Can this be done? 5 hours to 3 hours in 2 years

What the mind believes, the body achieves.

You don't need to ask us.  If YOU think it is possible, then it is!

Good luck! 

Possible?  Sure. 

Not to burst your bubble but at IMFL, it will take a 9:20 in your age group and that *might* get a Kona slot.  That means running a 3:20 is just a start.  You bike will need a great deal of improving.  Going from 5:30 to 5:00 might be nearly as hard as dropping the time off your run.  Cutting 5 minutes off the swim is totally doable.  Go 1:00, 5:00, 3:20 and that is a 9:20 without transitions.  And still no guarantee that you will get a slot.  All this looks a whole lot easier on paper. 

There were several who benchmarked similiarly at IM CDA and were completely shut out of a Kona slot.  This sport has gotten faster.  With faster times, more Ironman races, slots are getting harder and harder to get. 

Spend some time (several months maybe) just focusing on running, training like a runner (bike and swim somewhat, but your focus should be on running)- this is probably best done during the winter.  Enter shorter stand-alone running races and also work towards qualifying for the Boston Marathon with whatever time you need for that.  If you can't qualify for Boston, then you're just not going to be able run fast enough in the IM marathon. 

Can it be done?- yes, absolutely especially since most do not run as fast as they can for their first IM marathon.  But it will take a lot of work and hopefully you are blessed with great endurance as a start.  And don't get caught up in any sort of deadline for this goal- many spend years training to put themselves in the position to qualify.  Consistency in training is going to be your best friend.

This is what I did over the winter, ran 40 to 50 miles a week with some peak weeks of ~70 miles outside snow, sun, rain, flooding you name it. Structured workouts with a focus on power (hills) and base building. I've now moved to working on speed and have been super happy with my speed increase and lower HR than last season. Not to mention lack of aches and pains, building a really good base does pay off. I've done a stand alone Marathon at 3:30 (hung over and without and specific Marathon training two years ago) and will do a couple later this season to see what my current race time is. I'm focusing on IMCOZ, so I have months to keep training and I've done IMs before. The IM Marathon is a whole different deal than a stand alone one. You'll need to really train and I'd focus on the bike too. Easy to go too hard on the bike, easy to mess up your nutrition and dig into your run time. Just remember if you went a bit slow on the bike, you have 26.2 miles to make up for it. I'll be super excited to see a 4hr something IMCOZ run time, extra excited if I just have a strong run the entire time.

I'd say if you can pull off a low 3hr Marathon and get faster on the bike you have things insight.

Ah the quest for Kona.  They say that us non genetically gifted folks can obtain it if we are diligent.  My journey, is to finish the first IM, hopefully one month from today and then we shall see what the next 5 years of training brings as far as gains in speed go.  Then it will be time for me to evaluate whether Kona is realistic or not.  You are at least 3 years ahead of me in my journey with your swim and bike speed.  

Be diligent and leave the rest up to what will be.  Triathlon is a lifestyle, winning medals or qualifying for Kona are just a bonus.  Few who do not do triathlon understand this.  Did you win?  How did you do? etc.  The answer to all, I trained my hardest and performed to my best on that day.  That is all and it is enough.

Edited by Baowolf 2009-07-01 11:15 PM

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If you aren't coming off the bike in 6 hours total at FL (swim, T1, bike time), forget about it ................ which means you better get used to be either being REALLY strong on the bike, or have a lot of experience riding in a pack.

To give you an idea of the sort of ability level you need to run a 3:20 IM marathon, you would need to be able to run around 3 flat or better in an open marathon.  And to run well off the bike you need to pace the rest of your effort accordingly (swim AND bike).

There is a guy here on BT (TH3 FRB) who put up a 9:3X at FL and a 10:05 at CDA and didn't get a slot.  The guy is a low 2:5X marathoner ...........

Don't give up the quest!!  But be realistic in your expectations.  It is a lot harder now than it used to be with the level of talent in the pool.

Edited by Daremo 2009-07-02 7:09 AM

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If you think IM training is more fun than anything, you're off to a good start   Others have alluded to this, but you MUST think of the triathlon as a whole. How fast/hard you go on the swim will affect your bike and run, and how fast/hard you go on the bike will affect your run. So, if you 5:30 bike resulted in a 5 hour marathon, you cannot look at reducing that bike time without taking into account what that's going to do to your run. Stick around long enough and you will see countless "bike was great, bonked on the run" threads. One of the things that you learn through practice and experience is to better manage the pace and effort in all 3 events to maximize the overall result.

So... you obviously have a lot of work to do on the run to build up your speed and endurance, and in concert with that you're going to need to push the bike up another level so that you can go faster and still have more energy in the tank. Set some goals to get you to that point, use some shorter races as checkpoints, and see where that journey takes you. Maybe you'll get to Kona, maybe it doesn't happen; but I bet you'll have a great time along the way and see some amazing results.

Adollar, Rick, and Fred are dead on regarding KQ at IMFL. You need a 1hr, 5hr or better, sub 3:30 run to be in the ballpark. At most other courses, 1/5/3:30 is usually the standard. You have good swim, good bike, and a very bad run right now. If you train smart and put in a lot of volume, your pacing across the board will improve. Getting "fast" at Ironman would come only afetr you get very good at s/b/r, say targeting a 1hr/5-5:15/3:30-3:45. THEN you can bring in the kind of intensity to get those down that last 10-15% to go for a KQ time. 2 years? Sure, why not, as long as you are comitted and love it!

I'm--literally--the last person on BT to ever suggest anyone hire a coach.

If you're serious about this, you need to hire a coach.

Thank you all for the advice. I will continue to train for the B2B IM in November and see what happens then.

My first thought on reading your post was that you went too hard on the bike and paid for it on the run.  However, after looking at your logs and run race times, it would seem that while you may have gone a little too hard on the bike, you ran fairly close to what what I would have predicted based on a well paced bike.

Based on that, I think you need to get in lots of miles running.  The first thing I would focus on is getting the miles up and getting your 10k into the 40 minute range; in order to do this you are going to have to spend lots of time on your feet and a good 10k program will not be that different from a marathon program.  After you get the 10k time down, I would focus on getting a half marathon under 1:30 and you should be close to where you could run a 3:30 off a well paced bike.

In addition, I would also spend a bunch of time in the pool; based on the fact that you swam a 1:05 and the amount of swim training you did; I would invest the time to swim with masters 3-5x/week over the next couple of years and you should be able to drop your swim time to under an hour (and maybe well under an hour).

Shane

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