Becoming an Ironman
Meet Luke Rawcliffe - an incredible athlete who trained with me to complete his first Ironman triathlon in 2018 in Wales. Luke trained for this alongside a tough and demanding job which often involves being offshore for weeks and months at a time. He had such strong determination when it came to his training, and he trained with me doing both 1-1 swim sessions and following an online Swimming programme that was designed purely to train him to be ready for the swim part of the event. He had a target of 14 hours to complete it, and he absolutely smashed it, finishing in 13 hours and 13 mins. Keep reading to find out more about his training for this and how the event went itself.
What made you decide to enter an Ironman?
I started running to build my cardio and lose weight after years of focusing on weightlifting. After my first marathon I wanted a new challenge. I’d always been a decent swimmer and cycled a lot when I was younger so I decided to give Triathlon a go. Once you get involved in the world of Triathlon, you notice people with distinctive IM tattoos and you hear Ironman events spoken of in hushed tones. Once I found out what they were (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle, 26.2 mile run), I was flabbergasted. I found out one of my good friends had competed at the IM World Championships in Kona in his youth and he inspired me greatly. They seemed absolutely insane so I set myself a target of doing one before I was 30.
How did you pick which one to do?
I knew I wanted to do a proper Ironman event rather than just a long distance triathlon of the same distance ran by a competitor. The support and organisation at the IM events just looked mega. I didn’t want to travel abroad so that left me 2 choices – Ironman Bolton or Ironman Wales. Wales looked harder with more hills on the cycle and run and it had a sea swim rather than a lake swim, so I chose that one – go hard or go home!
What did you do in terms of training for the event, and how far in advance did you start?
The year before I trained for an Olympic distance tri and a Middle Distance tri (Half Ironman distance), as well as completing my second marathon. I then spent the winter focusing on Crossfit and lifting at M Squared Fitness to build some strength back up, before beginning Ironman training in earnest the January before the race. The race was on 7th September so that gave me just over 8 months of dedicated training.
I bought and studied a book called Be Ironfit by Don and Melanie Fink at the suggestion of my friend and mentor John. I based my cycling and running loosely around the Competitive program contained in the book. My swim training came from SwimWod – initially the generic Swimwod program and then later, a bespoke plan suited to my goals.
Roughly speaking, training was split in to 3 ten week blocks and those ten week blocks were themselves periodised in to 3 or 4 week cycles. At the start I was probably averaging 10 hours a week and by the peak of block 3 it was 20 hours per week.
A typical week towards the peak would look something like
Monday – Rest
Tuesday – AM Swim / PM Interval run
Wednesday – Brick (Cycle then run)
Thursday – AM Interval Cycle/PM Swim
Friday – AM Swim /PM longer easy run
Saturday – Long hilly cycle with hard brick run
Sunday – AM Long run /PM easy recovery cycle
In order - rank your favourite disciplines from best to worst in terms of the swim, bike run, and tell me why.
Running
Cycling
Swimming
I adore running. It’s my anchor. It is absolutely vital for my mental health. I can’t express the feeling of freedom and joy I get from just putting my shoes on and heading out of the door. It’s a workout, meditation, self-therapy and fun all in one. I also love that all I need is a pair of shoes. Wherever I am in the world, I can run.
I also love cycling but it can be a bit of a faff to train. You really need a decent Turbo Trainer to be effective with your training – especially living in the city. It takes ages to find any decent hills or clear roads. I’m also pretty clumsy so cycling fast in the rain can be a bit of a hazard.
Although swimming is my least favourite of the 3, I don’t hate it by any means. I just find having to go to find and get to a pool regularly very difficult as I work away a lot. Its also really hard to get a clear lane in a pool unless you’re training in the middle of the afternoon or at 6am!
What was your goal in terms of time? And what did you end up getting?
I initially just wanted to finish, which means a time of 17 hours. As training went on, I brought my target down to 15 hours, and went in to the day being cautiously optimistic and hoping for 14 hours. I ended up with 13hrs, 13 minutes and 46 seconds, which I was absolutely ecstatic about.
How do you think you manage to beat your goal by so much?
I think being consistent and very serious about my training. I gave up a lot of my life for the last 20 weeks of training.
The most specific thing I would pinpoint was doing a lot of Brick workouts, which means running straight off the bike. On many days I’d do a 5 hour plus hilly cycle in the peaks followed by an hour run straight away, so that on the day I felt absolutely fantastic getting off the bike.
Also, with my training, learning the concept of making your hard days hard and your easy days easy. If you’re training 6 days a week and often twice a day, its unsustainable for anyone to go full out every session. The key is to train hard enough to get the training stimulus but not too hard that you effect the quality of your recovery or impact the subsequent day’s training.
Great Advice. Were you nervous going into the event? If so, what were you nervous about and how did you deal with the nerves?
I was a little nervous about the sea swim leading up to it – it was absolute chaos at the start and for the first lap. I’d seen videos of sea triathlon swims and I’d done a few in lakes but nothing of this scale.
As the 3000 of us queued up on the famous zig-zag beach road in Tenby, I remember feeling very anxious about it. I just tried my best to practice mindfulness and remind myself how hard I’d worked to get to this point. I focused on my breath and before I knew it, I was legging it down the beach and in to the water. Once we started, there was no time for any nerves!
Did you encounter anything unexpected during the event or any difficulties? If, so, how did you overcome them?
To be honest, everything went pretty much to plan. The only difficulty I had was that I felt so good in the first few miles of the run that I pushed a little harder than I should. At the half marathon point I was on for a PB but the wheels fell off not long after that as I began to cramp up and get intense pain in my legs.
I dealt with it by walking through the aid stations and loading up on electrolytes, caffeine and salted nachos. What followed was a very long and painful couple of hours but the key is to just keep moving forward – never stop! Even if you’re walking you’re getting closer to the finish.
Love that. What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter an Ironman?
Be prepared to sacrifice a lot for your training if you want to give it your best shot.
It is expensive – Entry fees, coaching, physio, multiple pairs of running shoes, a good bike, bike servicing etc etc etc. I estimate it probably cost me over £2000 in total.
Seek some advice and try and find yourself a mentor who can answer your day to day questions and keep you moving in the right direction. Training can be incredibly lonely at times so it really helps to have someone who understands to share things with.
How did you feel once you were done? And what was your first meal afterwards?!
To put it simply, it was the most incredible day of my life. It still makes me emotional thinking about it. Nothing has ever come close to the feeling of pride and accomplishment as I crossed the finish.
Physically though, I was a mess! I went straight to Dominos in Tenby and ordered about 30 quids worth of food for myself. I ate a tiny bit of it on the way back to the hotel, had a bath and then collapsed into a fever sleep – I had definitely pushed my body to it’s limit.
How long did it take you to recover?
I had trouble walking for a couple of days but about 4 days after I was silly and did a Crossfit workout for Chris G’s birthday at M Squared Fitness and that probably set me back about another week! I was probably back to normal in a couple of weeks.
Do you think training through SwimWod helped you to achieve your goal for this event, if so, in what way?
Absolutely! I had the stated aim of trying to improve my swimming efficiency. The swim is the shortest part of the event so your efforts are best spent on the cycle or the run in terms of trying to get a quicker time. I wanted to get in to the water feeling confident and out of the water feeling fresh, and SwimWod definitely helped me do that. The programming is such a good mix of technique work and different intensities and it was perfectly tailored to me and adapted based on my times and feedback. On the day, I really did come out of the water after my 2.4 miles feeling great and ready to take on the rest of the day.
That’s great to hear! Would you do another one?! If not, what is your next goal?
I absolutely will do another one at some point in the future. I’d love to go abroad and do a destination event like Barcelona or Tenerife, but at the moment I’m very focused on running. I’m working towards a 50 mile ultramarathon next spring so consistently aiming for 40 miles per week plus 3 CrossFit classes where I can to try and ward off injury and keep some strength.
Amazing! Well, good luck with that, sure you will absolutely smash it, and thank you for such an inspiring blog with detailed insight into what it might be like to train for and complete an Ironman. Hats off to you!