Low-Oxygen Lies! How This Ironman Races While Missing a Lung

I want to start today's case study episode by reading out an article that one of our athletes, Dan, wrote. And this case study is about Dan, and he titled it Chasing Failure. Low Oxygen Lies. The title read. The article reads, In 2020, I made the decision to try and do something I thought I could never do. I made a two year commitment to train for a full Ironman. Completing an Ironman is a formidable challenge for anyone. But this would be especially true for me because I was born missing a left lung and left rib cage. For most of my life. I stayed away from endurance sports because I thought I couldn't do it. I told myself that lie for most of my adult life. This is for anyone out there who thinks they can't. For anyone with imposter syndrome, for anyone who's failed and wants to improve but struggles to pick themselves back up. This is for anyone who wants to start the growth journey but doesn't know where to start. This is for you. You are not alone. You can do hard things. Deep down, I knew I wasn't maximizing my potential. I knew I could be more disciplined. I. I wasn't doing the small things and maximizing my time. I knew there was room for improvement. I wasn't applying high levels of agency and nothing was holding me accountable to a higher standard. I wanted to do better, I wanted to be better and I wanted to learn. I always had some sort of excuse. The only thing holding me back was me. So dad, he went on to complete two Ironmans before joining us on his journey. And this is really just a refreshing journey and a motivating story that we wanted to share. And the start of that article really moved me and, and we're going to talk a little bit about our experience with him, but it's a bit of a different case study because we want to talk about his journey overall, because there's two parts to this. There's the fact that he trained for three years before us and completed two Ironmans. But then he changed to us and we want to talk about naturally his story of improvement with us. But just overall, the motivating part of this journey, of him doing all this and his attitude missing a left lung and a left rib cage.

Yeah, it was an interesting phone conversation when he first reached out and he'd been listening to the podcast and he'd already achieved, achieved the fear factor of, as he said in his article, living this lie that I can't do anything. And so he overcome a lot before he came to us. So he got himself organized he got himself a coach before he came to us. And in that time, he learned how to swim, ride, and run. And, you know, from the beginning days, he couldn't do any of that because he didn't think it was possible. So I just want to make sure that everybody understands that this is a guy who's basically starting from scratch. And because he's got limitations where he's only got one lung and one rib cage, and, you know, you just have to stop and think about that for a minute. Would you be contemplating doing an Iron man or a 70.3? You know, I've had a pulmonary embolism, which is nothing like having one lung. It's a minor imposition for a period of time in your life. This is something Dan's had his whole life. So the expectation is that, you know, it's not really probable that you could do things like this. And I think this is the thing I want to get out to everybody, is, you know, put limitations on yourself. He's a guy with a huge amount of limitations, yet he's still out there pursuing goals and dreams and not having expectations of grandeur, but to test himself, challenge himself, and try and improve. And once he got over the limitations of not only his physical problems, but learning to swim and ride and seeing if he can run, then trying to learn how to train consistently, then getting to a level where, you know, he could achieve. He achieved a full ironman, and he did, you know, 16 hours, 40 something for his first ironman, which is, you know, incredible to do that with from a beginner. And then he went on to do another half ironman. And then after three years with the one coach, he's then reached out to us from our podcast and wanted to improve himself. He was happy with the fact that he completed these events. Now his next challenge was, can I do them better? And because he felt like he wasn't being pushed enough and not getting the right direction, which is no criticism of the previous coach. It's just that he was hearing things on the podcast that we do with our athletes, and he wanted to know a. If it was possible for him. That was one of his first questions, was, can you do what you're doing for your athletes with me, with my limitations? And I say the same thing to everybody who reaches out. There's no ceiling. You only have your own limitations. That's yourself. And if you want to improve, what's to stop you? If you do the work and you're willing to turn up each day and they're the Questions I'm throwing back at him. Are you prepared to do the work? Are you prepared to have some hard weeks and months? Are you willing to do that? And talk is cheap, as we know, isn't it? You can say all those things, but do you really mean that? And when it comes to doing the program, are you up for it? And they're the things I want to make sure that before we let anybody join our program that they're on board with that. Because it's not an easy, not an easy thing to turn up every day, regardless of the intensity of the session. It's a relentless Groundhog Day where you achieve something today and then tomorrow you've got to achieve something at a different rate, a different level, a different sport. But each day it's turning up, turning up and trying to just gradually improve small minute seconds or meters or power watts or whatever session you're trying to do. You're just trying to be a better version than you were last week, last month, last year. And they're the questions I'm throwing back at Dan. We can help you. There's no guarantee you're going to be any better by five minutes or two minutes over the same distances that you've done already, but we can guarantee that we will be pushing you to be a better version of yourself. And if you're willing to follow the program and not do a version of it and turn up each day, then you'll give yourself a chance to be a better athlete than you've ever been. And as it turns out, he did Oregon 20, 23.70.3. And then he did Oregon with us and we only had him for eight months and he improved nearly 35 minutes. That's phenomenal. From a 709 to a 640 something, you know, that's the work that he was prepared to do and getting the right guidance around, you know, he wasn't that much a better athlete in eight months. You know, he'd been doing this for four years and out of that four years we had him for eight months, yet he was pretty much learned how to, how to train properly in the first three years and then, then he wanted to go to the next level. And instantly he jumped to a new level. And that's the thing I'm most proud of as his coach was a fulfilling his dream of can I improve? Tell me, don't lie to me. Can I improve? And my answer is, there's no ceiling, it's up to you. And he just took that by the horns. And the results. Incredible. And Joel, we can go through the data, which we always do with these case studies, and show his improvement in his FTP and his running pace and his swim pace. They're really important things and they're the things that allow you to improve. But the thing that he did well was he really listened about how to execute. And as much as we have these podcast case studies, people don't seem to understand that the program is really important. What you do in each training session, the order you have, they're really important things. But if you don't actually have the understanding of how to execute, then you'll still continue to make the same mistakes. And I looked at this. His power numbers from one Ironman in 2023 to his second. We talked 70.3 half Ironman. His power was actually lower in the second race where he was 27 minutes quicker and 4k is an hour faster. You know, that says a lot about how you're executing, how you're measuring your effort in different parts of the ride. And you know, he got off and ran seven minutes quicker in his half marathon. So they're examples of learning how to put the power and the effort where it's important and understanding how to ride and how to run properly. And I think that was a summary that. I know it's a long winded one, but that's kind of how the whole thing evolved in such a short period of time. He really understood how to sort of ride differently and enable him to run better.

Yeah, look, in terms of the data, like you said, his FTP went up 30 plus watts, 35 watts over eight months. And then the ability to execute that on race day and take that improvement and execute better on the bike leads to a 27 minute improvement and 4km an hour faster and then the 7 minute improvement in the race in the half marathon. He's 5k. When he came to us, fresh PB ended up he's 10k. Fresh PB ended up being the same pace as 5k PB, which translates to that 7 minutes quicker. So yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine trying to do an FTP test with one lung. They're hard enough with two lungs. So look, we didn't want to go nuts into the data or the training. We really wanted to let in this episode. Dan kind of speak for himself. So I want to kind of finish on the last part of his article and we're going to link the article in the show, notes that you can actually read the full thing and then One final text as well that he sent you personally that he's allowed us to read on this, which I thought was just a great way to finish this case study. And I honestly just his journey and the way he's written this article, it's just one of those ones. It's a great refresher, it's a great reminder and it's really motivating and can really kick you into gear. And if you're low on motivation in this training block, which often triathletes can be random parts of the year, we hope this helps. So to finish off, he says, Four years ago, I couldn't swim more than 150 yards or run for more than three miles without walking. Four years ago, my longest bike was 15 miles. Over the past four years, I've swam 217 miles, biked 9165 miles, and run 1560 miles. I used to tell myself that I wasn't cut out for endurance events because of my physical condition. Why try to do something that requires a lot of oxygen to do? You can't do this. It took a lot of work to debunk the lies I told myself. The article is titled Chasing Failure. Low Oxygen Lies. And then the final text he sent you was, hi, Jared, I've been struggling to get back into my training routine, but I just listened to the most recent podcast and I realized something. Think about the people who are unable to swim, bike or run due to some sort of physical limitation or condition that they were born with. And while I was born with some unique challenges, it hasn't prohibited me from doing triathlon. When I originally started training for my first Ironman, I would often think about the people who don't have the opportunity to do what we do. And it often is a reminder to me that I'm not just training for me, I'm training for them as well. And now that I've heard your recent comments about how you are motivated by seeing your athletes do well, that reminded me of that. That's something I need to get back to and remember. This is what I love about the triathlon and endurance sports community. We are all connected, even though we may not realize it. I know we've only been working together eight months, but I just want to let you know how much I appreciate your coaching and guidance. You've had a huge impact on my life and I just want you to know how much I appreciate that. Thank you. So, any final thoughts on this case study and those final words?

Yeah, and it's really emotional when you hear someone. Yeah. Who. Who really lays it out there in front of you and is so appreciative and it's humbling. And, and you, you love that they're. They're feeling that way. I couldn't be happier to have that sort of response because we really care about each athlete and, and, and not only did they improve, but that they're enjoying themselves along that journey. And, and, you know, it's hard to enjoy yourself when you're training day in, day out, and. But the enjoyment comes from the improvement. I keep saying if you put the work in, the training's not that fun. But the fun part is that you're getting better, and that's fun. When you start improving, you can't wait for the next training session because you just see that you're getting better and you want more of it. It's like an addictive drug. The more you improve, the more fun it is and the more you want to get better and better. And these are the things that. I think that when we first started, that was what I was saying to him. You know, you're only as good as your own limitations. And if you, if you want to put limitations on yourself, you won't go anywhere. But if you're willing to put yourself out there. And look, I'm not saying Dan was the perfect athlete to coach. There were times where he would miss, you know, several sessions because he had, you know, work commitments and family commitments just like anybody else. And obviously he had recovery issues because he was. Had so many limitations with only being able to function with one lung. And, you know, that takes a big, big toll on your energy. So your body has to learn to adapt to that quite well before you can get that consistency. So people who don't have any issues with illness or injury, the consistency is easy, but he doesn't have any issues with illness or injury. He just has a thing that's happened from birth where it's a limitation. So he has to deal with that each week. And he could have used that as an excuse, but he never does, ever. He never uses that as an excuse. He's always saying to me, sorry, I couldn't get that session done because of work or because of this. And that's the thing I was always on his back about was, you know, you do what you can do, but you know that the answer is going to be keep turning up. And once he got to understand that and tick off the sessions, his improvement really, you know, really started to go places because he was consistently Training and then he could implement the strategies we were talking about how to ride the power differently to get the best result and that, you know, to ride 4Ks an hour faster in a 90K time trial, you dream about that. One K an hour is something you'd be really happy with, but, you know, that's because of the work he did. But the thing I want to finish off with is it wasn't because he trained 100%. We just, you know, we have 1% of people who do that in our program. Most people can't achieve perfect training. So don't think that that's what you have to do. Don't think consistency means perfect training. We are all imperfect and our goal is to be as perfect as we can strive for perfection. And if you get close to it, you're going to do better. If you don't strive for it and you're haphazard and more than happy to do better the basics, then you're going to get what you deserve, the basic result. And that's the key thing I think that I've learned by working with Dan is even though he's not training perfectly, he's just actually doing such a better job than he was before. And the focus when you start to improve really highlights how much fun it is and how motivating it is because you know that if you do the work, then, you know, when he finished that event, he just could not wait to talk to me to say, I just can't believe how much easier that race was, how much faster I went in both the run and the ride. It was, it was, you know, unfortunately, it was during the period where I was in hospital, so I didn't get the chance to talk to him about it straight after, which is the fun part. And yeah, we had a delayed, you know, you, beauty conversation on the phone about how well he went. And yeah, it was one of those moments where he was just over the moon and, you know, he's been working so hard for, for this moment almost. And it was, it was well worth it. And yeah, that's the story we want to get out there is, you know, there's people with way more limitations than you or I have ever experienced, yet they're willing to do whatever it takes to be the best version of themselves. And, you know, if one thing I've learned in the last sort of six weeks is, you know, don't take anything for granted and time is limited, even though you don't think it is, so make the most of your opportunities when you have them because you don't know what's going to happen next. And that could be something that happens tomorrow or 10 years or 20 years time. We don't know whether you've got 20 years in the sport or whether you've got another hour. You know, you could have a bike crash like two guys had today. And you know, these are the things that we've got to think about when we're, you know, looking at what we're setting ourselves up for the next year or two. And I really want that message to be, you know, whilst you've got the opportunity, take it because, you know, they don't come along every day. Things change. So it's a great story and one that I'm really proud to be associated with. And you know, as I say to everybody, we take, we take people who are beginners, we take people who have got limitations, we take people who are at the pointy end on podiums. We just want everybody who's on board with us to be a really genuinely nice person who wants to improve and is willing to do the work. And that's the sort of athlete that gets the results.

So well said. I couldn't agree more. And I'll finish with some final words from his article. He says confidence comes from keeping the promises you make to yourself. Start small, make a commitment and follow through. Even if it doesn't work out, you can still learn from those experiences and try again. That's the key. Keep trying, keep learning, get up the next day and give it another go. All you have to do is have the courage to get started. You can do hard things. I really like that final sentence. You can do hard things because of how much the enormity of this hard thing felt for him. So that's it for this case study. If you do want to find out where your ceiling is and what your potential is and you want to give it a crack, you can apply for our coaching@trivelocoaching.com we always have our promise that if you don't improve your FTP in the first eight weeks, then the coaching is on us. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode. Sam.