Writing these lines has been a long term goal of mine, because at the time it all started I made a promise to myself - if I ever win an Ironman race, I’ll share my story with more than the few people who believed in me from the beginning.
And the time has now come, since in September I won Ironman Italy in 8:11h, the second fastest time for an agegrouper in an Ironman race ever.
Why am I proud of this?
It’s not about the time itself, since Ironman races cannot be compared to each other because of different conditions and distances. (For example, the fastest agegrouper time until now is being held by a columbian at IM Cozumel where the swim course is a point-to-point swim in a current- which is quite faster than on a common swim course.)
It’s more about the journey and the circumstances over the last 2.5 years.
It’s because I achieved this being 100% self-coached, getting my knowledge about Ironman racing and sport science from youtube, some podcasts and the http://www.triathlon-szene.de forum.
I also did no training camps, let alone altitude camps at all, same for any performance diagnostics or used any fancy gadgets. Occasionally? I did all my high intensity sessions with a heart rate monitor and a powermeter on my bike. Overall, the intensity control and training scope was mostly about how my body felt and reacted to training stimulus.
If you have come until this point, you might enjoy digging a little deeper and let me tell you about what was going on over the last 2.5 years…
First, let me introduce myself a bit more. My name is Michael and I’m a 27 year old physiotherapist from Leipzig, Germany. I started with Triathlon when I was 18. At the time, I did some drafting races in the german Bundesliga (1st and 2nd) up until 2017.
After that I put my focus more on my education and then my job as a physiotherapist for a while. Since the middle of 2018 I did about 90% of my training alone. No real focus, just for keeping up fitness and enjoying it.
Everything changed with the beginning of COVID in march 2020. My courses were changed to online lectures which I often skipped because I found them boring. Since my job as a fitness coach was also canceled, I now had lots of free time at my hands, much more than ever before.
I basically came down from a 70 hour week to a 30 hour week and because I was so bored I finally took up “real” training again.
At the beginning I weighed in at about 78.5kg, 5 minutes per kilometer jogging felt horrible and power on the bike was basically non-existant. My last swim session was in september 2019.
At this point I could go on talking about how difficult it all was to combine my job and all of the training during COVID (because the lockdown was lifted after a few weeks and I therefore was back at 70 hour weeks)
But this is when the freakshow started. I asked myself what I wanted to achieve in the “Triathlon game”. And the answer to this question became clear very quickly – I wanted to become really fit and do Ironman or “Long Distance” Triathlon.
My training from march ‘20 up until the summer of ‘21 was quite simple. I did as much volume as possible and when I felt like it I put in some vo2 max or LT2 intensity sessions. The only problem was that a day only has 24 hours and 8 of these you have to sleep. My school always started at 7:30 or 8 am and took until 4 pm, so I had to get up at 4:30 am to put a session in before start and another one after it finished. A typical week for me then looked like this:
40 hours of school, 8 hours of working on the weekend and 20-25 hours of training.
The little I really learned for school took place during the easy sessions on my turbo. During this time I became very fit but didn’t do any competitions because I simply hadn’t the time for it on the weekends.
In september of 2021 I finished my school and finally became a physiotherapist. Because now I only had to work 25-30 hours per week, things got a lot easier. So I decided to do the Leipzig Half Marathon as a test race and surprised myself (and probably others too) with a time of about 70 minutes on a pretty accurate course.
With such a good form I felt the time was right to try an Ironman race. From this point on I had about 7 months of preparation. I knew I had to take up swimming again and at the beginning the feel for the water was of course lacking because the last swim was in 2019. And two weeks after starting, the pools were closed again because of the lockdown.
“No problem” I said, one cannot win the race in the swim anyway, so let’s just do more running and biking. So, from November 21 until march 22 I had some crazy training weeks, doing all the bike sessions on the turbo. When the pools opened up again in january ‘22 and after about 6 weeks of swimming, I could swim steady at 1:25/100m pace which should be good enough for Ironman racing at agegroup level. My bike and run were also pretty solid at this time.
In April I tested myself at the Hamburg Marathon and up until km 31 this went pretty well. Then my left quadriceps started hurting and I could only “jog” to the finish line. But overall my time of 2:34h wasn’t that bad at all.
After Hamburg Marathon I started my final preparations for the Ironman race, also in Hamburg. I hadn’t ridden the TT-bike since ages so it was now time to start that again. In hindsight it might have been a bit too late for a good adaption to the TT position, but at least my running form was on point. The same was true for my fat metabolism which (in my opinion) is one of the most important factors in long distance triathlon. But let’s not talk too much about the preparation anymore but about the race itself.
The experience of racing an Ironman for the first time was unbelievable. The swim went ok, although I had only done two openwater sessions before, which might have been too little. I exited the water at around position 10-15 which was a solid base. But I think I lost the race because of my slow transition in T1 – taking my time, putting on gloves and socks was definitely not the best decision.
When I got on my bike, the boys in the lead were already away and some of them I never saw again for the whole day. This meant I had to ride most of the bike leg alone which is sub-optimal. At kilometer 140-150 I had some really dark moments because I understimated the importance of nutrition. All I took for the whole bike leg was 2 liters of fluid together with 250g carbs which is not sufficient for riding at Ironman intensity over 4.5 hours. When I finally approached T2 I could’t image running a marathon.
I took my time again in T2 and drank a lot at the first aid station and so I felt quite ok after starting the run. For the first 10k I was able to stick to my planned pace of 3:45-3:50/km. But after finishing the first lap I felt completely empty and was starting to think about quitting. This idea never really left me but somehow, by putting one feet in front of the other, I did survive all laps and finished the Marathon in 2:57, which for me feels like a pedestrian pace. Since I didn’t need any medical help at the finish line, I believe there still was room for improvement. The result wasnˋt bad at all with a time of 8.37 and 6th place overall!
What did I learn from my first Ironman race?
Basically it comes down to this: doing more rides in TT position with intensity in combination with more long rides, consuming enough fluids and carbs, more openwater swim sessions and working on my mental strenght. Sounds really simple, doesn’t it?
As you already might have suspected, I wasn’t really happy with the result. So I quickly decided to give it another try at Ironman Italy in september. This meant I had about 3 months left to work on becoming a better version of myself.
Training went very well, I really enjoyed the time and especially doing rides with my friends during the beautiful sommer was great . I even managed to do some 30+ hour trainings weeks which isn’t a problem when you love what you are doing.
3 weeks before the race I knew I was in a really great shape when I did a “norwegian light” session of 4 hours of biking at intensity, followed by a 25k brick run on the track at 3:45 min/km at LT1.
This will conclude my first writeup, the rest is history and deserves it’s own post
I hope you enjoyed reading. Feel free to comment below and/or like and subscribe on social media.
Cheers and keep on training!
MW
