Race day at the Ironman, nothing but a picnic on wheels

Several years ago, I received an unexpected phone call from one of my longtime friends, and he shared with me that the organizers of the Ironman were going to hold their first mainland IM event in Lake Placid and suggested that we ought to apply for entry.  Before my brain could shift out of first gear, I responded with an emphatic, "OK", and that's precisely when I realized that this was no small commitment.  Fortunately, I had already been committed to a healthy lifestyle filled with regular exercise, so I didn't have to start from scratch.  My exercise group was engaged in a weekly routine of swimming, running, and biking, so at that point, it was simply a matter of "ramping" up the workouts over the coming months in preparation for the August 15th race day.

There were several critical issues I faced as part of the training leading up to the Ironman.  First, I was particularly concerned with how much of each discipline should I incorporate into my training each week.  In my research of other IM finishers, it seemed that on average about 18-21 hours of training were necessary each week in order to accomplish the desired goal of finishing with a modicum of respectability.  Naturally, that was divided between the 3 sports, but it was also quite important to have at least one full day of rest built into the schedule.  Therefore, I had to achieve a minimum average of 3 hours a day to accomplish this goal.  Next, having run several marathons, I recognized that I would have to run about 35 miles per week to comfortably finish the marathon portion of the race.  From here, I worked backwards and determined that I needed 3-5 miles of swimming and approximately 180 miles of biking per week of each to see this through.  Initially, all I planned to do was supplement the base with those additional miles.  That strategy worked quite well, but as the weeks and months "rolled" by, I kept getting this uncomfortable feeling that I hadn't done enough training.  Fortunately, my friend and I stayed in frequent contact to provide emotional support and too, we shared trade secrets about our training which helped immensely.

Additionally, during all this time, I was experimenting with my diet.  I tried various supplements, sports drinks, but what I kept coming back to was the good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  In the meantime, my friend came up with a homemade calzone that seemed to work for him.  In the end, the PB and J, coupled with a few Starbucks coffee flavored cappuccinos worked remarkably well as my race day diet.

After months of training and when it was all over, I realized that completing an Ironman triathlon was indeed quite an accomplishment.  At the time, I had read that, globally, there have been only 100,000 people worldwide who had ever achieved this feat, so I felt an ever greater sense of personal satisfaction.  As I reflect back on that day, I now wonder, how did we ever do that?  Then I say to myself, it was nothing but a little swim and a run with a picnic on wheels in between!