IRONMAN 70.3 ROCKFORD TRAINING – WEEK 1 WRAP-UP – MARCH 9, 2025
As most amateur athletes do, I beat myself up through spring, summer, and fall, then use winter to recover, maintain fitness and get ready for the ritual to start all over again. Winter maintenance for me mostly means staying out of the cold and training indoors on the treadmill and a stationary bike at my workplace gym. It’s been a pretty mild winter and I did get outside occasionally to put in some running miles, but they were all done at an easy pace.
When I ride the stationary bike indoors, I usually set the level to a slightly hard spin, and just sit and do the work. I often will finish with an hour ride with a 16 mph average, and I wonder how accurate that average is. Sure I am sweating, and I can feel like I used my legs, but experience has shown that when I ride outside, a 16 mph average will kick my butt.
The weather turned nice for early March in Chicagoland this weekend and I decided to join a group ride on Sunday. The post said to expect a 16-17 mph average pace, but seeing that my plan called for 75 minutes of riding, I wasn’t too worried about it as I would ride to join the group and then split off when I needed to. I held on to the group as we casually warmed up for a few miles. But after about 15 minutes into it, I was working pretty hard to hang on. I purposely didn’t bring any gels with me to avoid being tempted to ride farther than my plan called for, and when we reached an intersection about 5 miles into the ride, the group went west, and I turned east toward home. Proud of myself for not overdoing my first outdoor ride since last fall.
Me waving from the rear, where I would start and where I would end.
Upon getting home, the ride ended at 25 total miles, 94 minutes of riding, and an average of 15.3 mph. That was about what I was expecting. Factoring in periods of slowing for walkers on the bike path, slowing for traffic, and the leisurely start pace of the riding group, the effort was probably pretty close to 16 mph average. But I’m not fooling myself, I was worn out, much more so than when I ride the stationary bike. But winter maintenance seems to be doing an adequate job at keeping me close to being ready to reclaim mid-year form. I just have to follow the plan and not overdo the training when a group ride dangles in front of me like a GU pack.
A good start for the first week of training. 4 runs/17 miles, 3 rides/55 miles, and swimming will have to wait until I get my pool open.
Back in June 2024, my running and Ironman friend Susan messaged me to ask if I had heard any rumblings about a new Ironman 70.3 race coming to the Midwest, specifically the Chicago area. We were trying to come up with which community had the best shot at it – Chicago? Crystal Lake? Maybe the North Shore area? I had not heard anything about a new race, but it started spreading excitement and it wasn’t long before Ironman made the announcement that Rockford, Illinois would be the newest race on the 70.3 circuit. Although I wasn’t really planning to do any more long distance triathlon racing, I was definitely interested. Once it was announced and sign-up opened, I decided to be among the first racers in this inaugural race.
Rockford is located about 90 minutes from me, so having a race that I won’t have to travel far to is a nice bonus. Once the weather warms up, I plan on driving out and doing the bike loop to see what will be in store for us on race day. I have run the now defunct Rockford Marathon twice – 2009 and 2010 – the prior being my return to marathoning after a long break from running that distance. So the return to Rockford for the 70.3 is somewhat befitting, since it has been four years since my last Ironman and eleven years since my one and only 70.3 in Muncie, Indiana. Time to get that adrenaline rush going again and enjoying triathlon training.
Rockford Marathon finish 2009
Rockford Marathon finish 2010
Two of my Gunner teammates will be joining in on the fun – Jeff, who is also planning on doing Ironman Wisconsin, and his sister Jan. This race might be the first half-iron race for them, but they are experienced Ironman finishers. There are also a few local friends doing it as well – Jennifer, who just rocks whatever race she does – Leah, who has officially dipped her toes into the triathlon waters and now is ready to do a cannonball into the deep end – and Chad, who I met last year on a local gravel ride and has since finished Ironman Chattanooga. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. I think Susan opted to pass, but I’m sure I will see her on many of the training rides this summer.
I will be following the competitive 16-week plan in Don and Melanie Fink’s IronFit Secrets for Half Iron-Distance Triathlon Success, the same book I used for training before.
Monday is a rest day, and today, Tuesday called for a 45-minute Zone 2 run, which I did on the treadmill. I got through it somehow. Swimming will have to wait until closer to May when I open my pool up. I tend to just swim straight and practice some simple drills for 30-45 minutes, which should be sufficient for this swim in the current aided Rock River. Biking will be done on the stationary bike at work until the weather gets better. Which reminds me, I better get that tri bike out of the garage and give it a good going over. It hasn’t been ridden in several years. I know for a fact that the rear brakes need an overall, and the chain might need to be replaced. I will get on that soon.
So there you have it, back in the saddle for some more Ironman-ish fun!
Today marks the start of training for the 2024 Chicago Marathon! Sixteen weeks of training, and I kicked it off with a… swim?
Yes, I started with a swim. I have had a fairly rough go with running this year and was forced to hit the reset button. After taking basically two months off from running during March-April-May, I slowly started easing my way back into it. But boy, has it been a slow recovery.
I was dealing with an injury that I self-diagnosed as high hamstring tendonitis, and took some time off from running to help my old tendons and muscles recover. I have recovered enough now that I can do five miles pretty well, albeit much slower than I would like. I ran eight miles the other day and felt pretty beat up afterward, so instead of starting training with a bang, I better ease into it.
In the past, I had used an advanced plan to train for the marathon and it worked pretty well for me. But I really saw success when I was also training for triathlon, specifically Ironman. My three best marathon times were all done in the same year that I had trained for an Ironman. So I thought that maybe I might use the Ironman training plan to prepare me for the fall Chicago Marathon.
The main reason why following a triathlon-based training plan would be beneficial for me is because running is tough on my body, and at 60 years old, it isn’t getting any less tough. By following the triathlon plan, I have to spread my workouts over three disciplines and not just one. This should allow me to build cardiovascular conditioning through swimming and biking, as well as running, without putting all of that on just running.
To make it even a little less taxing, I will be following the “just finish” plan, which is a beginner-type plan instead of the advanced or competitive plan that I would normally follow. I can always up the training another notch if I feel like it is going well, but I really don’t want to have to hit that reset button again. Also, I have signed up for a sprint triathlon in July and I need to prepare for that too. I must admit that I enjoyed my swim today, and I have really enjoyed the biking that I have done as well.
I’m not setting any time goals, or shooting for a Boston Marathon qualifying time – I just hope to run strong and finish well. So, hopefully, all of this will work out and I will find some success in sixteen weeks. Chicago Marathon 2024, here I come!
2020 Ironman Louisville got killed by a lethal combination of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as social upheaval going on in Louisville and it was not only enough to postpone the race, but to kill it totally off. Ironman Louisville (aka Kentucky) is no more. I was offered a deferral to a handful of other 2020 races which I felt had no chance of occurring, so I opted for the deferral to 2021 Ironman Chattanooga. A year into a pandemic, and I’m still somewhat pessimistic about whether we will race or not. But 2021 is here, people (including myself) are getting vaccinated, and real in-person events are starting to take shape and look like a possibility of actually happening. The CEO of Ironman came out recently with a video regarding how they expect the racing season to play out, which made most of us scratch our heads. What I get out of the video is that they truly want to race, but if they can’t they will tell us at the last possible second and keep our money anyway. But no matter his message, I’m signed up and will have to train to be ready if it does happen.
After completing Choo in 2019, my buddies and I all kind of agreed that we didn’t care to come back to it. I guess maybe that was the ungodly heat that helped with that mindset, but yes, it seemed to wow us less than Wisconsin, Lake Placid, and Louisville had done in prior years. But when Choo became my only real option, heck I will take it. It’s really not that bad of a course – the swim is almost effortless and the bike is the easiest of the four I have done. The run is the devil at this race, and add the heat like we had in 2019, and well, it was enough for us to say we’d never want to do the race again.
Seeing that I got through about 16 weeks of training for Louisville when it got axed, I have somewhat just drifted through my usual training, knowing that racing in 2020 was a longshot. With the exception of enjoying some brief, mild winter trail running, my desire to sign up for races or even do any significant training has waned. I had lost my mojo. The time to start training is here, but I’m still looking for some motivation.
I was spinning on the stationary bike this week and listening to some shuffled songs on Spotify when I heard Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up. That’s what I kind of need right now, something to pump me up. The weather is getting better, the snow is starting to melt, and soon I will take my training outdoors. Time to pump myself up.
I’ll be following the Competitive Plan from the book Be Iron Fit by Don Fink once again. It has never let me down. I have made some alterations to it in order to make it more personal to my needs, but I stick to it pretty closely.
I swapped out my old saddle for a new ISM PR1.0 split-nose model. I’m hoping that the saddle is more comfortable than the old one. I will have to find another way to mount my bottle cages to it, but there is time for that.
Swimming won’t happen until I get my pool open in May sometime. I have added some light weightlifting workouts for now, but I tend to get bored with that real quickly.
Here’s to training with my Gunner teammates and some of the locals I know who are also doing the race. Ironman Chattanooga, here I come! PUMP IT UP!
Training for Ironman #5 has begun! But not without some concern. Usually, my concerns are about some nagging injury that is giving me doubt about completing my workouts, or some forgotten conflict that may pop up and cause me to miss something important, or some other dumb thing on my mind. But I never thought that a global pandemic might derail not only my training but the race itself.
When my buddies and I committed to doing Louisville again back in January, I had no idea that I would be sitting around inside my house with the government telling me to stay home and not go anywhere other than essential travel, i.e. to work, to get groceries, etc. But here we are. When the race dominoes started falling, races like the Boston Marathon and others, I knew that this might be a little more of a worry than what we were telling ourselves. Pools are now closed. Gyms are now closed. Running trails are open, but the toilets are locked! (Maybe that’s only a problem for me.) Getting the workouts in maybe a little difficult for some, but Ironman triathletes are a hardy bunch. Heck, if we can get through an actual Ironman race, we can get around these training obstacles.
My plan for this Ironman is to once again follow Don Fink’s “Be Iron Fit” competitive training plan for the next 30 weeks. It has served me well in my past four races and I have tweaked it over time to fit my abilities and needs. I don’t follow the swim plans like I did the first two times I used it. The past two races went well with just two 45-minute swims per week with a handful of longer open water swims thrown in. I won’t be able to swim for a while, as it hasn’t warmed up enough for me to open my own pool. I suspect I will start swimming in late May.
It is on the cusp of being nice enough to bike outside, but if the weather prevents that I have both a trainer at home or a spin bike at work that I can use if necessary.
I’m in pretty good shape for running this time around. I had been training for an ultramarathon that was to take place on April 3rd but it fell victim to the pandemic and got postponed. My goal for this year’s race is to try to go sub-4 hours on the run. In 2017 my run split was 4:05 at Louisville, so I think that it is reachable. I just got to learn to stay out of the porta-potties on the run course, which always rob me of time. If they are locked on race day it might not be an issue!
My ultramarathon got postponed until 12 days after Ironman Louisville, so I hope to use the 30-weeks of training to prepare me for that event as well.
So here’s to a safe 30-weeks of training, and I hope my buddies and I and everyone else training for Ironman Louisville stays healthy.
A couple of months ago, Dave’s awesome wife and our usual Ironman travel coordinator Carla texted us Ironman friends and informed us that she had secured hotels for our next Ironman. Say that again? You did what?! When did we decide we are doing an Ironman?! Usually, when I get that nauseated feeling of signing up for an Ironman it is self-inflicted. This time Carla was causing it! After some not-so-deep introspection as to whether I wanted to add this to my racing calendar (I already had a spring and fall marathon and some shorter tri’s on it) most of our group decided to rev up our Gunner mobiles and give it another go. Honestly, training was not going well for my spring marathon Boston qualifying attempt, and this was a good enough reason to get out of that. As for that Chicago Marathon that is two weeks after this Ironman race, I will see how I feel. I may defer the race until the following year if I remember to do it in time, or I might just take it easy for two weeks post-Ironman and run Chicago as a victory lap. I was planning on it being my last one for a while anyway. So with that reasoning, I decided that I was in.
Training has now started for my fourth Ironman and again I am joined by my Gunner teammates, or some of them anyway. It appears that Alex and I are the only ones officially signed up, and my life long buddy Dave (Alex’s dad) was the one who initiated the idea about doing the race so I am sure he’s probably signed up. Jeff says he’s only in if John is in, but Jeff has started training for it too. John skipped Louisville and has his hands full with a very young family, so I’m guessing he may miss this one as well, but I never count him out. I’m trying to pitch the easy training plan to him, which requires less training time. There’s also talk of Jeff’s sister Jan joining us, and Dave is heavily recruiting his brother-in-law Scott to join in the fun. That’s awesome, the more the merrier. Also, there is a group of first-timers from the local running club that are also training for the race as well. I’m looking forward to seeing Susan and John B. training and completing their first Ironman, and I hope we can find some time to do some training rides together. So there are quite a few joining in the fun this time around.
IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA
Ironman Chattanooga is sponsored by Little Debbie! I love Nutty Bars! Wait, is it Choo or Chew?
Our adventure is taking us to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, to Ironman Chattanooga, also known by triathletes as “Choo” as in The Chattanooga Choo-choo, and sometimes “Chatty,” and has a reputation for having a fast downstream swim, a mostly gentle rolling hill bike ride through northern Georgia and back to Chattanooga, and a run with a few killer hills. The most notable item about Choo is that the bike ride is 116 miles, four more miles than all of the other Ironman races, making this Ironman 144.6 total miles. The veterans will say that you don’t really notice the extra four miles of cycling and that the fast swim evens out the time. All Ironman races have unique things about them, but none of the others have an extra four miles. I’m looking forward to adding this race to my finisher resume.
Here’s a look at the bike and run elevation comparisons from the three races I have done (in order of completion) and Choo:
The data was taken from the Ironman website, but there are lots of triathletes that say that Ironman’s reported elevations are not very accurate. I seriously doubt that Moo has less elevation than Lou. Regardless, the chart is pretty consistent with how I remember them. Choo looks like an easy run compared to Moo and Lake Placid.
TRAINING PLAN FOR CHATTANOOGA
I’m changing up my training plan this time around. I will once again be using Don Fink’s Be Iron Fit for training, but after following the Competitive plan in the book for my previous three races I am giving serious consideration to following the Just Finish plan with some alterations. The main reason is that I am pretty sore all the time, and I just want to ease into the training this time around without killing myself. The Intermediate plan seems to me does not differ much from the Competitive plan to make it worth dropping down to. Getting the Saturday and Sunday long bikes and long runs in are what really matter, and the Just Finish plan starts off with much less time training but gradually catches up to the Competitive plan. The big difference is that the Just Finish maxes out at two 5-hour rides, whereas the Competitive plan has two 5-hour rides, a 5:30 ride, a 5:45 ride and finishes with a 6-hour ride. Not sure if I can handle that stuff this time around. We’ll see how the training goes and I may increase my weekend rides and runs to follow the Competitive plan. If the group decides to do a group ride and they are following the harder plan, then I will definitely go along with that.
As I eased into Week 1 training, I found that the Just Finish plan was less work than I had been averaging in my off-season training, so I decided to start with the Competitive plan and keep my daily efforts to about an hour of daily exercise until I’m happy using the Competitive plan, or when the Just Finish plan catches up to me.
As for swimming, I gained a lot of confidence from the training I did in 2017 for Ironman Louisville. Lou has a similar river swim as Chattanooga and I set a swim personal best there with a 1:09 swim. Lou has a short upstream swim portion which Choo lacks. At Choo, it’s all downstream, and I hear that even though the water temps may prevent wetsuit usage, many still set swim personal bests. For Lou, I basically waited until May when I opened my own swimming pool and just did two 45 minute swims a week, with the occasional hour-long swim or open water swim thrown in to keep me honest and make sure that I had the confidence I needed to swim 2.4 miles. Swimming for 45 minutes is really no big deal, and to swim an additional 45 minutes I always thought would be no big deal as well.
So here we go again! And I’m very excited about training for Ironman Chattanooga! GO GUNNERS!
Week 1 Training Totals:
Swims: None > Rides: 4 total / 57 miles > Runs: 4 total / 12.25 miles
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an amazing run 