Why do an Ironman triathlon?
- Published on
- Shreshth Mehra--11 min read
Contents
- Why do it?
- The experiment
- Key insights
- How much did I train
- One after the other
- Enjoy the process
- Improved focus and time management
- The Ironman Community
- Other details
- Footnotes
Why do it?
Let me start with reasons not to do an Ironman triathlon. First is cost and second is that you'll probably sign up for another one right after. I very strongly believe that everyone and anyone can do an Ironman and in fact I would even say that everyone should do an Ironman. If you currently feel that you can't do one here's some inspiration
- Chris Nikic, the first person with Down syndrome to finish an Ironman [^1]
- Rajesh Durbal, triple amputee with multiple Ironman finishes[^2]
- Hiromu Inada, 86year old finisher who started the sport at 60 after retiring[^3]
Besides the bragging rights for life, you also get some side effects from the whole journey. These may include
- The word difficult getting replaced by "I've done an Ironman what's this"
- A constant need to challenge yourself and not be satisfied (it can get irritating sometimes)
- Time management skills that make it seem like you have more hours in a day than the others
There are many other positives in my life that I can traceback to Ironman. If you're reading this you're likely someone who likes to push themselves and challenge their limits, so Ironman is the perfect journey for you. My intention with this post is not to show you how to train for an Ironman (there are people way better than me at that) but to give you a raw and true picture of what the ironman life looks like and what it taught me.
The experiment
Finish the Ironman Mont Tremblant with 40 weeks of training (January to August)
I should mention that before I started training for the full Ironman at Mont Tremblant, I had no previous experience in triathlons. In fact, the longest I had ever swum was 200 meters, had never sat on a road bike before and my longest run was a 10km run for a cause which I completed at walking pace. However, I was very active in sports in high school. I competed at various levels in Boxing, field hockey, and table tennis. Even though the kind of cardio levels and training required for triathlons is very different from what I was used to, a lot of skills and fitness transferred directly.
I found a coach through Ironman U [^4] who helped me create a plan for my specific case. However, around 10 weeks in I found a local triathlon group in my city and started training with them. This is something I would highly recommend as not only do you find like minded people but it also makes the workouts a lot easier and fun.
Key insights
Note: I was only 19 when I completed the race. As a result, I was able to put my body through a lot more without getting injured and recovered a lot faster. I was also in Engineering School at University of Waterloo, Canada at the time which meant I could only give so much time to training without failing my classes. I realise that my training numbers were less than ideal and training for a full Ironman directly was a bad idea. In hindsight, I would first do a couple 70.3 races over 2-3yrs and then build towards a full Ironman.
How much did I train
After 300+ hours of physical training, 80kms of swimming, 1500kms of cycling and over 800kms of running, the graph below shows what my 40-week training looked like.
After the 40 weeks of training, my longest swim was 3.2km, longest bike was 160km and longest run was 35km. As you can see in the graph, my biggest week of training was week 36 with 15+hrs of training. This is way below what most people would recommend but is the most I could manage given my strenuous Mechanical Engineering degree along with trying to make new friends in first year University in a new country.
One after the other
Swimming was by far the biggest challenge I had during the training. Each time I went to the pool and tried swimming I would hate every minute of it. I was not able to swim more than 300meters at once and kept thinking how would I manage 3.82km in open water.
One day when I was doing my usual 300m warm up I thought to myself what if I did just one more lap. That would set a new record for me at 325m. Sure, I was feeling tired and my muscles were hurting but 25metres could not be any worse, right? So, I did 1 more lap. Right before I finished this extra lap, I said to myself, "now that I have already matched my longest swim ever all I need to do is 1 more lap for a new record". And I kept doing this till the time lifeguards had to come and stop me to tell me that the lane swim time was up. I swam 1200meters non-stop that day. I could not believe my watch when I saw that number. This way of focusing on the very now and not worrying about how much more I have left in the future is probably the single most useful skill that helped me complete the race. From that day on, every swim was just one more stroke, one more lap. Every bike ride became one more pedal stroke, one more split interval and as you would guess every run became one more step, one more km till the time these steps and strokes summed up to make up the Ironman distances of 3.8km swim, 180km bike and 42.2km run.
Enjoy the process
Despite this cheat code of fooling my brain to think I only have 1 more to go and then do 50 more, I still hated the swims. This made waking up at 6am before my lectures to go swim very difficult. In order to improve on my swim technique and force myself to go swimming regularly, I joined paid classes at the University. Once in a while, during the classes we would shut our eyes and let ourselves just sink down in the water till we hit the ground and then stay there for as long as we could. What this did for me is it took away my strangeness from water. By allowing myself to be comfortable in the water with eyes shut and having no perception of depth, I made friends with the water. Very soon after, I started enjoying the way water would glide over my body with every pull of my stroke. During the cool down, I would swim with eyes shut just to feel how the water flows over my body. In fact, doing this somehow even improved my speed. This is where I realized that the only way to do something well and regularly is to enjoy it. Discipline and will-power can only allow you to overcome certain bad days. With distances as daunting as that of Ironman, it is impossible to complete the race through sheer will and force. You have to enjoy the race, even more so you have to enjoy the entire process of training in order to accomplish this challenge. As mentioned before, having a training group helps with this greatly.
I have since realized that this is true not only for ironman but anything in life. A very clear example of this is why diets work for some people and not others. Several studies show that the reason diets don’t work for people is because people struggle with sticking to them. If you are forcing yourself to stick to a diet through will power, sooner or later you will give into the cravings. However, if you were to adopt a diet plan that you enjoy eating, it won’t be an ordeal anymore. This trick makes your life way easier whether it be training for an Ironman triathlon or completing an Engineering degree.
Improved focus and time management
You have to get your workouts in which can be anywhere from 2-4hrs/day in a average intensity week. You have to get your 8hrs of sleep. You have to eat good nutritious food. You have to study for your engineering classes. You also have to give your friends time if you want to have a social life. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's more to life than just these things.
It starts out tough but then very soon you start getting better at time management. In fact, I noticed that even my focus improved significantly (possibly due to the benefits of exercise and eating healthy). As a result, I was able to get the same classwork done in a shorter amount of time and I was able to learn new things quicker. I started to run to places to get a workout in. In fact, my friends started to joke about it after I ran 10km to a bar to hang out with them. Point being, somehow I had superpowers when it come managing my time.
The Ironman Community
What's most interesting to me is that when you visit an Ironman event you can sense the oneness in the Ironman community. This oneness is a result of a knowledge within every triathlete. The knowledge of what it feels like to train for an Ironman. The sharing of what it feels like to experience this is what gives rise to the love in the Ironman community. That is why every single person I have met in the Ironman community is always a well rounded, humble and helpful person. The word used for this at the Ironman world championships in Hawaii is Ohana which means family. And once I experienced the community, I couldn't agree more.
Other details
Footnotes
[1] - The inspirational story behind Down Syndrome Ironman history maker Chris Nikic
[3] - Oldest person to complete the IRONMAN® World Championship | Guinness World Records
[4] - Find a Coach