather do my Fartlek session the Tuesday just before lunch to avoid a full stomach ready to party, and my long bike endurance session early in the morning after a good breakfast. At the same line, I never went for two bike and run intervals sessions on the same day. But it happened that I went for a 2h30 endurance ride and a 1h15 tempo run on the same day because I knew I would feel comfortable about it despite the large TSS amount provided.
- You have to understand that time management is priority management. This is one of the invaluable lessons I talked about in the introduction chapter. Until this universe collapses, one day on earth will always be equal to 1,440 minutes or so. You will have to make a lot of self-sacrifices if you want to break through on the level required for a #SUB10 attempt. For a year I declined 95% of the dinners and parties my friends invited me to. I'm a big boy, it's not about not going out eating non diet stuff or drinking alcohol. I could have prevented myself from doing so. No, it's all about not standing up for hours, hanging around late in the night, and over generating needless fatigue for the next training day. Believe it or not, excellency lies in those kind of details.
When taking into account all these parameters regarding my own life and situation, this is how my weekly training schedule pattern looked.
I made sure to keep a very specific pattern schedule over the season to adjust more easily my life around it.
Keeping a clear pattern over time helped me to schedule my life weeks ahead, because I knew that, for example, Thursday would be running and swimming. Keeping it simple and straightforward was very important, but sometimes it just could not work that way, either because of the seasons or the travels :
- In Europe your day is not quite the same over the short daylight course of winter and the long daylight course of summer. You have to make adjustments especially when it comes to your long bike endurance session on the road.
- Travel is a puzzling challenge for any IronMan training. I can talk about it because I've actually got a job that involves a lot of time abroad. If that didn't have consequences for the run with a treadmill in every hotel, it was a real deal when it came to the swim and the bike when I had to be away from home for more than 3 days. For every trip I spent at least one hour to figure it out which hotel had a Wattbike and public pool close to it.
To quote the great Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States : « If you fail to plan; you are planning to fail. »