By Mike Tarrolly, Co-host of the Crushing Iron Podcast
An athlete I coach, Bill, left a training peaks comment the other day about how he went out for an easy run with a guy much younger and faster. Bill just finished Ironman Wisconsin and he was planning on something easy. But this kid is training for a half marathon and his easy pace was 7:50 miles.
It would have been easy for Bill to cash it in, but he hung around and told me, “It must be nice to be young . . . it felt really good to be able to keep up!”
That got me thinking. It’s really easy to get caught in an Ironman “safe space.” Seems like that’s the way of the world and I know for a fact that it creeps into me as both an athlete and a coach.
I remember back when I started triathlon. I used to try and run with runners, bike with cyclists, and swim with swimmers as much as I could. But over time I drifted into my own world and got soft in the process. It’s easy to “think” you’re going hard and even easier to stop when no one is looking.
We always talk about how athletes usually go too easy on their hard days and too hard on their easy days. That usually ends up in the gray area where there isn’t a whole lot of benefit.
Why do we do this?
Because, even though no one is usually watching, we “think” they are because we post on Strava or other social media. We don’t feel comfortable putting slow paces up, and we definitely don’t want to put a failed workout to the world.
Personally, I have been spending a lot of time walk/running since Ironman. It feels good and doesn’t shell me too much. But after Bill told me that, I went out for a straight run with a negative split mentality.
I cruised for a while, then decided to make it hurt a little. I went deep inside, which is a place I haven’t often gone the last few years in training.
I don’t want to say it all clicked, but something did. I realized that I have to go harder if I want to be faster. I can keep telling myself that I will execute the perfect pace in Ironman, but we all need a little head room to cover our asses.
Back in the day I used to cruise around 8:30/mile, but this year I was more in the 9:30 range. Why on fucking earth do I think that is going to give me a better Ironman run? It won’t.
We need to test ourselves more often. Cruising along at the same effort all season will not get you to your Tri Calc expectations. The only way to get there is work harder and bust out of the safe space you’ve created.