Exactly one year ago yesterday I decided to embark on the
greatest journey of my life. Sitting on my hotel bed in the middle of Manhattan
at 10 a.m. running on $20/hour WIFI with credit card in hand, I registered for
the 2014 Subaru Ironman North American Championships in Mont Tremblant.
Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea what I was signing up for. My early season
training started that very afternoon with a 20km run around the circumference
of the island. It seemed like a good start. When school resumed in September I
followed up the previous summers triathlon training with the University of
Waterloo’s Cross Country team and Triathlon Club; both of which help me to
develop a solid base upon which I would build up to the ridiculous distance.
About 6 months out I decided to sit down and draw up an
elaborate training schedule that would outline every single day leading up to
my race, as well as every single minute of training I would plan to do. I had
planned a 4-month incremental plan with 3 weeks of increasing volume followed
by 1 week recovery, eventually peaking at a 25 hour training week. Training sessions were divided up into approximately 10% swimming, 30% running and 60% cycling. Of course it
looked more plausible on paper.
On a group run in late winter/early spring I noticed an odd
sensation in my left ankle on the medial side. I didn’t think anything of it
and shrugged it off as an effect of the cold weather. As the days and weeks
went on, however, the sensation turned into a burning and then into a sharp
pain. Uh-oh. This is just what I need, another injury right before my first big
block of IM training. Without much delay I immediately went and got orthotics
as it was suspected the pain was due to my flat feet finally giving out (it was
diagnosed a few weeks ago as Posterior Tibial Tendinitis). The pain continued
until about a month and a half out when it disappeared completely… or so I
thought. I’ll get to that later.
Through the pain I adjusted my running schedule slightly,
deviating from the original plan. I did what I felt I could get away with. This
included missing my two biggest running preparations for my IM: Around the Bay
30K & the Mississauga Marathon. Luckily my injuries did not hinder my
swimming or cycling in any way so I could train 110% in those disciplines.
By this point, I am two and a half months out and hadn’t run
more than 18km all year. In fact, the longest I have ever ran was 30km two
years ago in both the Around the Bay 30K and the Midsummer Nights Run. Since
then, I had never run anywhere near that distance. So while coping with the
ankle and still following a revised schedule I gradually increased my milage to
a maximum of 28km. Not my ideal distance for my IM training, but I figured it
was best to play it safe. From there, I began to wind down my milage which is
when my ankle started to feel better. Over the course of my IM specific training, I estimate that I ran approximately 1000km.
Cycling
My cycling training went very smoothly. I estimate that over the course of my IM specific training I rode well over 4000km, a large portion being between May and July. Between training
with members of EPFS/3Sixty5 Cycling, the members of the Usual Suspects as well
as solo rides, I managed to get in, more or less, every kilometer I had
originally planned back in March. My longest ride was a full 180km the weekend
three weeks before my race. This was also the first year that I had trained
with power and I felt it made my training exponentially more productive. I
found my numbers and learned to stick with them. Which played a key role on
race day.
Swimming
During the winter school term, I swam with the triathlon
club two or three times a week. The practices ranged from 2300 to 2800 meters
in an hour and mostly consisted of speed work.
As the term progressed, I felt and saw my times getting faster. I
learned more technique in those 3 months than I had my entire swimming career
up to that point. After the last practice of the term, I stayed after the 2500
meter hour workout and continued to swim an additional 1500 meters to make it a
4k swim on the day. I did take breaks and it took me about an hour and a half.
It was uplifting just knowing that I could finish the swim distance with a few
months training. After school ended, however, I wasn’t able to get back into a
pool for about another 2 months. When I finally did start up again, my fitness
wasn’t completely gone but I found I had to work extra hard to make up for the
missed sessions. I could get my 100m repeats down to under 1:30, which I was
happy with. I figured I swam about 120km over the course of my IM training.
It has been said that the 4th and 5th disciplines
of triathlon are transition and nutrition. For the Ironman, being such a long
event, I wasn’t too worried about a speedy transition because I had planned to
sit down, take time to collect myself and make sure I had everything I needed
for the next leg of the race. Nutrition on the other hand will determine
whether or not you will even finish. I have found personally that for shorter
races, even up to a 70.3 event, I do not need any nutrition other than water.
Even in my 5:04 half iron race, I had one gel on the bike and took in only water the rest of
the way. I never felt I was losing any performance. My reasoning behind this
is because I normally have very bad GI problems with solid foods so I figure
the less I have to eat the better. This method worked for me in every other
race I had done but for the Ironman I knew it wouldn’t be enough.
I devised a race day nutrition plan that I thought would
best work for my body. One problem that I predicted in my preparations was that
if I went nearly 11 hours without taking in solid foods, I would get hungry. Liquid
nutrition would not be enough to satisfy a hungry stomach. In my first half
iron, with 8km to go, my stomach
actually started grumbling. But if I ate solid foods, I risked the possibility
of GI problems and cramps on the run. Through my training, I experimented with
various forms of nutrition to see what would work. I came up with these sort of
oatmeal squares. Consisting of mostly large grain oats and flour, I also added
a healthy amount of eLoad Fly Carbohydrate Fuel. There was nearly no taste to
my creation but I knew it had the proper nutrients that I would need and that I
would be able to digest it quickly. I believed that if I cut out all of the non-essential ingredients in store bought food (such as flavouring, colouring and preservatives), I would have a bar with just the bare essentials that I would need and to help control my GI issues. I calculated all of the carbs, calories and
electrolytes that I would need for the day and my nutrition schedule looked
something like this:
1 Gel before the swim
1 Gel after the swim
On the bike:
Every hour:
1
Gel (With a generous amount of water)
1
Carb Square (4.5” x 3”)
1
Bottle of eLoad Endurance Formula + Eload Fly
On the run:
Every half
hour:
1
Gel
Water
at every aid station
After the race:
- BEER
- Literally everything in sight
After the race:
- BEER
- Literally everything in sight
Of course this was all just a plan that I thought would best
work for me. I spent a long time planning out the numbers and figuring out how
best to tackle this discipline that for a long time I had just ignored. There
was no way of testing my plan 100% through and I knew it would all come down to
how my stomach felt on race day.
With all of my training behind me and my race day game plan
sorted out, all that was left to do was give it my all, have fun and trust that
I had prepared myself enough.
