The Road to Becoming an Ironman

This is the most ambitious thing that I have ever attempted. My main sporting background is playing rugby and more recently, road biking. Having played rugby through my childhood, teens and into senior rugby, the gym played a very important role in improving my rugby related strength and conditioning.

Now as a physio, those skills are what I employ with my patients to help achieve their goals. So it’s my turn to listen to my inner self, to sensibly push the boundaries and use the experience that I have to get me to my goal of completing Ironman Wales in 12 hours 30 minutes. It’s ambitious, but everyone needs to have a goal in mind.

Current Experience

To date, the furthest I've swum is a 1 mile pool swim in 32 minutes (2018), completed the Carten 100 (a 107 mile bike ride) in 7 hrs 33 mins (2018) and completed a half marathon in 1hr 50 mins (2014). I completed a sprint triathlon last year (400m swim, 22km bike and 3km run) and the transition feeling is something that is rather difficult to describe. So this is something that I’ll certainly be working on early on in training incorporating brick runs. I've never swum in open water either so this is certainly something I will need to get used to.

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

The aim:

2.4 mile Swim - 1.17 @ 1.50/100yds 112 mile bike - 7.00 @ 16mph

26.2 mile run – 4.00 @ 9min/mile

Total: 12hrs 30mins (inc transitions)

The first thing that generally happens when you consider doing an Ironman is you look at training programs and try to work out whether you have enough time to train. Well, guess what…according to these plans, I don’t. All of these plans suggest training twice a day, for silly amounts of hours a week which is totally unrealistic as to what is possible in the everyday person’s life.

I am a self-employed physiotherapist running a busy physiotherapy clinic, take 5 Pilates classes a week, work Monday to Saturday, have a wife and 18 month old son. I struggle to train once a day let alone, twice a day. So use the age old saying…fail to prepare, prepare to fail. In my preparation I believe that I have 9-10 hours per week that I can use as my Ironman training.

Is this enough? I believe that if you’re focused and efficient in your training, then anything is achievable. Or I may just be being unrealistic and end up failing. But this is my case study. My opportunity to see whether it is possible or whether you need to conform to the training twice a day plan.

Follow me throughout my blogs as I guide you through my training.