Ironman Journey - The Plan

To bring your dream into reality you need a plan. In the age of Internet any plan is just few keywords away, but that also brings the problem of “CONFUSION”. The more plans you see the more confused you will be. When I decided to do my first Ironman, I did the same, started crawling the Internet for Ironman plans and over the period of time I was exhausted, intimidated and more confused than ever.
To break this, one strategy that works is to find a plan which looks similar to your existing schedule or focuses on building the base and slowley progressing towards achieving your goal.

After going through numerous plans, I decided to go with this 32 weeks plan. The best part of the plan was it was quite balanced, has all the required components like cycling, swimming, running and strength training. It also has periodization covered, which includes Base, Build 1 & 2, Peak and Taper phases. Overall very well laid out plan.

Once I decided the plan, there was no looking back. I never questioned any part of it and stopped looking for other options.

The successful execution of the plan was definitely taking us closer to the success and we felt it after every session.

Sometimes you might need to de-tour from the plan for e.g., to participate in a race or some personal engagement, but the soon you come back the better it is.

In the end I’ll say once you zeroed down your plan, look no further, keep you head down and start working on it.

The best thing I did was taking a printout of the whole plan and I kept it with myself all the times, having a physical copy in the digital age is definely a cumbersome task, but do it. Once you touch and feel your plan, you will get the power and strength to execute it.

Dream it! Do it!

Cheers,
Ram

Ironman Journey in summary

On 12th November 2016, I alongwith my younger brother and a friend did our first full Ironman triathlon in Langkawi, Malaysia. In this post I would like to summarize our journey / points that helped us in becoming successful in one of the toughest single day event.

- Dream : Before you start you need to dream, breathe and live your Ironman journey. You need to set aside all the unnecessary tasks and plans and you should be ready to sacrifice some of your personal and professional time.

- Plan : Plan your journey. Internet is full of everything and all sort of plans but you need to filter out what suits you and go along with your schedule. Too easy and too hard might break your momentum so choose wisely. Avoid distractions, once you have chosen a plan, STICK TO IT!

- Execute : Execution is fun, coz you don’t need to do any further analysis, just follow the plan, do the required workouts on a given day. DON’T STOP TILL YOUR ARE DONE!. Sometimes you will derail from the plan due to presonal and professional commitments but get back as soon as possible. Don’t regret about yesterday, be positive and move forward.

- Obstacles / Show Stoppers: Find your obstacles and show stoppers as soon as possible. Work on it, find ways to get over it. We realized that taking the tyre out and putting it back was taking long time in case of flat, so we practiced it over and over. Researched on it and found new ways to fix the issue. Uncovering show stoppers builds resilency in your plan and execution.

- Train like a Commando: Ironman training is similar to that of commando training, you need to be yourself all the times. If something goes wrong, don’t expect others to help, HELP YOURSELF! Build a commando attitude!

- Race : On the race day think of it like another long practice session. Execute it the way you have done it in your practice sessions, DON’T TRY ANYTHING NEW!, but be ADAPTIVE to change. While racing we faced heavy rains in our cycling course, instead of thinking about it we quickly adapted and enjoyed it.

- Soak In : Once your race is over, you might not realize that you have achieved your Dream by flawless Execution overcoming Obstacles and finished the Race, so give yourself time to Soak In to the newly transformed YOU!

- Life Lessons : Try to find our life lessons from your journey and make it a part of your routine life. Whether it’s working independently, commitment, dedication or overcoming obstacles or adapting to change. I realized that I need to work independently, work on the areas which are slowing me down and be more focused.

In the end I realized that Ironman is not just a race it’s a transformational journey for an individual.