The Award Winning Thread - Sub 10 IM Plan

Mr ME · Joined: 25 Aug 2012 Posts: 97 Location: Gateshead

Along with the sub 3 marathon thread this thread has been a massive source of help and advice for me over the last year or so. I’d had a sub 3 marathon and a sub 10 Ironman as my goal in 2013. In hindsight this was perhaps slightly premature for me. I missed both targets going 3.00.28 at VLM and then 10.18 at the (insanely hot) Outlaw later that summer. The 29 seconds that separated me from a sub 3 marathon plagued me far more than missing sub 10 for ironman by 18 mins. I was reasonably pleased with my performance at the Outlaw and any disappointment was offset by the surprise of coming 2nd in my AG (35-39).
This year I managed to crack both targets going 2.51 at the Manchester Marathon back in April and then going 9.45 at Ironman Mallorca in September. I’m very aware that when it comes to this forum I do a lot of taking but not a lot of giving back, so whilst I don’t consider myself an expert by any stretch I thought it was about time I contributed some thoughts about what I learned from the experience and the things that made the difference for me.
My life has been insanely busy over the last year. My second child was born in September 2013 and work has been very intense. I got back into training mid December 2013 and between then and July 2014 I was averaging around 10 hrs per week. The vast majority of this was done very early in the mornings and very late at night to accommodate work, child care and family life. I knew that doing this meant that recovery was always going to be an issue and during this time I was (unfortunately) averaging about 5 hrs of broken sleep per night. Despite this, my motivation was high and I can count on the fingers of 1 hand the number of planned sessions I have missed in the last 10 months. So although rest was massively compromised my consistency was close to 100%. Particularly as I’ve not been able to do massive volume this has been important.
I’ve not got a glittering athletic history. I certainly did sports at school when I was younger but nothing spectacular. I had a typical 15 year layoff between 15 and 30 when drinking and smoking were the order of the day. I got back into ‘exercise’ at around 28 but didn’t do anything in terms of training till about 32. I’ve always been very aware of my lack of natural talent but I’ve sometimes been able to compensate for this with motivation. I’ve worked hard towards these goals and for the untalented but motivated they are definitely attainable. Others have often gasped at the hours I put in - I know it’s nothing significant compared to some of you guys on here - but for most of the year I train for fewer hours than most people spend watching TV.
Even before the training started a lot of work needed doing in terms of setting my life up to accommodate all of this – first and formostly was constant communication and negotiation with my wife. She’d much rather I went to bed than go out training late at night but overall prefers the version of me who is training for something than the version of me who is not training. This year we managed to get the balance about right.
My injury history is not good. After many years of occasional jogging I targeted marathons in my early 30’s with too much zeal and ended up with 7 stress fractures (or bone injuries) in the course of 5 years. I knew I had to sort this out to achieve either the sub 3 or sub 10 goal. This in itself took a long time and a lot of trial and error. Key to this was restricting my running to 3x per week (1 long run, 1 hill interval session on grass and 1 medium long run) I’ve tried to run off road as much as possible.
Good nutrition was also important. My diet’s not perfect by any means but we cook everything from scratch and I cut out anything processed. On top of this I found it helpful (and cheaper) to get off the gels and sports drink and for much of the season relied on dates, soreen loaf and water. I switched to the gels and sports drink briefly before racing to get my stomach used to it. I’m lucky in that I’ve got something of an Iron stomach and can hold down pretty much anything. I also ditched the commercial recovery drinks and finished up long hard session with a smoothie of milk, flax seed, nesquick, banana and honey – seemed to do the trick.
I did the usual thing of taking a recovery week every 4th week and made sure that on those weeks I got a massage. I was also taking vitamin D everyday over autumn, winter and spring and do an hrs core and strength session once per week year round. I found that doing all of this meant I’ve stayed injury free for nearly 2 years and in the run up to Ironman Mallorca I had been running well and consistently for 10 months in a row. I think I managed to get into something of a virtuous circle. The more consistently I was able to run without getting injured the more my muscular endurance developed which meant in turn that my bones had to cope with less stress and strain and injury was therefore less of a risk.
I know that there’s a lot of talk about how you shouldn’t attempt a marathon and Ironman PB in the same season. However for me I think that Manchester (early April) and Mallorca (late September) were sufficiently spaced to allow me to do this. Even if it wasn’t ideal from a theoretical point of view, running 2.51 did wonders for my confidence when approaching the task of cracking sub 10.
In terms of training for the sub 3 marathon I found that the thing that made the biggest difference was running a weekly (increasingly long) medium long run at Marathon pace. I know that it was this that allowed me to run a 2 min negative split in Manchester. After this I got to thinking about whether or not a similar approach could work on the bike in preparation for Ironman. This wasn’t going to be possible for me for the majority of the year because of time pressures but I knew that there would be a 5 week window in July and August when things would be different. My work patterns was going to be changing and in the transition period I was going to have some very welcome time off and would be working only 3 days a week. I knew if I planned it right I could get my usual weekend long ride in and also an additional hard 3 hr ride in during the week. This allowed me to push my average training hours up to about 17 hrs a week in this 5 week period as well as getting better quality sleep. Knowing about this in advance was partly what prompted me to sign up for Mallorca – it was well placed in relation to these 5 weeks. I’m sure that this temporary increase in training hours made a huge difference. I’m unlikely to ever get that same opportunity in the future and so it has crossed my mind that my form going into Ironman Mallorca may have marked my lifetime peak in terms of fitness. Only time will tell I guess.
I got a stages power meter from the states early in 2014. I’m only really just beginning to understand its potential as a training tool but certainly riding to power targets in the last 12 week before the taper was hugely beneficial. A word of warning for the uninitiated – it’s not all about FTP. I managed to get my FTP up to 340w which I was delighted with. I’d hoped to ride Ironman at about 74% of FTP which would have been 251w. I knew going into Mallorca that I wasn’t going to get anywhere near that. Looking back at my NP for longer rides I’d been managing anywhere in-between 220w early in the year and getting up to 245w later in the summer. On the day I aimed to hit 240w but even this turned out to be too ambitious. I rode most of the ride at 238w but started to fade badly in the last 15 miles of the bike and my NP came down to 232w which is about 68%FTP.
The powermeter has been incredibly useful but next year I’ll be concentrating more on doing my longer rides at a higher power than I will be on getting my FTP up.
Another point regarding the bike. I read somewhere recently that good Ironman performances rarely arise out of ‘holding back on the bike’. The article argued that most of the top athletes wouldn’t be able to ride a 112 mile TT much quicker than their ironman ride (2 or 3% at most). The argument continued saying that the trick is not so much holding back on the bike but the capacity to run well and efficiently on tired legs. I think I just about managed to get away with this. Certainly I don’t feel I held much back on the bike and wouldn’t have been able to ride it much quicker as a TT. It’s just finding the endurance to sustain my pace at the end of the marathon that I need to work on. Perhaps you lot have some other ideas about this.
In terms of bike work during the winter, almost all of what I did was on the turbo – high intensity stuff, short hard intervals, 2x20mins etc. This was really just to keep the bike legs ticking over and to supplement the marathon training. Post Manchester I focused a lot more on the bike. I was doing a weekly hill session (x4 repeats of a hill it takes me 10 mins to climb at max effort), I began increasing the 2x 20 mins to 3x20 mins and then 4x20 mins, the typical long weekend ride (I usually rode for 4 – 4.40hrs and never rode over 5hrs), a high cadence turbo session and as the summer approached I started trying to get that second medium long ride in also.
Time constraints meant that I didn’t often get to run off the bike. Ideally I’d like to do more of that in the future but for me to make this worthwhile the run off the bike needs to be 10 miles or more in order to come close to getting used to the kind of feeling that you experience in the second half of an Ironman marathon.
Whether it’s technically the right thing to do or not I did all of my long runs at faster than IM pace, these tended to be runs that averaged about 7.10 min miling.
In comparison to my biking and running my swimming is woeful. I vowed to do something about this this year and for most of the year I have managed to get in 2 or 3 sessions per week, 1 long set, 1 short hard set and one technique based session. In hindsight I really regret the time I spent in the pool. I’ve had some returns on this time but they have been minimal. I swam 1.11 at the Outlaw last year, the swim was measured slightly long that year. In Mallorca I swam 1.02 but this swim seemed short. Yard for yard I’d be surprised if my Ironman swim was even 2 min quicker this year than it was the previous year. I’ll continue with the technique stuff this winter but I won’t be putting in nearly as much time at the pool this coming year, I think that time could be much better spent on the bike…or with the family…or in bed!
Come race day in Mallorca I was feeling good. For me it was a blessing that it was a non wetsuit swim but my experience in the water was not a good one. Never before have I experienced such chaos and mayhem. I think this could have been largely avoided and one thing I need to get better at is swimming tactically and navigating to my advantage. I do tend to stand on the start line with a plan but that seems to go out the window the moment the gun goes off and after that I’m just trying to survive. I follow the pack rather than swimming my own race and as a result end up getting pummelled left right and centre. Just sorting this out could save me huge amounts of time and energy. When I got in for the second lap my arms felt as though they’d been ripped from their sockets and for a short time I wasn’t sure I’d manage to complete the swim at all. All of this as well as a jelly fish sting to the back of the knee meant that I started the bike stressed, worn out and full of adrenalin. I think these were the factors which meant I wasn’t able to hold, my watts on the bike the way I had done countless times before in training – more time wasted.
I’ve tried to get better and more economical with my transitions but looking at the guys who finished near the top of my AG in Mallorca I’m still giving away at least 2 mins in transition. Something else to work on.
Finally the run. I always find it very difficult to judge pace at the beginning of an Ironman run. Despite knowing I was going too fast a pace to sustain I struggled to slow down in the first hour and went through half way in 1.32. I knew I couldn’t sustain this and sure enough the wheels started coming off in the second half. I managed to keep running (but began walking the aid stations) but faded to a 3.18 marathon which was about 10 mins slower than I thought I might have been capable of on a perfect day. It was the familiar feeling of deep fatigue and the desire to stop towards the end of the marathon which I think I need to be better prepared for next time. I’m not quite sure how I’m, going to do this but I read something recently about the idea that all swim sessions should aim for a negative split. I’m beginning to wonder if all my training (swim bike and run) should aim for something similar – this is something I’m going to think more about over the next year.
I’ve been very motivated to achieve these goals and I’m delighted to have ticked them off in convincing fashion. Looking back on the things that made the difference for me, I think one of the main things was reading this thread start to finish about 18 months ago. As I went along I copied all the things which seemed interesting and helpful and compiled that into my own document. This then helped to shape most of my training blocks. I had very few original ideas, almost everything came from you guys on this thread and then finding ways to incorporate those ideas into my life. Hope some of these thoughts might be helpful for some of you lot in achieving your goals. Thanks.
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Tri Curious · Joined: 08 Jul 2006 Posts: 280 Location: Cheshire

Nowhere near this standard of performance but that was a bloody good read and thanks for taking the time to write it.

Cheers

YKK · Joined: 23 Oct 2011 Posts: 317 Location: North&West london

well done Mr ME, good to see this achievable on limited training time.

Actually, I was on the same trajectory as you, I was hoping for a sub 10:30 at Outlaw last year and then a sub 10 attempt this year, but ended up frazzled and ran a 4:50 marathon. Was still hoping for sub 10 this year there, but just could not get any mojo on the bike so hardly rode at all this year, however focused on nailing a good run, which I did to go sub 10:15.

Currently I am not doing an IM next year, but the following year I hope to get a bike time near to yours, which will make the difference, perhaps even at IM Mallorca.

Wheezy · Joined: 10 Oct 2007 Posts: 1889 Location: Sub 3 (elect)

Great read. Thanks Smile

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tivmeistergeneral · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 2:48 am Post subject:

Nice work. Props for keeping your Mojo up with all of the other "distractions" going around you. A couple of things that popped into my head as I was reading your write-up...

Mr ME · Joined: 25 Aug 2012 Posts: 97 Location: Gateshead

Many thanks for the thoughts and feedback chaps, much appreciated.
Matthew.
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Heisenberg · Joined: 01 Sep 2013 Posts: 4 Location: Pembrokeshire

Great read Mr Me, thats cut and paste straight into a document of my own!

explorerJC · Joined: 20 Oct 2005 Posts: 16060 Location: Farthingstone

great read Mr ME
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SidSnot · Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 1642

Having read through this entire award winning thread, thought I would give it a bump.

Aiming for sub-10 at Outlaw this year, 10:54 last year; 52, 5:23, 4:26 so no prizes for guessing where I need to improve. Run training was severely impacted by calf injury last year, much more consistent(and longer) so far this year.

Anyone else aiming for sub-10 in '17?
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Jorgan · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 1:55 pm Post subject:

surf22 · Joined: 09 Nov 2017 Posts: 8

Hi everyone,
50 years old, practical sport for a decade.
PB Marathon 2h48 2013
PB HalfMarathon 1h19 2016
Since 2014 triathlon.

IM Austria 2015:01:06: 05:37 03:24 10:17:54
24 weeks training, 15h11' average. Swim 16%, Bike 54%, Run 30%

Challenge Roth 2017 01:05 05:36:03:34 10:22:33
24 weeks training, 14h28' average. Swim 19%, Bike 51%, Run 30%

Do I have any chances to stay below 10h in IMFrankfurt 2018 at 51 years?
Do you have any advice or suggestions to give me?

Thank you

Jorgan · Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:29 am Post subject: Re: IM Sub10 for an old

Jorgan · Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:42 am Post subject:

^^ I should also add that Frankfurt is probably the fastest bike course I have done, very good surfaces apart from a bit through the city centre; no tough hills. Having done Roth & Austria, I would say it's quicker - at least for someone who's 'weakest' discipline is biking, as it's less up & down i.e. power spikes. Austria is a beautiful course, but there's very little flat: it's up or down really. I like more constant efforts, and long steady climds like Regensburg had when it was an Ironman.

I pretty much soft-pedalled the second lap as it was so hot and still did my second best IM bike split. The only thing with Frankfurt is that it can be very hot, and there's no shade on the run. I did it in 2015 when it was almost as hot as the infamous Outlaw in 2013 Laughing

/sarcasm
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mattsurf · Joined: 28 Sep 2016 Posts: 852 Location: Zug, Switzerland

surf22 · Joined: 09 Nov 2017 Posts: 8