Our 14 Week Ironman Program Disaster [CASE STUDY]

I want to do an Ironman in 14 weeks. Can you help me? I've never done one before. If you know us and you know this podcast, you know that that question is like nails on a chalkboard. This was the question that Mitch asked us last year in August as he had started training for the Busselton Ironman in December. In today's case study episode, we're going to take you through why, despite our preferences, we decided to help Mitch to his first Iron man and what happened over the next 14 weeks to make it possible. So firstly, dad, we get this kind of application. Why do you agree to bring him on when he is potentially a walking red flag for us?

Great question, Jordan. I'm looking forward to letting the listeners hear about a really different approach to getting prepared for your biggest event that you're going to do in quite a while. If you've never been really involved much in triathlon and never done a half and here you are wanting to do a full line, man, and that takes pretty, you know, pretty gutsy, confident or I don't even know what the word is, disregard for your own health and well being. And it's a question that we get asked a lot is, you know, is it enough time? And we always say there's never enough time for this. You give yourself the most amount of time you can and if you're thinking of doing something in December, now in February, now's the time to start. Don't start in June or July. You can start in June or July, but it just gives you five months less preparation time. What's the impact of that? Well, the impact of that is that you'll get to the race probably 20% less prepared than you would have had you started earlier. So for someone to say, you know, 13 or 14 weeks time, I want to do an Ironman and when I start digging deep, I'm always gonna, I'm not gonna say straight away and slam the door and I'm that person saying, you gotta be kidding. That's just, it's just not possible. So I need to find out about where they're at with their fitness. What have they been doing in the past? Are they an experienced endurance athlete? So all those questions, I'm trying to find out in our interview before I agree to, to work with Mitch and, and they' we discussed in that initial conversation and I loved his attitude was you just tell me what to do and I'll do it. You know, I'm on board with whatever you, you tell me I've started a 20 week program. I'm six weeks into it and I don't really trust it and I don't really have anybody to communicate with about how I'm feeling and whether I should be doing this session today or should I have a recovery day because I'm feeling really tired and I'm not coping with a load. I just need guidance. So I know it's late. You admitted all that. I know you don't like doing this, but you know, if you'd really take me on board, I will follow whatever you say to the letter. And, and you know, I'm not going to do a version of it. Yeah, you got to trust it. I'm on board with it. So he talked me into it to be, to be fair and, and you know, sentences like I'm going to do it anyway whether you help me or not. And I just, I just can't let anybody go into a race and have a bad experience. I, I'm just going to stop them from doing that because if I can help them for a minute or 10 minutes or 10 days or 10 months at least I'm going to give them some advice. And so, you know, all, all the time. I said the problem is when you don't give yourself enough time, you have to go too quick with the progression. And that's the main thing that we're against is the quicker you go with the progression, the more risks you take. What do I mean by that? The more risks you take are the potential to get really sick because your immune system's so on the brink because you're training so much hours plus you've got work. And don't forget he's a tradesman and he works physically on his job and he's got his own business. And the job he has is very physical, he's tiring and he's on houses on roofs. And this is a factor that has to be taken into consideration. The fatigue that he's going to accumulate doing his really physical job and trying to train for an ironman in such a short space of time. So that's what we're always worried about is are you not going to be able to cope with a load and is your immunity going to be compromised and you get sick. And then if you're, if you progress too quickly with, if Your longest ride's two hours and you're aiming for a six hour ride, do you have enough weekends in 13 weeks, 13 weekends to do a two or three hour ride all the way up to a six hour ride, is that enough time to progress slowly? And why do we have to progress slowly? Because we don't want your body to, to really get run down and, and then you could get injured from that. So getting sick is one thing, but getting injured from overuse, you know, being in a position that you're not used to, your body's not used to sitting in a time trial position for that long. When you, when you haven't been doing this sport for very, you know, for very long, you haven't even had a time trial bike, now you've got a time trial bike and, and you're changing position from what you've been used to riding on a road bike. So all these things have to be taken into consideration. Your body has to be able to cope with the changes and adap and that's the progression that we work on. And if you give someone 6 months or 12 months to do that, the body doesn't even notice the little changes in the duration and the intensity that you're giving it. But when you're doing it over 12 weekends, and that's literally what you have because you've got the race week, that's one week, one weekend. You've got the taper week, that's another one. So out of 14 weeks, you've only got 12 weekends to get from a 90 minute run to a four hour or three and a half hour run on race day. And you know, possible three hour longest ride you've done to a, to a five and a half to six hour ride on race day. So it's, it's a big progressive step. So it's one. Once I explained all that to him and you know, he wasn't going to take no for an answer. So it was, okay, let's go, let's, let's start the process. And obviously we have to actually find out where your level is. So we have to test you in the first week. So straight away we're losing sessions that might be useful for your preparation for an endurance event like an Ironman. We're already having to compromise straight away. So that's how it started.

And so it turns out he did get injured, he got injured for running. So pretty much straight away had to completely change his Ironman program to swim or ride. And so suddenly you're against a whole bunch of hurdles because one, you've got a short time to prepare for an Ironman, but two, now you can't even prepare for the marathon and running. So let's talk about the training and what were you focused on with him, what was your goal, what was your intention, especially once he couldn't run. How did you approach the training?

Yeah, that was disappointing, there's no doubt about it. And that was one of my big fears when we started. And it started off okay. He got a month's worth of training but as I said before, because we were trying to progress his duration possibly too quickly and, and you know, you hope that he can cope with that, but as it turned out, his legs couldn't. And so we had to completely change our mindset to, okay, we're going to really use this negative and turn it into a positive and you're going to be, you know, one of the best prepared bike riders that's ever, ever entered a first up Ironman. And so we really concentrated on that and we really switched to a swim bike program and he was doing the rehab, had to rest first before he could do any rehab. And then, and then we, yeah, we really had to be careful not to up the load on his bike as well. So we got, you know, a lot more recovery style riding in just to get the blood flow around and concentrated more on getting his FTP up with some threshold and some VO2 work and then really working on the weekend to get his, to get his ride duration up. And it wasn't about riding fast, it was about spending time in the saddle as long as he could and using Saturday and Sunday. And to add to this, he's a really good stand up paddle racer and he races every Saturday morning. So that's something that he wanted to keep doing. And they're very competitive nationally and his team, they race as a team. Yeah. So we had, we had to fit that in as well. So, so, and that's normal in every, every program. People have got things that they want to keep doing, but you know, the priority is that, you know, you've, you've, you've selected an event that's pretty monumental. And we do have a lot of people flippantly on Instagram, talk about, you know, anybody can do an iron Man. Well, I just don't agree anybody can to a point, but it's how well you do it is what, what we're on about. You know, getting through it isn't kind of the only thing that you should be trying to do. You should be getting through it proud and, and satisfied rather than, you know, I ended up walking for half an hour, but I still got it. I just proved that I could do it. That's, that's not how we want to do it, we want to do it where you're totally prepared so you can, you know, if you have to run for 50% and you have to walk for 50% but you still end up running properly, you know, throughout, throughout the day, that's a better way that you're, you're able to sustain your ultimate goals, which is not to just exist in an ironman and just get through it. And so that's the main thing that we wanted to get across to him. And during that period where he was injured, we switched our mindset to okay, you're going to do a lot more bike riding. It doesn't have to be harder, but it just has to be more duration. So that we'll get a lot of the cardio stuff from the intensity on the bike during the week, but we'll get the endurance into your body from the weekends longer rides. And if we get in the hills and you do a fair bit of standing up and longer steady climbs, it will help your legs be strong enough so that when they do come to run, you'll have that endurance load in your legs from the bike. And as it proved out in the end, that's actually what happened. And his bike riding went through the roof. Yeah, we've got a lot of details that we can show you about his progression, but that's kind of how we switched our mindset from turning a negative into a positive and making sure that his swimming was up to scratch and, and that he was getting the endurance and the intensity on the bike so that when he, when he went to run cardiovascularly he would be really fit to run. It would just be. Could his legs, the muscles and bones in his legs cope with the landing load that running, the impact that running has.

And yeah, I guess it was a pretty heavy swim and bike program. Once he was able to start running, I think he basically couldn't start running until four weeks out from the race. Which as a coach that just makes you so nervous. Because we want our athletes to be 12 weeks out, almost marathon based ready. We want them to be in that position where they've already got multiple two plus hour runs under their belt and they can cope with big long two to two and a half hour runs with no problem in that way in this last phase we can give them extended running ready for the marathon and ironman that they can cope with. And so to get four weeks out of an injury underdone is a pretty nerve wracking time. So yeah, what was the thought process with his running in that Final month leading into the race.

Yeah, we had lots of good discussions and when we started running we had to actually make sure that we weren't going to injure him straight away. So, so we just couldn't throw him into, you know, 60, 70, 80 minute long runs. We had to start with, you know, some really shorter runs and 20, 30 minutes and 40 minutes and just every second day, just try to get him to run every second day and, and not worry about the long run being on the weekend, but just add time every second day. So that's kind of how it looked. And then we're able to reduce the bike time duration on the bike spent in training and substitute that with some running. And we couldn't really test to see where his level was because that would risk injuring him and would give too much fatigue from a high intensity 5k or 10k run. It would create too much fatigue for. Therefore he wouldn't be able to train for running again because he'd be probably a little bit sore from running too hard because he had four weeks off. So yeah, we had to be very careful about. And so you're really almost going into the race not knowing what pace you could do because you hadn't tested that over a long time and you hadn't tested it in a five or ten or half marathon. So they're the indicators that we always use when we go into a race. What's your current data, what's your testing? Tell us, what have you been able to do as a run off the bike? What have you been able to do as a half marathon fresh or a 10k or a 5k fresh? So all these indicators weren't available. So that for us was a little bit of a worry. But we know that every bit of advice we've ever given any athlete that joins Trivelo is the one thing we want you to know is whether you're in a training session, whether you're in a testing session or whether you're in a race, you should follow the same theory, which is start conservatively, build your session, your training session, race or, or testing session, build it so that you're able to finish off just as strong as you started. So if you have that theory and that concept are going into an ironman that you're going to be very conservative and you're going to really protect yourself and then as the risk gets less. And what do I mean by that? Well, if you start in the first 5 or 10 or 15k, there's still a huge risk if you Start running fast, faster, because you've still got 30k left or 35k left. If you get to 30k, you've only got 12k left. If you get to 35k, you've got 7k left. The risk is much less. The chances of you running fast are really slim anyway because you're probably at a pace that you can only cope with. So to come home stronger is a little bit fictitious in anybody's mind. And we still have a lot of people saying, I'll bring it home in an iron manner, I'll run faster. And you know, we just say that's just not going to happen. You know, you're going to get to a running pace and you're going to. Your job is to hold it, hold onto that pace and not fade. And that's how we planned his run on the day, based on what we were doing in that last four weeks, which is just progressing his duration each week. So, you know, the first week it would be, you know, 20K, then we try to do 30, then 40 then than 50 so that, you know, by the time he gets to race week, he's had four weeks of really consistent running where his body's used to the pounding effect. Again, we haven't run fast, we haven't done any intervals intensity, we haven't done anything long to create any fatigue. But we've gradually got his body used to the running action and especially off the bike as well. He got used to that. So we did some marathon paced and we gave him a big range to see what he felt comfortable with. So by the time he got got to the race, he'd done a couple of marathon pace runs off the bike where he got to feel what it felt like to run at 5:10 or 5:20 or 5:30 pace. And you know, the question was, well, how much longer can you hold that for? Because that was all unknown.

Yeah, exactly.

Because we hadn't had a chance to do that because of the injury. So that was our strategy.

Yeah. And it turns out he was, he was true to his word. He turned out to be a great guy just overall, but a great athlete. And, and he absolutely nailed the training. And you love the fact that he went headfirst into the swimming bike while he couldn't run. And I think you were so stoked with preparation because you just said, well, he couldn't have trained any better for the bike. And then he did all he could in that last month for the run and then it was coming to the race. So, you know, a Race plan is nerve wracking for any race. And it's the most nerve wracking I think for the Ironman. It's such a big event, it's such a long day out there and then it's even more nerve wracking if you don't even know how you're going to cope with the marathon. And so knowing you can cope with the swimming bike is a pretty good position to be in. But how did you approach the race plan? What was your confidence in his ability to get through the marathon?

Yeah, so we got him to such a really good level as a swimmer that he could cope with the duration of the event and he could cope with easily with the bike. That was, that was really a positive. And I think, I think he rode five hours, 20 on a day. I think he's probably a 505, 510 rider. And our strategy was, you know, the opposite to what most people logically would think. Well, I've got really poor running form because of my training. Let's just make as much time up as we can on the swim and the bike. And we did the opposite. We just said let's just be very disciplined and conservative and so the bike feels like you've really not hurt yourself and then you'll be able to get off and you'll be able to run consistently because your fatigue levels will be so low as if you'd run 15 if you'd ridden 15 minutes faster. I think he ended up running 330. I don't actually have that data but, But I think 340 was it. 340 something. Yep. So yeah, I think, I think he's a capable runner of a 330 and, and he wasn't that far away and, and I was trying to get him to think, think like a 350 to 4 hour runner and in the, you know, the first 10, 15K and just try to be, try to be as conservative as you can and you know, just, just keep stressing that, you know, being conservative is going to pay dividends in the long run. You'll be able to run the whole way even though you haven't run this distance. You know, in terms of time, I shouldn't say distance. You haven't, you haven't run the time in training and you know, we don't expect to run 42k in training. We expect to run some time where we're running slower in our training than we would on race day. So the time's important. So you know, getting to Run three hours or two and a half hours or split runs, running two and a half hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon when you're getting. So you're getting a total duration of three and a half hours. So we didn't get a chance to do any of that. But. But in the end of the day, it was really about his discipline in not. Not extending himself too much the whole day. And sure, we. We may not get the fastest time, but in fact, we did. We got a really good time. Um, but, you know, he is capable of, you know, now we know he's capable of probably 20 or 30 minutes quicker. So that was exciting for his first race, to be disciplined, to stay with the structure, stay with the schedule. And it paid dividends because he could not have been happier at the end. It was like, oh, damn it. I think I could have gone harder. And I don't have many people say that. And he did a 10, 30 something. And I think the goal was to break 11 hours originally smashed it. And with limited time and with an injury, it was just ridiculous. And that's why I wanted to get this podcast across, because it wasn't smooth. There was. There was. Everything was wrong. The preparation time. We talk about plan, prepare, perform in our motto, you know, planning is don't start with 14 weeks to go for a nightmare.

Please don't take that message from us that we're saying it's okay to do this, it's really. We want it to be one offs. We don't. It's really uncomfortable.

Yeah. We're not saying this because that's what we want everybody to do. We're saying this because that's what we want no one else to ever do. We want you to give yourself ample time so you can actually probably get the time you want on race day. And even though he's ecstatic to actually finish the event and finish it running, full of running, I think he only faded like 5 or 10 seconds per K over the second half of the race, which is pretty phenomenal. So his execution was bloody impressive, to be honest.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I was. I was, you know, I was probably more relieved and excited for him than I've ever been for any athlete, because it was like, this could go horribly wrong. A, we haven't had enough time to do this and you've been injured and we haven't got really good data to give you a decent race plan around, and we have to ask you to ride more conservatively and then you want to. And you know I'm saying to him, you're going to find it like you're going to say, Jerry, what are you doing? This is too easy the whole way around because it is a level that he could cope with, no problem. And I'm so impressed with the way he stuck to and his discipline. That's the thing I loved about Mitch and the way he just, you know, he just trusted the process.

Yeah. Look, I think that watching you as a coach, it's so fun on Ironman day. And just like you don't have favorite athletes, you don't have favorite races, but I think you definitely light up the most on, on Ironman Day. There's just something special about the Ironman and the, and the monstrosity of it. And that's seriously doesn't diminish. You know, any other race, any other 70.3, you light up just as much. But I think, yeah, you're really, you were anxious about this one and, and to see his result and for him to go in with the goal of breaking 11 hours, his first goal for an Ironman and to see him get through it, get through it really well and do 10 hours 28 minutes. Yeah, you were just equally relieved and ecstatic and I think that just. Yeah. On some of the data points, you know, to be able to not basically equal split the marathon, you know, it was a 151st half and 152 second half. Two minutes slower in that second half is just pretty awesome. But the, the key, the key PowerPoints I wanted to point out were, you know, he wrote 5 hours 20 minutes and he averaged 191 watts when in your own words, he really wasn't a proper bike rider by any means or a bike rider at all. When he, when he, when he came to the program, in fact his first 20 minute test, this is really important, was 228 watts. You know, that's for 20 minutes and then for 180 kilometers. You know, 14 weeks later for 5 hours 20 minutes he's at 190 watts. That is an incredible, incredible improvement and percentage of that was his best 20 minute effort at 228 watts. So his execution was really quite good and conservative as he said. But I think you were just really glad that when we talk about some of the big red flags that an athlete might have, he had all three. It was, it was not enough time to prepare. No, no. Not enough data to know how he's going to execute and therefore come up with a race plan. And then there's the Actual execution itself as well. And so what this kind of proves is we're not trying to say you can do an Ironman in 14 weeks, but for most people, they have zero of those three things. They don't give themselves enough time, they're not doing the required training in terms of distance and volume and specific sessions that will get them ready for Ironman and they don't have a race plan. So what this kind of shows is that if you just have a couple of those things, you can really work and use that to your advantage if you're smart about it. And if you have the right race plan, if you just can get enough volume, at least in the swim and bike, that really proved that for us. And ideally, the reason we want athletes to give us six months minimum, probably 12 months for an Ironman, six months at an absolute minimum, is because we want to have all these three things covered. We want to have enough time to progress them safely and properly. We want to be able to give them the right amount of volume in the training session and we want to be able to have a great, confident race plan that we can execute, and we know we can execute based on their data on race day. That's the dream and that's the best way to ensure you go and get the result you want. And I think this just shows even if you have a little bit of those things, you can get a good result. But ideally you have them all.

Yeah, but I think the main thing, Jord, is all those things you've said are true and we want to emphasize those points. But if you actually have guidance that's going to allow you to give your best effort on the day and not have an ego to say, well, I'm better than this on the bike, I should be able to ride 5 hours 05 or 5 hours. You could have ended up running 4 hours 20 rather than 3 hours 40 because you're so exhausted from the bike that your body is really breaking down. You know, you've burnt so much more fuel, you've raced at a higher heart rate, your lactate levels where it shouldn't be, because you've really raced the bike trying to get back time and that scenario doesn't work. We've had so many examples of guys who've tried to do that. And, and don't forget on that day we had Stevie mack rode a 4 hour 40. We had Fiona, Fiona also Fiona Mann riding right in her lane and we had Reece also doing exactly the same. So all four athletes that day rode exactly how they wanted to in their ranges, including Mitch. And then all four athletes ran properly and they all got a result they wanted and, but they all came into that race with different preparation and you know, you've got someone like Stevie Mack, who's a world champion, who's, you know, doing a nine hour Iron man, you know, so you got that level and you've got, you know, Mitch who's, who's trying to do his first one. It was Stevie's first one, but he's trying to, he's not racing and he's trying to get through it as properly as he can. Stevie's racing it. So, but, so they're different, they're different mindsets and they're different strategies and different plans and, and that's the message we're trying to get across. If Mitch had gone in with, I'll just try to catch up, he would have had an awful time on the run. There's, I've got no doubt about it. Underdone, underprepared, rode too hard and then couldn't run because he ran out of fuel. His body couldn't cope with it, his heart rate was elevated. You know, it was pretty tough day wind wise, so it could have been disastrous. And it sounds like, oh yeah, that was pretty straightforward. But that's why it was straightforward because he did all the things right. He did it all well. He listened and followed the instructions and stayed in his ranges and didn't have an ego and saying, I can do faster than this, which we know he can, but it would have impacted detrimentally on his running and therefore the day would have been spoiled. The minute you have a terrible one leg out of the three, it really spoils the whole day because you're not happy, you know. And that day the swim was horrendous. It was the worst wind. Guys were taking 10, 15 minutes more than they normally would have and the bike was pretty tough. And for anybody knows, Buso, it's a flat course, but it's got so many turns when you change directions and then, then the run is, you know, quite tough because it's, it's really windy on that day. So you've got headwind, tailwind, headwind, tailwind the whole day. So, so yeah, even though it's a fast course, that particular day it was probably the worst conditions they'd had in years for wind. So you have to take all those things into consideration and the outcome is just absolutely tremendous. And that's why I really want to do a case study on someone like that. Who didn't get all the planning, preparation and execution right. But he did get the execution right. He did get the planning right. And he, once we established that he, you know, once you've got a set amount of time then you can get the planning right. And you know, whether you get 14 weeks or whether you get, you know, 36 weeks, you've got to manage the planning around those weeks you have available and try to fit in the appropriate training into those weeks. And I think that's what, that's what Mitch and our coaching group did really well.

And one of the best things to finish off that you've really enjoyed is he's just kept going from there and he's kept training and he's absolutely flying. And since then he's just done 312 watts for a 20 minute test. So that is a massive improvement from where he started. And yeah, you're just very happy as a coach that he's continued on, he's kept up the consistency and he's really reaping the benefits now and he's going to keep reaping the benefits and he'll race even better with continued training.

And don't forget it was only August when he started. So he's doing 228 watts in August. And here he is now, you know, 312 watts. I don't know, August, September, October, November, December, January. It's like six months later, he's improved nearly 90 watts. And you know, that shows you if you stay consistent, have the appropriate rest after the Iron man. And I'm having to force him to rest. He's saying let's get going. You know, I'm so excited about my performance. I can't wait to start the next program. When are we starting? And I'm saying you just need to have a rest. I don't mean rest as in stop training. Let's just recover in your training. Like we advise and give you the recovery sessions and follow this. And Mitch has done exactly the same thing. He's followed the instructions the right way in recovery and now he's able to in February, you know, I think what was his January FTP? It was 290 something, I think.

Yeah. So number, his treatment number is 312. So it gives you an FTP of 296.

Yep. And in January what was his number?

Sorry, that was the last test.

Yeah, okay. Sorry, that was the last test. Yep. So. So I know that he's testing again this week, which is going to be exciting to see. See where he's at in terms. And look, his speed now is over 40Ks an hour for that, for that 300 watts. So you know, when he first started, I think he was, you know, mid 3, mid 35Ks an hour. So he's really, you know, improved incredibly. He's literally 5Ks an hour faster than he was over 20 minutes.

So we've probably jumped the gun a little bit. You're recording this episode today. He's literally doing his FTP test tomorrow. But I'll put in the description notes once this episode is live. I'll put in the description notes what he ended up with, with his permission, with his FPP test tomorrow. So you can see the comparison.

Yeah, and we actually will get to see him do a run test which will be, which will be interesting. So, so look, I'm so pleased that he's continued and now he's. Because he's consistently in the program. He's now, you know, he started at a level of three out of 10. He built up to Iron man at to a four or five and he's recovered, you know, and just stayed at five and now he's at six and heading to seven. And you know, if he continues on that journey over the next two years, he, you know, who knows what he can do somewhere in the nine for an ironman. And that's, that's exciting for him. But he knows it'll take time. But, but you know, he's, he's not having this period where he's off for six months and having to come back and then starting back at three or four and getting super frustrated because his numbers are well down on what they were and felt like he didn't lose much fitness. But the numbers don't lie. You know, that continuous consistency of training is the key. And the stop start stuff is what prevents you from the improvement. You want, you want that progression. You don't want to keep getting to a good point then regressing and then getting back to that good point. But, but taking time off in between because that you just yo yoing up and down, you're not actually getting any improvement. So, so we say that a lot. But, but it's so obvious and we still have athletes that are doing it and, and they get frustrated with themselves. But, but you know, we have to keep pointing out, well that's a decision you make when you decide to do that. So.

That'S it. I think that's a good conclusion to this episode and we hope you enjoyed it. And for anyone thinking about an Ironman, keep these points in mind and if you'd like to get the same level of coaching, if you're thinking about an Ironman or any race, you want help with preparation, although you don't, please don't leave it too late. If you've got a race coming up, get onto us as soon as possible. Don't leave it another month because the longer you wait, the less training you have and the less weeks you have available. So you can go to trivalocoaching.com and apply to be coached there. A reminder that we coach athletes from Australia, but also all around the world and internationally. And we have a eight week guarantee that if you don't improve in the first eight weeks, then the coaching is on us. So that's it for this case study episode. Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you on the next one.

SA.