Ironman Training Diary - May 6, 2026

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

To be clear, I am training for this event not because of what I want to do but 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. 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.

If you don’t know me, then I suppose you’re under the impression I’m already some sort of ultra-hardcore athlete. I am not. At the time of this writing I am 50 years old, and will be 51 when I compete in the May 16, 2027 Chattanooga Ironman 70.3 event. I am however unquestionably in better shape than most 50 year olds, and in particular over the past 16 months have become generally pretty obsessive about my fitness level. But this is Ironman (I’m typing this in a whisper). Or rather, a half-Ironman as they call it. The race starts off with a 1.2 mile swim, then participants who manage to make it out of the water transition to a 56 mile bike segment before finishing the race by running a 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles). Thus the 70.3 qualification. The full Ironman is double those distances.

As for my qualifications to run an Ironman? Well, I don’t have any. Or almost any. Just two Saturdays ago I ran the Ohio Health 1/2 Marathon with a middling completion time of 2:29. Since January 1, 2025 I’ve completed 16,217 pushups. I enjoy difficult physical endurance activities, having run a series of races of varying lengths in 2025, and on March 8 of this year participated in the Arnold Fitness Expo Pump and Run which included bench pressing 150lbs 16 times and running a 5K in 27:40.

As for my swimming, technically I can swim as in I won’t drown if you push me into a swimming pool. However I can’t recall ever having completed a lap of any sort in a swimming lane, and I definitely could not perform a respectable front stroke. In fact I’m not even sure if that’s what the swimming technique is called; I only called it that because I know there is a back stroke and so figure the one that you do flipped over is called the front stroke. Seems logical.

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.

What about the bicycle? Well, I own a bicycle and can ride one. 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 so I could carry granola bars and frisbees. 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.

After ditching the bike, it’s on to the 1/2 marathon. As I mentioned earlier, my most recent 1/2 marathon finish time was 2 hours and 29 minutes. 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.

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 as my dear uncle is fond of saying, “Onwards through the fog”. I have 376 days to figure this out, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.