An Ultraman Training Day
The Origins of Big Day Training
I wrote this before my second trip to Ultraman. I’d won the year before and was trying to beat the course record on my return.
My return didn’t go as planned, I swam through a few jellyfish and my race ended with an ambulance ride to the local hospital.
The piece, written in November 2003, has been lightly edited.
“I talked to Scott Molina after he won here last year, and I realized that this really is a different event. A six-hour training day doesn’t prepare you for an eight-hour race. Only an eight-hour training day prepares you for that”
-- Mark Allen1, Triathlete Magazine, following his 1989 Ironman Hawaii victory
The quote above summarizes my favorite workout.
I like to call it simply, The Big Day.
Mid-November 2003
I woke up at 5am headed downstairs and chopped up five pieces of fruit while I made my coffee. I also cooked up some mixed-grain cereal for after my swim.
Once the coffee was ready, I added a cup on non-fat cottage cheese to my fruit and headed back to my bedroom/office. What I like to do first thing is clear my easy emails and answer questions on my forum2.
Around 6:20am I suited up in my bike kit, packed my second breakfast and rode easy to the pool. This ride takes anywhere from 20-30 minutes depending on the wind. It’s a nice start to the day and I arrive at the pool warmed up and ready to go3.
I’ll lay out the swim workout and then share a little story about how it went.
Warm Up
300 alt by 50 fr/bk
[2x] 150 pullbuoy, 50 kick, 2x50 (20 fly, 30 easy)
8 x 50, 20 fast, 30 easy – 20s were IM order, 30s were all free
Main Set
400 IM for time
400 easy, broken, mix of strokes
10x100 on 1:35, coming in on 1:29 down to 1:254
Cool Down
800 pads and buoy, easy to steady
100 easy swim
Total – 4,000 LCM5
After the warm-up I took a trip to the gents and then stood up on the blocks. When I was standing on the blocks, Roly shouted to me to wait while Glen ran to the office.
Glen and me, below.
The conversation went like this…
Glen – “OK Gordo, I’ve got two watches here, so I am going to get all your splits as well as your 50 times. Now we want you to swim this just like Dolan6 and that means negative splitting every 50. You’ve got a dive on that first 50 of fly so we’ll give you a little benefit for that but keep it smooth and relaxed. None of that Balboa stuff.”
Glen likes to joke that I have Rocky Balboa fly and has been known to yell “Adriaaaaaaaan” across the pool when I am running into a bit of difficulty – trying to dig a trench from one end to the other.
I line up on the blocks, relax and I’m off. The first 50 wasn’t too bad and I did my best to swim easy. Trouble is, with fly, I really only have one speed… survival. I hit the wall and pushed off a whole 1.5 meters before I needed a breath.
At 60m, I started to lock up and went to every cycle breathing. 40m is a long, long way when you are locking up and breathing every cycle.
With 25m to go it felt like I was standing vertically and flapping my wings like a chicken (a deeply anaerobic chicken).
At 20m to go, my vision was starting to get cloudy from the lactate and I dearly wanted to stop but there was no way I could with the watch going and my two coaches watching.
Somehow, I got to the wall but the last 10m had my whole body shaking and my stroke length about 40cm per cycle.
Touch… turn… and a moan so loud… I saw an entire lane of real swimmers look over to see what was happening.
I took my backstroke out in 57 because I was so blown – an open turn at the far end as I was too fried from the fly. Came home in 50 so that was better – Glen would say later that a seven second negative was more than he was looking for!
Breaststroke – well this used to be my secret weapon but not this morning – swam a 1:51 and even at that pace, my legs started to lock-up, again.
Free – the one piece of happy news – out in 45 and home on 40 – so even totally blown I was able to manage a reasonable leg here.
6:33 for the total – 1:30/1:42/1:51/1:25 – I’ll be back for a rematch7.
Glen’s quote – “Gordo, I reckon you got that 400IM licked, all we have to do is teach you how to swim fly, back and breaststroke. You know, you are the Dolan, when Dolan’s not around.”
Roly’s quote – “That Gordo, he ain’t a regular triathlete, he likes ALL strokes.”
My quote – “Sub-6 gentlemen. You guys have to help me get there.”
Above is Coach Roly - the man who taught me how to swim like a swimmer
The rest of the swim went well, about 1:15 all in, ate my second breakfast (mixed grain with beef, some Endurox, a banana and a coffee). Probably about 30-40 minutes of hanging around. I then hopped on my bike and headed out the ride The Gorges.
The Gorges is a favorite long ride in Christchurch, NZ. I think that the route I chose is ~150K round trip from my house – not really sure as I am back to training with just an HRM right now8.
What I like to achieve on my Big Days is five to six hours of cycling, after eating my post-swim meal. I like to digest while I ride, to train the capacity to process calories when moving.
Nearly all of this ride was done under my AeT9 – when I did this ride earlier in the week with Scott, I was above AeT for about half of the time. Today, whether it was fatigue or being solo, I wasn’t able to get my HR rolling10.
Nearly immediately, I was riding into a headwind, so I relaxed and got down on my aerobars. The weather was nice, but it was crapping out to the North, South and West. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I got drilled. Fortunately, the drilling only lasted for about an hour.
Out there on the road, I started thinking about this piece. Why do a training day that lasts seven to nine hours?
The biggest single reason is… “How the heck are you going to try to ‘race’ for nine to seventeen hours if you can’t regularly train for seven to nine?”
Racing long gets easier the faster you go. There is a huge difference between a nine-hour steady workout and even a ten-hour steady workout (eleven hours? far, far tougher).
Over the last two years, I’ve trained my ability to handle up to five Big Days in a week11. I think that gives me an edge over athletes that max out at six to seven hours. Why? Because seven-hours is where nearly everyone cracks. I don’t need to wonder what will happen at the six-, seven- or eight-hour marks – I go there all the time in training.
The athletes who don’t go long will tell you that the pace is too slow, that they don’t need to, that they needed to get their group ride in – that there is another way. Well, there is no easy way! The best way to train for a nine-hour aerobic time trial is to first get your body to the point where it can operate aerobically for nine hours, often.
So, when an athlete goes to that group ride (or Olympic Distance race, or gnarly Track Session) and takes the next day off/easy – I will have logged thirteen aerobic hours to their three to five. If I do my Big Day thirty weeks a year then I will have an extra 200-300 aerobic hours over that athlete.
Let’s step back from elite racing and consider this logic as it applies to a regular agegrouper.
If your anaerobic12 work, spontaneous tempo or hammer session means you lose, say, three hours per week of aerobic work then that’s about 120 hours over a 40-week training year.
If you are training 4-600 hours per year then that’s ~20% of your aerobic volume that just went out the door. Bear in mind, aerobic volume is the most-specific, most-important part of your endurance program.
Back to our story…
At about the four-hour mark, I got to the end of the Old West Coast Road, it’s a slight downhill all the way back to town. I do an ABS session here.
What’s an ABS session?
You put the bike in your largest gear ratio, and you can do “Anything But Shift” – you can stand, you can moan, you can consider the injustices of life and drafting in WTC racing – however – you can’t shift!
My last ride with Scott had a beautiful tailwind the whole way back to town – we were sitting above 40 kph nearly the whole way — heaven.
With that memory giving me a bit of a strange grin, I ground my way into a light headwind. Not as easy as last time and my cadence was waaaay low – which meant my HR was a lot lower. I still wondered a bit about just how tired I should make myself for Ultraman. How deep should I dig that hole?
My ABS set took about sixty minutes today – the first thirty minutes is reasonable but then it gets difficult.
Once that was done, I did some higher cadence work with make-the-light sprints to break up the ride through town.
Food consumed on the ride – four bananas, oaty slice thing (about 350 cals), 1L of cola, 2 bottles of sports drink, Thai Chicken sandwich and an apple.
Got home and had a recovery smoothie – banana, rice milk, whey powder, L-glutamine powder, creatine, chocolate, cinnamon. Then had some more mixed-grain cereal with onion, mushroom, veggies and diced chicken.
More email and net stuff – then a 50/50 run that’s 30 minutes of flat (easy pace), 15 minutes of climbing (steady pace) and 15 minutes of descending (easy pace).
The run rounded out my big day and I threw down a pint of OJ highly diluted with water.
Dinner was some beef with veggies, an apple. Later, I had some roast chicken and a half pint of OJ diluted.
It’s 10pm now and I’m off to bed.
How To Use Big Day Technique
Gradually, very gradually.
There’s no rush to get to the seven-to-nine-hour mark. It’s taken me a few years. However, know that this is one of the most valuable sessions you can use to prepare for the challenges of racing long.
Initially, it’s all about simply moving for a long period of time. As you adapt, you will be able to add more and more steady-state training. When you are a top AGer or elite, with excellent base, you’ll be able to handle inserting some tempo13.
Ultimately, it’s not a single mega session that creates a deep level of fitness – deep fitness is created by weeks, and seasons, of consistent smart training. By smart training, I mean consistently working to improve performance at AeT and whittling away at your limiters. That’s what generates long term performance gains.
Scott Molina Introduces A Tier One Week
At the start of the year, I asked Scott to show me a Tier One elite week. We laid it workout-by-workout. I added it up and it was 35 hours per week.
At the time the wheels would come off every time I went past 31 hours. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I was disappointed that I wasn't stacking up.
Four months ago, Scott told me that I was "there" in terms of doing what it would take. I didn't need to do more or go harder. I needed to repeat-as-desired and let my steady-state paces rise and rise. I didn't believe it at the time.
Lying in bed last night, feeling very good, I realized that I had backed up the Five Passes Tour14 with a 40-hour week then a 35-hour week. I'll lay down 30 hours this week, freshen and race Ultraman.
What does it take to be a Tier One Ironman Pro?
I think that it takes the ability to lay down 30 weeks of 35 hours or more15 -- that's the platform. Once you can do that, then to get to the sharpest end of the field, you need to have faith and execute week-after-week-after-week. Maybe not everybody does that kind of volume -- all the time -- but I bet if you review their history you'll see, somewhere, some serious aerobic development.
Everybody wants to believe there is another way, an easier way, I don't see it.16
Both Scott Molina and Mark Allen coached me as an elite. “Scott” in this piece is Scott Molina.
Before Web 2.0, we had to build our own social media. I had a chat forum where we’d discuss training, much like we do on Twitter today.
As an elite, I liked to ride, or run, to the pool as much as I could. All those easy miles added up across the course of a year.
Funny how the mind works, I remember training much faster than these paces. Our mind retains best-performances. It doesn’t seem to hold onto the standard swim paces we swam, in the middle of a big block.
LCM = long course meters, a 50-meter pool
Tom Dolan, greatest medley swimmer of the pre-Phelps era
My goal at the time was to get under 6-minutes for a 400 IM, I’d eventually get down to 5:48. I learned to swim at 30 and was 34 at the time.
In base training, I liked to cap stress using heart rate and not worry about the power I was producing. I should have kept this winter habit up later in my career.
Aerobic Threshold, the bottom of Zone 2 in a five-zone system. Aerobic Threshold sits in the Moderate Domain in a three-zone system (Moderate, Heavy, Severe).
As an elite, I did a lot of training tired. Heart rate suppression is a sign you’ve probably done enough and it’s time to absorb the work. More on that in a future post.
The capacity for 5 loading days a week. What we were missed back then was the back-to-back recovery days. We also didn’t make our “easy days” easy enough.
Now we call it the Severe Domain.
Friel Zone 3, Heavy Domain
A multi-day Gran Fondo around the South Island of New Zealand.
The volume requirement has not changed 2003 to 2022.
The work has remained the same. What has improved is the recovery, the timing of the loading and our ability to keep ourselves/our teams from going off a cliff due to excessive fatigue.