Ironman Training Diary - What am I Getting Myself Into?

Today I started training for an endurance event that I’ve always thought so to be venerable, so esteemed, that if I could whisper the name in writing I would. Ironman.

Even if you’re not an endurance athlete, I suppose you’ve at least heard of the Ironman, or maybe have seen one of the “Ironman Finisher” stickers affixed to the back of a car. Some competitors are so taken with the event that they’ll even tattoo the logo onto their calf. Regardless of your familiarity, I’ll take a moment to refresh readers on the details. An Ironman race consists of three athletic activities, in this order: swim, bike, run. Events are held all over the world, and there are two distances: 70.3 and 140.6. Yes those are miles. I plan on participating in the May 16, 2027 Chattanooga, TN 70.3 event, which consists of a 1.2 mile swim down the Tennessee River, a 56 mile bike across the rolling hills of southern Tennessee, and is capped off by a 13.1 mile run across downtown Chattanooga.

If you don’t know me, then you’re probably under the mistaken impression I’m already some sort of ultra-hardcore athlete. I am not. For starters, I’m getting old. At the time of this writing I am 50 years old, and will be 51 when I hopefully compete in the Chattanooga event. I am however unquestionably in better shape than most 50 year old men, and frankly could probably run circles around most 40 year olds which is more a reflection on the poor state of health in this country than on myself.

But I only really started this physical fitness quest about 17 months ago (January 1, 2025 to be exact as I’ve documented here). And as the aforementioned blog post makes clear, I’ve been bumbling my way through most of the process, treating it as one part joke, one part quixotic adventure, and one part extreme dedication and seriousness. Along the way I’ve completed more than 16,000 pushups, run several 1/2 marathons and other races, and even organized a neighborhood race called the 5/15/500 Challenge (5 mile run, 15 mile bike, 500 pushups or other exercises of your choice).

If you want to participate in this year’s 5/15/500 event, it will take place at 8am on July 25 and the start/finish line is directly in front of my house! Post-race refreshments will be available, and costumes are encouraged. Spoiler: I will once again be donning my Reno 911 Lieutenant Jim Dangle hot shorts and sunglasses. I’ve already started growing the pencil mustache.

So Am I Qualified to Do This?

I feel pretty good about the run segment since that is my main exercise activity, but my hardest bicycle workout in a decade involved pulling our baby trailer behind it. During covid we rode our bikes quite a lot through the neighborhoods to pass the time during lockdown. I even bought saddlebags at some point in order to more effectively carry granola bars and frisbees.

Can I Even Swim?

That depends on how you define “swim”. At present I won’t drown if you push me into a swimming pool, but I can’t recall ever having completed a lap across a pool and back, at least on purpose. For that matter, is a lap defined as from one end to the other, or down and back? I have no idea. To put just how daunting the swim segment of an Ironman 70.3 is, in order to complete the 1.2 mile segment of this race, I’ll need to perform the equivalent of swimming back and forth in our local rec center pool 80 times. And just to keep things really interesting, in order to avoid disqualification you need to be back out of the water 70 minutes after you entered it. In other words you need to swim from one end to the other of a 25 yard pool in 1 minute and 8 seconds. Then do it again 79 more times in order to barely avoid disqualification.

The swim + cycling portion of the 70.3 must be completed in under 5 hours and 30 minutes, so let’s suppose I channel my inner Greg Louganis (although on second thought I think he was an Olympic diver, but you get my drift) and complete the swim in 60 minutes. This means I have 4.5 hours to change into my cycling gear, jump on the bike, and cross the cycling finish line. The bike segment is 56 miles and so that means cycling approximately 12.5 MPH for 4.5 hours straight. Seems reasonable, at least until you take into account the very real possibility of flat tires or other cycling-related mishaps. Presuming I’m capable of fixing the issue, now I have to bike at an even faster pace to make it for the time.

Am I Sure I Can Run?

My most recent 1/2 marathon finish time was 2 hours and 29 minutes, and despite wildly overanalyzing my performance I’m still not entirely sure I can put a finger on why I did so poorly. And I was torched when I crossed the finish line. The 70.3 must be completed in less than 8 hours and 30 minutes, so even if I barely make the swim + bike cutoff in say 5 hours and 15 minutes, I’ll only have 3 hours and 15 minutes to run a race that a few weeks ago I ran only 46 minutes faster.

Can I At Least Grind?

If you’re using “grind” in the context of say R. Kelly’s Bump N’ Grind, well, that’s debatable. But if you’re asking whether I have what it takes to see this adventure through to the bitter end, I think so. Just a few weeks ago I did 370 pushups during my son’s soccer game for no reason other than my nemesis Charlie challenged me to a pushup duel. In anticipation of officially kicking this off I’ve already been logging more miles and time at the gym than I have in a very long time. In other words, I have zero problems with a) looking dumb while I figure things out nor b) grinding through pain to get what I want.

But I’m not so nieve to think that participating in an event like this is the outcome of “exercising more”. I’ve already started soliciting the advice of a few very accomplished endurance athletes who have completed Ironmen events, and will soon be hiring a swimming coach. Finally, I’ll be putting the full weight of my 40+ years of programming experience behind this effort, building out an AI capable of tracking all of my progress, sleep, diet, heart rate, and anything else relevant to ensuring I’m tuned to meet the extraordinary physical and mental demands that lie ahead.

Why Even Bother?

Whenever I’ve set out to do something out of my comfort zone, I’ve always found it useful not to necessarily think about what I have to do to reach the goal, but rather who I need to become to reach it. By shifting the burden of responsibility from something I need to do over to who I need or want to be, I’ve found it much easier to can convince myself to do the hard things required to achieve the task.

Put more practically, book authors write, so when I wanted to become a writer many years ago I looked up what guys like Ernest Hemingway did to write their books and simply imitated them, writing every single day without fail. That worked out pretty well for me. When I decided to quit being so lazy and fat and get into shape, the process however unorthodox was largely the same: people who are physically fit work out a lot, so if I want to get into shape then I must become one of them. Lazy people do not work out; physically fit people do. Once you adopt this sort of mindset, doing the things you don’t want to do tends to become a lot easier. In fact, “easier” or “harder” doesn’t even factor into the decision making process.

My desire to participate in an Ironman originates in a rather different way than these past goals in that I am training for this event not because of what I want to do but specifically because of who I want to become. I want to be associated with a group of people who for my entire life I have looked at as being something more than human. After all, it’s hard to think of anybody who is capable of swimming, biking, and running these incredible distances in a few short hours as anything but superhuman. So over the course of the next year I want to become superhuman. A lean, mean, nasty physical specimen. Chiseled. Resting heart rate of like 40 and calling strawberry-flavored greek yogurt a snack I only eat on Friday nights.

Now that I’ve put all of this down on paper, I’m starting to wonder what in the hell am I thinking even attempting to do this. But “onwards through the fog” as my dear uncle is fond of saying. I have 376 days to figure this out, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

And I’ll be documenting the whole messy affair right here on my blog!