Minimal Ironman training

Up until a few weeks ago I was doing very little exercise and I was really missing it. When I did bimble out for a run to ride it really helped me to de-stress and I remembered what I have been missing, but when time's tight it's easy to take the easy option and junk the planned run or ride in favour of something else. I tend to dislike the threads that I see on various triathlon forums that are titled 'What's the least amount of training I can get away with and still get around an Ironman?' It just seems all wrong to me. Shouldn't it be 'What's the most I can do in the time I have available and get around an Ironman?' That said, I have been paying a lot more attention to these ideas and training methods if I am to go long again at any time in the future.

Then again, there's the question, 'If I want to go sub(17/16/15/14/13/12/11/10) hours, what's the minimum amount of training I will need to do?' I know that I cannot set aside 20+ hours per week to train and to be honest, I don't want to anyway, as there are too many other factors in my life which are important to me. But, I would like to race long again and work towards a time goal, sub 12 as a minimum and sub 11 hours as a bit more of a stretch target. But how can I do that on the limited time that I have? I've read Fink from cover to cover and while there's some good advice in there the thought of following a 30 week schedule with a lot of early doors long aerobic work is not for me. I just don't think I have the dedication to follow something like that so religiously for so long.


So I started looking around for other ways of approaching Ironman training and I hunted around the tinterweb for some advice. 'My Secret Sauce' by Sami Inkinen, a Kona qualifier with a sub 9 personal best  discusses some points which turns a lot of conventional IM training wisdom on its head and makes really interesting. This blogpost came up with some really useful stuff too.

The common threads are a) biking on a turbo trainer, b) no brick workouts and c) no long runs.

While I'm cycling everyday to work, it's a very congested and short ride so just not suitable for specific cycle training. Now it's winter my Argon is bolted to the turbo so I can jump on and do a 45-90 minute specific turbo session which is a lot more time efficient than trying to get out on the bike.

I found a couple of posts, like the one here written by the excellent Coach Cox that also gave some pointers on time crunched Ironman training. 7-10 hours per week is considered minimal, so just over an hour per day and when you factor in a weekend bike of 2-3 hours that's only 4-6 hours of training during the rest of the week. The other key factor here which would really help me is only one session per day, rather than trying to squeeze in two per day. This means getting an early session in before work is potentially doable, particularly if it's a turbo session in the garage.

So, my thinking for the next few months is this;

1. No swim training at all. Forget it. I can swim and when I get nearer to the event then I'll stick my wetsuit on. At the moment it just isn't time efficient. If I were to do two swim sessions per week it might make me 10-15 minutes faster over an IM race; in the grand scheme of things this is not worth my time.
2. Turbo twice per week. One long interval session (based around 2x20 intervals) and one short interval session (based on 8-10 repeats of 2-5 minute efforts.)
3. One long ride per week; this might be an hour on the way home or a 2-3 hour Sunday ride.
4. A long run, no longer than 90 minutes in duration. I will put some fartlek efforts in their to add some variability and speed.
5. One 30-40 minute run with intervals.

This will give approximately 7 hours per week, which in anyone's book is minimal Ironman training. The last three weeks have seen me start the process of adopting the above strategies. The turbo sessions have been hard work but they have already started to pay dividends. I went on a slow ride with Simon yesterday, just to catch up and have a coffee, but we climbed Crocknorth Road, one of my favourite hills and I felt pretty good the whole way up, even getting to the bridge before Simon, which has not happened in over a year. This year's season has given me the impetus to kick on next year and go long again. Let's see how little I can do to do it.