Subject: RE: Is one year enough to train for a half ironman? Originally posted by amerimanyo Hello everyone. I want to participate in the Santa Cruz 70.5 in 2016. I have just started training again, ...Is 14 months enough time to complete this journey? thanks! I took 10 months off after doing an Ultra Ragnar Relay the fall of 2013. Then I did an 8 week training for a 5K race the fall of 2014 (the 5K was rough). Then I did an 8 week training for a 1/2 Marathon (by then I was starting to feel some fitness coming back). Then I did 4 weeks of research into Triathlon options before staring an 8 week triathlon base cycle followed by another 8 weeks of triathlon peak/tapper before I did my 70.3 Triathlon. I was well prepared and ready on race day. I didn't have to lose weight though. I started at 178 lbs at the beginning of the 5K training and 9 month later was 170 lbs. on race day for my Half Iron Triathlon. One of my cousins that was on my Ultra Ragnar Relay team in 2013 lost a significant amount of weight. He lost over 100 lbs in 2012-2013. He was racing the whole way through his transformation doing marathons, half marathons, ultra marathons, relays, etc. His journey took a lot longer to complete than mine. I was feeling pretty fit after about 4 months of training and he took about 2 years to get to the same point. Endurance sports typically take you three years to peak. You don't wait for 3 years to start competing though. You start doing events after 3-6 months and enjoy the fact that you can improve every race for the first 2-1/2 years. If your goal in to be fit enough to enjoy the race and finish then you can defiantly accomplish that in your time frame. My cousin proved to me that people can do anything that they set their mind to. The human body can do a lot more people that most people think, so the limiting factor really is our own level of determination. |