In the northern hemisphere we’re in the middle of summer and tens of thousands of people inspired by watching Ironman events are wondering if maybe, just maybe, they could do one themselves? This is normally followed closely by the question, how long does it take to train for an Ironman?
Well, this is an incredibly difficult question to answer. For some people, they might be able to roll out of bed tomorrow and knock one out if they really, really had to. For others, it could be a multi year project. Working with an online coach such as myself is the fastest way to accelerate someone’s development, but for the purposes of this article I am going to assume you are training without immediate guidance. I’m going to look at each sport in detail, to help you understand how much time might be required to get up to scratch, but to start with let’s look at the larger principle of base fitness.
Base Fitness
Imagine two individuals. One played a lot of sport when they were younger, goes hiking on their weekends and is careful about what they eat. They’ve run a few half marathons for charity, learned to swim when they were younger, owns a cheap mountain bike and is a healthy weight. They decide they want to do an Ironman.
The second individual wears XXXXL T-shirts, has takeaway most days and has decided to take on an Ironman triathlon to turn then health and fitness around. They can’t swim, don’t own a bike and haven’t run since school, but for them a huge challenge such as an Ironman is the only thing that motivates them to make a positive change in their life.
These two individuals are going to have very different experiences, so answering the question “how long does it take to train for an Ironman?” is incredibly difficult, as we’re all starting from different places.
Base fitness is the biggest factor here, it looks how generally physically capable someone is. It doesn’t have to be specific to swimming, cycling or running, it’s merely the starting point. A few years ago I got an email from an FA cup footballer who wanted to take on an Ironman event over the summer break. I worked with them to get race ready in a few months. As they already did plenty of running with their team and had a reasonable level of swimming, all I really had to focus on was helping them get used to swimming in open water and building their bike fitness. We of course tweaked their run training to help them move from sprinting after the ball to running slowly for prolonged periods, but the learning curve wasn’t steep.
I have full admiration and respect for anyone who decides to train for an Ironman who can’t currently swim and doesn’t own a bike, but you may want to hold off on pulling the trigger on that entry just for now. It may be that you take to the training really well, but it could be that this realistically needs to be a multi year project for you to get race ready. Ironman entries aren’t cheap and it isn’t always easy to defer. Reading the rest of this article should give you a good idea of what your timeframe might look like.
Swimming
The swim has the most daunting discipline for most wannabe triathletes. There are a lot of factors which we need to take into consideration.
Water Confidence
If I were to ask you to jump into the deep end of your local pool, would you do so without hesitation? Or would you instead ask to enter the water very slowly via the ladder in the shallow end, and slowly build yourself up to getting out of your depth?
Your confidence in deep water is a major influencer of swimming development. If you are finding yourself in a panic as soon as you get out of your depth, you will need to allow more time. If you sign up for an Ironman event six months out and swim twice a week, that’s only 52 swims to take you from clutching onto the wall in the deep end for dear life and swimming 3800M in open water nonstop, where you won’t even be able to see the bottom.
Swimming Technique
Do you glide through the water or thrash your way to the end of each length, stopping at the end of each lap gasping for air?
A good swim technique will not only help you swim faster, it will also make you more efficient. The swim will likely make up somewhere around 10% of your day, you can’t afford to come out of the water exhausted. Developing your swim technique is difficult and takes time, and many simply leave it too late. Yes swimming in a wetsuit can cover a multitude of sins in your stroke, but what if it’s unseasonably warm and wetsuits are banned? Could you swim for 2.4 miles in the sea or a lake wearing nothing but your race suit, hat and goggles?
The best way to improve your stroke is to visit a face to face swim coach to get an analysis. I can do video analysis remotely, but there’s no replacement for having someone there in person if you are a newer swimmer.
Open Water Confidence
As I started training for my first triathlon in the autumn, I had read an awful lot about open water swimming by the time I eventually squeezed myself into a wetsuit. I would find myself eyeing up lakes and asking myself if I could swim across them, which I felt I could do confidently.
Then came my first open water swim. I stood on the edge of the lake on a chilly May morning after tip toeing through goose poo to get to the water’s edge. Wrapped up in a tight fitting wetsuit it struck me. I actually have to get into that big ,deep, dark cold piece of water. You can hear more about my first open water experience and how to avoid the mistakes I made by listening to my podcast.
I have done a lot of open water coaching and some take to it like a fish to water, others find themselves desperately clinging onto a buoy for dear life, and needing to be rescued by the water safety crew. Between not being able to see the bottom, not having a black line to follow, wearing a wetsuit, swimming in close proximity to other swimmers and the colder water, it’s almost a different sport to pool swimming.
This is especially critical for those entering early season races. If you are taking on your first race soon after the lakes open, you may only have one or two practice swims before race day.
This is difficult to test if you are reading this in winter when you cannot just jump in a lake to see how it goes. My recommendation if you have never swam in open water before (and I mean really swimming, not splashing around in the sea) is to book a late season race to give yourself as much time as possible to prepare.
Cycling
The bike section of the race is often the least intimidating to newcomers, as most can ride a bike confidently, where they may be unable to swim freestyle currently and don’t do any running. However, there is a big difference between riding a mountain bike on a cycle path, and riding 180KM, sometimes over hilly terrain.
Suitable Bike
For shorter triathlons any bike will do. A shopping bike with a basket and a bell? Why not, if someone is just getting started in the sport they don’t need to make a big investment.
However, if you are taking on an Ironman, you will need a suitable bike. I recommend a road bike if you are new to the sport. Triathlon bikes are expensive and specialised pieces of equipment, which will in a best case scenario will save you 30 minutes. If someone is a serious triathlete then this is a good investment, but if you are just dipping your toe in the sport then it is overkill.
Most people should be looking at a road bike with dropped handlebars and slick tyres. Don’t fall into the trap of buying a bike that is good for both on road and off road riding, as this will be markedly slower than a dedicated road bike.
Road Confidence
Riding on the road can be intimidating, but mile for mile it is safer than riding off road where your chances of being unseated by a rock or riding into a tree and causing yourself serious harm are much lower. The downside is that we have no control over other road users which causes anxiety in many.
If you start road cycling when younger this is less of a concern, you just hop on a bike and ride, but as we get older we tend to become more risk adverse and this can feel very intimidating. If you are an attentive rider who is constantly monitoring road conditions, runs a rear light in all weather, dresses for visibility and confidently holds their line when riding, the chances of you getting into difficulty and incredibly low.
However, you may need to allow some extra time to get used to riding on the road before you enter a race if it fills you with anxiety. Official Ironman events are held on closed roads but you will still be riding faster than you’re used to on a surface which is very unforgiving if you crash.
Comfort on the bike
One of the biggest factors in the distance someone can cycle for is their comfort on the bike. Sitting on a saddle isn’t comfortable for 5+ hours. When combined with an inappropriate saddle height and handlebars that are too far away from the rest of the bike this can make for an incredibly uncomfortable experience.
Popular mitigations include padded cycling shorts, a professional bike fit, chamois cream and strength training, but at the end of the day we do need to spend more time in the saddle to build up our resilience. This means long rides most weekends that slowly get longer to not only get fitter, but also to allow us to get off the bike with a backside in a vaguely fit state to run a marathon.
Mechanical Knowledge
Picture this scenario. You have spent years preparing for your Ironman event, you have trained for countless hours, spent thousands on race entry, a new bike, flights, hotels, pool fees and more. You are now stood at the side of the road during your race staring at a flat rear tyre, with no idea how to fix it. The mechanic passes you, but tells you they’re on their way to help someone with broken spokes, and don’t help with flat tyres. They chuck you a spare inner tube, but that’s all they can do. You will be disqualified if you ask for assistance from a spectator.
You will not become an Ironman, because you don’t know how to fix a flat tyre.
You cannot allow this to happen to you. You can’t leave yourself in a position where basic bike maintenance makes you break out in a cold sweat. You need to learn to do basic jobs such as indexing your gears, changing an inner tube, packing and rebuilding your bike yourself.
These can feel intimidating and overwhelming, but with the help of step by step videos on YouTube you can learn to perform these simple tasks yourself which might just be the difference between you finishing your race or not.
Running
Running is the simplest sport in many ways, but it is fraught with pitfalls, primarily in the way of injury. As a result, you need to be very careful with your training to allow you to get race fit without injury.
Strength levels
One of the biggest determiners of injury risk is strength levels. If you have short, weak and tight muscles, you are at a much higher risk of injury than someone who has strong, flexible muscles that help propel you forwards and support your body as you run.
The prime suspects in running injury are tight hips and weak glutes, which can present themselves as pain in all areas of the lower body from your knees to the arches of your feet, running injury is a complex topic.
To get ourselves to a point where we can start training to run a marathon alongside our swimming and cycling training, we will need to have a baseline level of strength. You should hopefully be including strength work in your training anyway, but if you would consider yourself a very weak individual currently, you might need to spend a bit of time getting stronger to allow you to handle the volume required for Ironman training without injury. I may be biased, but I can highly recommend my own Strength Training for Triathletes Programme which includes video demonstrations, theory modules and nine twelve week training plans to choose from. You don’t even need a gym to get started.
Current mileage
How much you are currently running will have an impact on how far away you are from being Ironman ready. Do you regularly run half marathons, or have you not put on a pair of trainers since school?
As we need to increase volume gently, we might find ourselves running out of time. If you can only run for two minutes before getting out of breath today, are you going to be ready to run a marathon in time for your race? There is no shame in walking stretches of the marathon, but this should be a last resort rather than the plan.
Conclusion
As I’m sure you can tell by now, there is no clear cut answer to how long it takes to train for an Ironman. It also depends on the kind of experience you want to have on race day. Are you ok with dragging your broken body across the line just before the cutoff wiping vomit off of your race kit vowing never to do another event? Or do you want to finish in under 12 hours and continue racing in the sport of triathlon for years to come?
Take a moment to read through all of the article again, and ask yourself how long you think it will realistically take to get ready. I have not even really touched on the fitness aspect here, but you should have a gut feeling for how long it will take you to build up the fitness to move forward relentlessly for 226KM.
If in doubt, I recommend you give yourself a bit of extra time. However, you also need to be smart with your training, if you decide to take on an event in a year’s time, how can you be sure you won’t be burnt out physically and mentally when race day comes around?
If you need help with your preparation, check out my Bespoke Coaching or Training Plans.
