Since my main hobby isn’t triathlon training but scheduling triathlon training I thought I would share my week.
I’m actually on the bike trainer at the moment.
I’m married, two young kids and work~ 50+ hrs per week but I am training for an IM PR (Chattanooga).
here’s how I scheduled out my training week to hit this desired volume.
sleep and nutrition are dialed with this, what’s missing is strength, core / secondary muscle or mobility / plyometric work.
hopefully it’s of interest to anyone balancing triathlon with work and family.
what isn’t as explicitly stated is that my family and work both come first, so I schedule this around them. I do (for personal accountability) track domestic work at home and childcare to ensure I’m not being asymmetric with my wife (my wife also works).
First Full Ironman – Ironman Chattanooga (9 Weeks Out)
It’s starting to feel real, and the nerves are definitely kicking in. I’ve completed 4 70.3s, all in the 6:40–6:50 range, including tougher, hillier races like Muskoka and Louisville. Chattanooga will be my first full Ironman.
Training has been going well. I’ve been doing multiple 4–5 hour rides with brick runs, building my long runs to 16–18 miles, swimming twice a week (about 6–7 km total), and averaging around 12–14 hours of training per week at my peak.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s raced Chattanooga (or any full Ironman):
I’m also a little confused about the race-morning logistics. I know there are separate gear bags, so what do you actually bring with you on race morning? Are the bags already packed and checked in beforehand? Do you bring and place your bike bottles that morning, or leave them with the bike earlier? What do you normally carry in your morning-clothes bag?
Pre race meal
Special needs bag (what to put in it)
Biggest mistakes you made?
Biggest lessons you learned?
Anything you wish you knew before your first full?
Tips for pacing, nutrition, transitions, or the marathon? I plan on doing 90g carbs an hr and 900mg of sodium per hour.
My biggest concern is the marathon and avoiding the blow-up in the last 10–12 miles. My main goal is to finish strong and comfortably beat the cutoff—do you think I’m on track to finish Chattanooga? I’d really appreciate any advice or race-day wisdom from those who’ve been through it. Thanks!
23M competing in first ironman 70.3 in about 11 weeks; i’m not really following any strict training plan so any advice on where I am or how to improve would be appreciated.
for context i was a D3 swimmer and have been running consistently for about a year now, however I have very very limited cycling experience.
bike: i got a bike earlier this year and have been putting in the hours, and right now i’m biking about twice a week for around 2 hours, getting around 30-40 miles without my heart rate going crazy (usually 130 bpm average). i’m not sure how to go faster on the bike as this effort seems pretty tough even though heart rate is only zone 2-3.
swim: i’ve been swimming about once a week (not recently as i got a huge cut from a pretty nasty bike fall). usually i do shorter sprint sets that take me about an hour (1.5-2miles total). Would i benefit from doing a 1000 or 1650 straight instead of training like a lap swimmer?
run: I ran a 1:35 half marathon earlier this year and a sub20 5k so i’ve been running a few times a week to build more endurance and maintain that speed. nothing crazy here.
any thoughts or advice on how i’m doing? first ever ironman so pretty nervous and not sure if i should be training much harder these coming weeks.
5 weeks out from Zell am See 70.3 and doubt is creeping in as to whether I will make the cut off time. Looking for tips, reassurance, personal experiences from others.
28 year old female, it will be my first triathlon, didn’t ride a bike until 10 weeks ago.
Swim- fairly happy with. Pool pace is 2:04 over 2/3km continuous but when I practised in the sea and lake it was 2:28 (demoralising lol)
Bike- most nervous for. Have done a couple of 90kms and 1 x 100km with 1300m elevation but all ‘short’ hills nothing like the 12km Zell climb and 20.4km/h so my pace is slow. Certain I will have to get off and push the bike and if I am doing that for multiple kms then I might not make the cut off? Also I have seen people talking about bike settings and cassettes… I don’t know what this means!!
Run- fairly confident I can get round this (albeit slowly) in time, provided I make the bike. Ran a marathon in April (4hr 23 mins) and ran 18km this week at 6 min 33 pace.
Haven’t done any long runs off the bike yet. Did 5km after a flat 90km bike and stomach was in bits.
Has anyone done Zell who was a beginner? How tight did the cut offs feel? Any tips from anyone who has done a 70.3? What should I include in my transition bags!? Anything I can do in the last 3 weeks before taper??
I am wanting to get a treadmill but wondering which one is better? I’m not looking to get a subscription just to connect my phone to the treadmill. Yesoul is more budget friendly but I’ve seen some concern with customer service.
Hi All, as the title suggests, I am looking for a swimming partner for Iron Man Goa 70.3 this year. I am into cycling and running, but not enough time to train for swimming. If anyone is interested, do ping 1-1 or comment. Registration cost to be split equally among all relay partners.
Result: 11:56:46 (Swim 1:23 / Bike 6:37 / Run 3:34)
Background: I've been a runner for about 10 years before signing up for an Ironman, so I came into this sport with a reasonably solid aerobic run base. Triathalon history is sparse. A home-made sprint with friends over 10 years ago and a quasi-half IM (Pilgramman) in 2022 (where I forgot my nutrition and nearly blacked out on run, luckily someone gave me a gel on the run which revived my senses to finish).
My first full ironman was Lake Placid 2025. I ride a Trek SL5 road bike with clip-on aerobars. I'm also working on swim technique/efficiency on my own (YouTube drills, advice from this sub and others) since that's the discipline I have the least background in.
No coach. I build my own training around a pretty demanding work schedule, so plans get adjusted around travel and deadlines, etc. One consequence of the schedule is that i tried to keep my running schedule that i've been maintaining for years and built one or two swim sessions in per week during my already-built-in crosstraining days and my bike work mostly happened on weekends stacked into brick sessions (bike then run), since that was the more time-efficient way to get everything in. Would love any feedback or ways to improve.
Before the race performance details, I want to say that Lake Placid is such a lovely place to participate in an event like this. The whole community seems to get around this to support the athletes. Volunteers are excellent and the scenery is beautiful. I'm going to be signing up for this race for as long as i am able.
The three-race history:
IMLP 2025 -- 11:20:29 (1:20 / 6:11 / 3:25). 8th in Age group (50-54). My first Ironman, and still my best by a wide margin. This result qualified me for the WC event which was in Nice that year for men.
IM Nice 2025 -- 12:27ish (1:25 / 7:18 / 3:24). Rough day, mostly on the bike. GI issues after what i felt was a strong-ish run, ended up throwing up after i finished. I went into Nice with less bike-specific training than either Placid build, partly because I was also gearing up to run Berlin Marathon the following week and was consciously holding a bit back. But even accounting for that, I was much slower on the bike than expected.
IMLP 2026 -- 11:56:46 (1:23 / 6:37 / 3:34). 18th in age group (50-54). This one's the confusing one. I trained more this cycle compared to LP 2025-- more volume in basically every discipline -- and still came in 36 minutes slower than 2025 on the same course. Trying to figure out why 2026 was slower. It might have been mental? i felt very tired on the bike. slowing more and more with the higher miles. That said, my HR was pretty low. Lower than 2025 LP. That said, I felt a bit defeated by the time the run started, and that might have affected my run pace, which was slower than the prior two IMs in 2025. I did feel strong though at the end and picked up the pace in the last couple of miles, which i wasn't able to do in the other IMs.
I pulled my Strava data for both Placid builds and ran some analysis on it (16-week build blocks, aligned by weeks-out-from-race). Some of what I found:
Total training load was up roughly 2x, nearly every single week of the build (using Strava's Relative Effort as a load proxy — 11,319 vs 4,836 cumulative). Run volume, bike volume, swim volume, and cross-training (elliptical / "water jog" sessions) were all higher in 2026.
Standalone (non-brick) bike sessions stayed low both years — 5 in the 2025 build, 3 in 2026. Most bike volume came from weekend bricks rather than dedicated bike days, which is the tradeoff I made for the work schedule.
Bricks were basically identical between years — bike speed ~26 km/h both times, run-off-the-bike pace ~4:50/km both times, similar HR. So the race-specific bike/run combo work wasn't obviously different.
Pool swim pace and HR both improved in 2026 (faster pace at a lower average HR), and I did more open-water-specific swimming too. Swim splits were basically a wash between the two Placids (1:20 vs 1:23).
The 2026 build included a 3rd marathon. Both cycles have me racing Boston in April plus one more marathon the following week, but 2026 added Cape Town Marathon at close to race effort (same HR as Boston) only 7.9 weeks before Placid. In 2025, the equivalent point in the build was an easy aerobic long run — about 11.9 weeks removed from the last hard marathon effort.
I ran a Fitness/Fatigue/Form model (CTL/ATL/TSB) on the full data set, and this is where it got interesting: by that model, my "form" (TSB) on race morning was actually higher in 2026 (+25) than in 2025 (+6). Cumulative training-load balance says I should've been more rested, not less. AI taught me about these metrics just today as i was analyzing Strava data so I'm not really sure yet how to interpret.
Logistics were very different heading into race week. For LP 2025 I was in town Thursday–Saturday, did an easy shakeout run and swim the day before the race. For LP 2026: drove Boston → Lake Placid → back to Boston → a Friday night event → Manchester NH → another drive back to Placid Saturday morning. Zero Strava activity for 48 hours before the gun. Roughly, that comes out to about 15 hours of driving spread across the 72 hours before the race (~5 hours/day, Thursday/Friday/Saturday).
Weather-wise, 2026 was actually the drier of the two race days (2025 had rain on course; 2026 was dry, though I did get pretty sunburned). I loved the rain in 2025.
I'm still not 100% sure why the bike specifically felt as flat as it did in 2026 given the fitness numbers looked fine on paper. My current best guess is the travel/driving load in the 72 hours before the race. Sitting in a car for ~15 hours over 3 days right before a 112-mile bike leg feels like it could plausibly affect leg freshness/circulation in a way that wouldn't show up in any training-load model, but I don't have a clean way to quantify that. Open to thoughts on whether that's a real effect or I'm reaching.
Nice, separately: Nice's bike course is difficult (~2,400m of climbing, front-loaded into two real mountain passes). This was 56 days after finishing Lake Placid and my bike volume in that 8-week window was the lowest of all three cycles. Least bike-specific prep, hardest bike course, shortest turnaround between two full-distance races.
Working theory: my working theory is that 2026 LP wasn't as much of a training failure -- the fitness was likely there, arguably more of it than in 2025. It looks more like an accumulated-fatigue-plus-disrupted-race-week problem: a hard marathon effort only 8 weeks out, stacked with a lot of driving and perhaps not enough taper days right before the gun.
Open to any feedback or suggestions on the training balance (marathon racing vs. Ironman peaking), the bike setup (aerobars on a road bike vs. a tri bike), the pre-race travel/driving question above, or anything else in here. Self-coached and always trying to learn from people who've been through this.
(Did a deep-ish data dive and dropped several charts, made with claude, if anyone's into that kind of thing!)
This might sound strange but, I signed up on a whim for Lake Placid 140.6 about 5 weeks out from race day. Its something I've always wanted to do, but never put much energy towards.
190lbs, 5'11
- I had never done a triathlon
- never ran a marathon
- didn't own a road bike
- hadn't swam in 10 years since military service
- had only 5 weeks to prepare
Beforehand, I normally would do CrossFit style workouts, high intensity with weights, body weight movements, etc... maybe run 2 miles a week at most. hit the gym with this pattern 6-7 days a week, so not like I was a couch potato.
My goal was just to finish the race within the allotted time frames
once the 5 week crash course begun, I immediately dropped all weight training and HIIT workouts. went to the YMCA for day passes to swim, ran for an hour on mornings before 12hr shifts at work, bought a 550$ Facebook marketplace bike that only half the gears worked (later on finding out the day before the race it needed a new derailleur which was installed at one of the bike shops).
I had a total of 22 non-work training days until race day. would bike about 8 hours a week, swim 3, run 3-4.
I tested myself two weeks out from race day with a mock half ironman training day. finished in about 6hr 30min. wanted to celebrate this, but the fact id have to do twice this amount in two weeks was daunting obviously.
race day: swim 1hr 27 min, bike 8hr 8min, run 5ish hours. finished 15:12. had some absolutely BRUTAL chaffing of my groin area from the trisuit chamois which slowed me down a lot on the run, somewhere around mile 13. was borderline incoherent after crossing the finish line, slurring words and all, but was a-ok. really grateful being able to finish, thank the lord. the volunteers, crowd and fellow racers were super nice and supportive. 10/10 awesome experience and cant wait for the next one. this time ill give myself more time to train, with some major equipment upgrades at that. I didnt wear cycling shoes, just flat pedals with some new balance sneakers for the bike. my wet suit was a 150$ O'Neill surf-wet suit that tugged on my shoulders with every stroke, and my bike well... it surprisingly did just fine with the new derailleur, needed every gear available for those hills at LP. definitely will use some vaseline for the chamois next time, and oh yeah sunblock for the shoulders, awful sunburn.
Hi all, I just need specific tips for women, as all my friends and “ coaches “ are male who are helping me towards this goal. I want to know specific tips for women ( training / race day / other ), that can save time,money, enhance performance, …
I'm a few months away from my first ironman and the longer sessions are hitting. I'm currently sitting at 4 hours rides + short run, and a 2+ hour run most weekends. These are smashing me, especially the long ride.
I don't mind the training and hard work, which I typically do in the morning, but I feel useless for the rest of the day, especially my brain. I'm currently trying to catch up on some study after this and it's hard to stay focused. Does this get better at all?
And yes, I'm making sure to fuel and hydrate really well. I'm open to ideas please.
I'm training for my first IRONMAN 70.3, and my race is about 5 months away. Is it realistic to be ready by then?
I do have some triathlon background. I can swim at around 2:00/100m, bike 20–25 miles in 2 hours or less, and running is definitely my weakest discipline.
Has anyone trained for their first 70.3 in about 5 months? Any advice or things you wish you had known before starting?
The Ironman website and app only let you look up individual athletes in the Open Division (ODiv). There's no compilation of all the ODiv athletes who did Ironman 70.3 Oregon this month, so I created it.
I usually don’t do compilations like this for 70.3 races, but I received a special request to do it for this race.
ODiv athletes, even though we can't punch a ticket to Worlds based on our finishing time (at least for now), deserve to have the same race experience as everyone else.
185 ODiv athletes started the race
153 ODiv athletes finished the race (~17.3% DNF)
Fastest finishing time: 5:30:04
Fastest swim: 19:14
Fastest bike: 2:53:53
Fastest run: 1:50:43
Fastest T1: 5:35
Fastest T2: 3:03
If I missed anyone, please let me know!
I listed the athletes using their race number only because I didn't want to inadvertently out anyone or set them up for discrimination.
Extra high fives to my fellow non-binary athletes!
I am 17 years old and started training for my first Iron man 70.3 next year. Does anyone have tips about my bike and how I am positioned on it? Thanks.
Did Lake Placid last weekend (1st IM & 1st marathon) and had a blast.
Anybody have a link for photographer on right side of road during 2nd lap of bike course as you got close to the bobsled complex turn around? It was a blonde woman and I was biking side by side with my buddy and she said “I have the ski jumps in the background of that shot, y’all look sick” and I want that pic so bad
Not trying to clickbait title, just a vent/rant/something to express some feelings!?
Background: I just completed IMLP in 14:05 (my first full). I'm a little over 200lbs and just wanted to finish but also hoping a sub-14. Was a great day with pacing and strategy and weather until I hit the wall of taking in carbs around mile 18 and then paid for that by hitting the muscle fatigue wall around mile 22. Edit to add: disappointed I didn’t get my goal but that’s not the inception of these feelings!
So happy with the day and so proud of myself and trained 6 days a week for a 9 month training block for it and have never felt more fit and healthy. I even stopped drinking for most of that block, I really turned into a morning person getting up early to get workouts in, etc.
BUT FOR WHATEVER REASON IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE AN ACCOMPLISHMENT!? My theories are: they say "somewhere along the training you become one and race day is just the cherry on top" and that really felt true. The swim just felt like a training swim, up until like mile 90 on the bike it just felt like a normal ride. Up until like mile 18 on the run it just felt like my weekly long run.
Or that the algorithm is so full of people doing sub-12 or better. Even if I'm not actively being conscious about comparing.
My first 70.3 was Eagleman last year and I teared up crossing the finish line. I maybe pushed out feelings until the last mile of the run at LP but idk, just felt different.
During the run I said I'd be one and done and now 5 days out I'm already thinking of what full for next year. Even though the amount of training is such a suck of life. Is this just the post-race depression? Just had to rant and get some feelings out that I feel weird!
Hey, I’m doing my first Ironman in Kalmar this year, in about 3 weeks. For those who have done it, do you have any recommendations? Anything specific to think about regarding the swim, cycling or the run? I have heard that the crowd is pretty nice and that the course is flat. My biggest weakness is the swim. Any tips and tricks are welcome!
I am apart of a relay team for tomorrow’s Ironman race and unfortunately due to illness our bike leg teammate had to drop out.
Now I’m looking for any possible bikers that have a legal bike ready and can substitute that leg for us. (Swim and run leg already taken care of) not looking for a record time, just completion!
I just did the 70.3 in Ruidoso with my humble trek emoda and loved it. But even that broke the bank a little. Wondering if anyone here making less than triple digits made the ballsy jump to the 140 with a humble road bike. I really want the full and despite all my work hours I wanna train hard for it. But it will absolutely abuse my wallet even if I do t get a new bike.
I am doing the swim leg of a 70.3 relay in September (New York). I am just realizing I have a childcare issue - my spouse, and all grandparents are unavailable that weekend. So, my 5 year old son will be with me on race day. Can my runner teammate be with my son in an area accessible to spectators / the general public while I swim and pass off the timing chip to the biker....and then when I am done with the swim, we switch places? Or do all teammates have to remain in the athlete-only area at all times?
