How hard is an ironman?

Pretty Much wrote:

Chow hound wrote:

Dude, its a 100+ mile bike ride. Bonk on the run and you walk. Bonk on a bike ride and ???? Having bonked on a few rides, its a horrible feeling, working so hard and going nowhere.

You know the friends who always say they dont like to drive that far when you mention a 20 mile run or marathon? Tell them about your 100 mile rides and they can't really phathom that, because they dont drive 100 miles.

Have you even ridden a bike before. Bonk on a bike ride and coast or just push the pedal down. It's a bike. 10 miles or 100 miles, so what. You're sitting on your butt, with all those gears.

Ill keep your troll roll going. Just sit on your butt with all your gears and coast up those hills. Heck, a buddy did IM one year and the winds were so bad he couldn't coast downhill...with all those gears.

RunningOnSole wrote:

What have you done previously?

Have you done any of the events on their own?

I think the bike is the hardest, longest and most demanding part.

Biking is by far the easiest to survive. Yes it is long but you can recover on a bike in ways that you just can't when swimming or running. The injury risk of training is also a lot less than running. Swimming might be easier the day of the event but it requires a technical base (i.e. a lot more people can't swim than can't bike) that a lot of people don't have.

The running is the toughest part. But mainly because you have spend 6 hours on the bike before you go out an run your 4:30 marathon (i.e. about the average times for Kona most years). Obviously going out an running 9+ min miles isn't remotely hard.

Obviously the issue for most people is that they can't train enough (i.e. they have jobs). so it is all about surviving the distance and not racing the distance.

If it was easy, it would be called "your mom" ;-)

The degree of difficulty goes as follows:

Biking (easy peasy)

Running (manageable)

Swimming (challenging)

Master swimming and you'll be good

snookieeee wrote:

The degree of difficulty goes as follows:

Biking (easy peasy)

Running (manageable)

Swimming (challenging)

Master swimming and you'll be good

No one has ever won the swim at Kona and won the race. Conversely, the bike leg performance correlates the strongest with overall performance.

Have you ever really hammered on a bike for 4-5 hours? It is a special kind of suffering.

If you are just completing an Ironman, your summary is fine. If you are racing an Ironman, you have it exactly backwards.

Thejeff wrote:

snookieeee wrote:

The degree of difficulty goes as follows:

Biking (easy peasy)

Running (manageable)

Swimming (challenging)

Master swimming and you'll be good

Have you ever really hammered on a bike for 4-5 hours? It is a special kind of suffering.

If you are just completing an Ironman, your summary is fine. If you are racing an Ironman, you have it exactly backwards.

Maybe you should stop hammering the bike and ride it instead.

snookieeee wrote:

Thejeff wrote:

Have you ever really hammered on a bike for 4-5 hours? It is a special kind of suffering.

If you are just completing an Ironman, your summary is fine. If you are racing an Ironman, you have it exactly backwards.

Maybe you should stop hammering the bike and ride it instead.

They don't make 7th place ribbons, Focker.

If you can swim ... otherwise 4 k open water is not a small task.

Its more about putting in the hours of the longer lower intensity rides and runs.

Some of these responses are hilarious from the people saying it's easy and almost anyone can go out and do one. Definitely not true. I've only ever done a half, but still not easy. My biggest problem was proper nutrition during the race, for I experienced extremely bad cramps during the run. I figured that since every week I go out and long run 13+ miles at sub 7 pace it shouldn't be bad, but after your legs are toast from biking it's a whole new game. To comment on the swimming, open water is completely different from being in a lap pool. You'll get kicked, crawled over, maybe experience some rough waves. To sum it up, each of those events apart aren't extremely difficult but put them all together and it's a big challenge.

Any decent runner can walk out the door and do one at the drop of a hat.

Bike: gears. If you can run up it, you can bike up it.

Swim: you're not going to drown.

Run: Covered.

BigBenJo wrote:

Any decent runner can walk out the door and do one at the drop of a hat.

Bike: gears. If you can run up it, you can bike up it.

Swim: you're not going to drown.

Run: Covered.

If most decent runners can't just walk out the door and do a marathon how can they do an ironman?

RunningOnSole wrote:

What have you done previously?

Have you done any of the events on their own?

I think the bike is the hardest, longest and most demanding part.

What drafting and freewheeling on a lightweight bike on a flat road.

Identifier of bull excrement wrote:

BigBenJo wrote:

Any decent runner can walk out the door and do one at the drop of a hat.

Bike: gears. If you can run up it, you can bike up it.

Swim: you're not going to drown.

Run: Covered.

If most decent runners can't just walk out the door and do a marathon how can they do an ironman?

But most decent runners can walk out the door and complete a marathon. They might not run fast, but take your average d1 xc runner, and they're running 80 mpw with a long run of 15 or 16. They can definitely slow that long run down slightly and hold it for another 10 miles. They'll be tired and won't be setting any records, but they can finish it.

Likewise, the people suggesting many decent runners could complete and Ironman aren't suggesting they would be fast, they are just suggesting they could finish it in the alloted maximum time. That maximum time allows for a lot of walking and similarly slow bike and swim sections.

They'd be back with middle aged rich guys using every allowable minute, but they would finish.

whattheheck wrote:

Biking is by far the easiest to survive. Yes it is long but you can recover on a bike in ways that you just can't when swimming or running. The injury risk of training is also a lot less than running. Swimming might be easier the day of the event but it requires a technical base (i.e. a lot more people can't swim than can't bike) that a lot of people don't have.

The running is the toughest part. But mainly because you have spend 6 hours on the bike before you go out an run your 4:30 marathon (i.e. about the average times for Kona most years). Obviously going out an running 9+ min miles isn't remotely hard.

Here a few theoretical thoughts from a recreational cyclist/runner, who hasn't ran even a marathon.

From theoretical point-of-view, cycling is a two-edged sword. While 112 miles can literally be a pain in the ass and it can hurt your back and neck, there is a plus-side, as it is the part of the triathlon where taking it easier has the least detrimental effect on your final time.

Whereas with running, the speed drops almost linearly when you cut the effort, if you cut your watts on a bicycle, the effect on velocity is far less because of air resistance. For instance, producing 10 less watts will drop your speed only some 4 percent, according to bike-speed calculators. According to the calculator below, you are only some 11 minutes slower when you cut your watts from 250 to 225 (naturally varying slightly due to other inputs).

This strategy could even have a slightly beneficial effect on your marathon time, as you are less exhausted and as you have spent your 5 hours on the better part of your fat-oxidation curve and your muscles are less glycogen-depleted for the last 26.2 miles. This doesn't mean that one should necessarily take it easy on the bike, but only that bike could be the part where a novice triathlete could take it easiest if he/she is unsure whether to survive the 10+ hour effort.

I have more than theoretical interest on the issue, because I am little-by-little moving my recreational endurance training towards Ironman (unlikely never going to complete one), so I'd be very interested to hear thoughts from real Ironman-triathletes on the strategy described above.

Aragon wrote:

For instance, producing 10 less watts will drop your speed only some 4 percent...

Should naturally be "10 percent less watts..."

Interesting. But I wonder if that's true at the highest level of the sport. I was in Copenhagen last year and saw some of the people finishing and as a runner kind of sneered at it like, "Oh this is just an arbitrary feat of endurance, not an actual race." It seems, however, that there are plenty of accounts of more side-by-side competing among pro triathletes.

Dude gets it.

The point is at the drop of a hat, a decent runner could finish an IM with no specific training, just as he could a marathon.

Finishing Badwater at the drop of a hat? No.

IM is not that hard.

It all depends on your strong events and weak events and how fast you want to do it. The elites make it look easy but it hurts ... Id say some track events can seem more painful but for a such a short time compared to the Ironman.

That being said when your trained properly for the pace you want to do the pain is minimal but it hurts for everyone. And it is hard... ZERO chances about it ...