Yep, doing an Ironman is crazy difficult. But, really, the training is where it's at. In your original post, you asked about training. So, I'll give you a little insight into what I did.
First of all, I didn't have a swimming or biking background. Did a little track and cross country in high school (over 20 years ago), but wasn't fast at all. I had started running again in my mid-30s and over a couple years worked my way from local 5ks races to the Houston Marathon. While training for Houston, I started looking into triathlons. I used to watch the Hawaii Ironman on Wide World of Sports in the early 80s and always thought that would be something interesting to do.
I spent hours and hours online researching and reading triathlon forums. 95% of everything I learned about the sport came from these two sites:
Kickrunners is a very friendly, great bunch of people who are always eager to answer any questions a newbie triathlete would have. I've had the pleasure to meet and race with several of them. We have a close online group of people from all over the country, much like what y'all have here on the Glade.
http://www.kickrunners.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=46Slowtwitch is the largest triathlon site. Thousands of triathletes from Pros to top age groupers to newbies post there. Not quite as close or friendly as Kickrunners, but anything you want to know about the sport can be found there.
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?forum=1As far as training, I used a coach that I met through Kickrunners. After my first tri, I wanted to do a Half Ironman which was 6 months later and he helped me train and have a successful race. He then helped me train for and complete my first Ironman which was a year later at Panama City Beach, Fl. in Nov, 2008.
For Ironman, he started me on a 5 month plan, training everyday. Each week consisted of 3 swim workouts in the pool (M,W,F), one bike trainer workout with a short run after (Tue), one run workout of shorter distances and/or intervals (Thur). Saturdays was the long bike ride with run afterwards (which is called a "brick" run) and Sundays was the long run.
Swims included all kinds of drills and intervals and eventually got to where I was doing up to 3500 meters total for each workout.
Bike trainer also included drills and intervals that would kick my azz and got to where some of them were 90 minutes long.
Saturday bike rides went from 90 minutes at the start of training and increased each week, with a shorter ride every third week. Some ride were 5 to 6 hours with one 6 1/2 hour ride at peak training. My longest rides were a couple of 112 milers, a couple 115-120 milers, and one 126 miler. All of them with brick runs of 30 to 60 minutes after.
Thursday runs were about 60 minutes, and was usually a tempo run or maybe some intervals. Sunday long runs started around 6 miles and worked up to a 17 miler and a 20 miler.
The training would get rough sometimes. There were some long bikes were I was ready to just quit. The only problem was that I was 30-40 miles from home and the only way to get back was keep riding or call my wife. And I couldn't bring myself to call her, so I just kept going. The swim workouts would get very boring. Many times I'd be the last person in the pool just before it closed for the night. Many Saturdays I'd leave the house at daybreak, before the wife and kids were up, and wouldn't get finished til after noon, then I'd sleep for a couple hours. I never moved my yard, I paid someone to do it.
My wife was very supportive during the whole thing. I couldn't have done it without her patience and understanding.
But it was all worth it. Race day was an awesome experience. I was well prepared and had a great race. And there is nothing like running down the finish chute, hundreds of people cheering for you, your name and picture on the big screen and the announcer calling your name as you cross the line and declaring, "You are an Ironman!"
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