I sent this message to another forum as well as many of them visit my website. I thought I would submit it to tri fuel as well as I often get emails from visitors to my site asking about how to prepare for and race the Ironman swim.

This is directed toward the age-grouper like myself who just wants to basically "survive" the day and have their best possible showing in the process. This is not really meant for the pros who have an entirely different agenda and train at a much different level than most age-group triathletes.

I have never been one to shy away from controversy when it comes to discussing the Ironman. After all, we all learn something by taking the time to listen to what other people have to say before being too critical. Telling people what they want to hear is not necessarily helping them. Telling them something them may have never considered might change the face of their Ironman experience and may help them immeasurably.

I'm sure there are many here who believe the success of their Ironman marathon depends on any number of factors. For instance, how much run training they did over the year. Their over-all experience with marathons in general. What they eat and drink during the run. What they eat and drink during the bike. How fast they do the bike. How much work they have done on the bike-run transition over the course of their training. The temperature. The tides, and whether or not Jupiter collides with Mars the eve of the Ironman....

Yet few Ironmen.......pro, age-grouper, first-timer, or ten-timer, will ever believe as I do that there is a direct correlation between the way you plan and manage your Ironman swim and the Ironman shuffle.

To me one of the key components of having a successful Ironman Marathon is to have a well-planned and well thought-out swim strategy.

For instance, how many of you plug away in the pool 5 or 6 days a week, join the master's swim club, pay for expensive coaching, and swim thousands and thousands of pool laps over the course of a training year so you can shave 5 minutes off your Ironman swim time? Then you proceed to blast your way through that swim and do indeed swim 5 or 6 minutes faster with your all-out, pedal to the metal swim. Great! Those hours and hours of swim training really paid off!

At least until you got to about the ten-mile mark of the marathon and started walking. When you finally crossed the finish line, you realize that your run took about 60-90 minutes longer than it should have. Welcome to the Ironman shuffle! What actually happened, is that you bonked, hit the wall, or ran out of gas. Call it what you like. What really took place is that most likely you mis-managed your energy reserves from the moment the gun went off some 12 or 13 or 14 or whatever, hours earlier.

The minute you hit the water and pushed yourself to the limit, fought through the crowd, elevated your heart-rate, got pissed off, got frustrated, lost your rhythm, lost your sense of direction, or just simply lost your head, you most likely set yourself up for a real bad marathon experience.

It took me years to figure out the proper race-swim strategy. I did pretty well everything wrong for years that I just mentioned above, including training my ass off for an entire training season of 10 months so I could swim a few minutes faster only to end up walking most of the marathon.

Do the math. You can finish the swim 5 or 10 minutes faster and then do the marathon an hour slower.

Why not spend 3-one hour sessions in the pool during the training year just to maintain your level of swimming without worrying about how fast you finish the Ironman swim? Why not concern yourself with HOW you get to the other end of the pool and not "how fast?" Forget the swimming day after day, and hour after hour just to save a few minutes and use that extra training time to work on your bike or run or even take an extra rest day. As long as you can handle the Ironman swim distance comfortably and with confidence, you are good to go.

And then come race day, do the swim 10 minutes slower and the marathon an hour faster. Hmmmmm

Are you with me so far??

The energy you lose during a screwed-up swim is unrecoverable during the course of the day. It is gone, lost, awol, taken a hike, and disappeared into a big, black pit never to be seen again.

Find the right path, the correct line to follow when the gun goes off for the swim. Don't think for a minute that it is an integral and necessary part of the Ironman that you get yourself beat to a pulp in a swirling mass of testosterone-charged, tapered to a fine edge, pumped to the eyeballs, thrashing whirlpool of hundreds of wildly flailing arms and legs.

All you will do is suffer from anxiety, apprehension, fear, anger, and self-doubt.

In a nutshell, you will increase your heart-rate way past acceptable norms, especially so early in the race. Most likely you will survive the swim and leave the water with your heart pounding pretty well through your chest. As soon as your heart-rate elevates, you begin to burn excessive energy. Valuable energy that you will need hours later out on the Ironman Highway. For many, their heart-rate is elevated unnecessarily high for the "entire duration" of the swim. Remember, this is a "huge" energy drain that is totally unrecoverable.

Just to swim a few minutes faster....

Then you will RUN through the transition area so you can hurry to get on that bike. Still, your poor heart has not stopped pounding. The energy has not stopped draining from your body like a leaky faucet.

I believe the secret to a successful Ironman begins with a well-planned out swim. Stay out of trouble, maintain your rhythm, keep your cool, stay relaxed, maintain a loooong, smooooth, constant stroke that you worked on during your much reduced, more relaxed, swim workouts. By doing all this, you will keep your heart-rate under control and use a minimum of energy in the swim.

Think of it as a long training swim.......

When you enter the swim-bike transition, try and avoid running. It really does little good for you in the grand scheme of things. You had a controlled swim, and now have a controlled transition. Take it easy for first 20-25 minutes out on the bike course. Let your body adjust to the change in demands. Let your blood flow adjust from your body being horizontal to being vertical. Start eating and drinking from that point on and not the second you leave the water. Then start the timer on your watch that you have hopefully set to beep every 20 minutes or so from that point on. That's to remind you to drink in a consistent time-frame so you have a constant intake of fluid. Every time it beeps, drink. Every other time it beeps, eat and drink. After several years of multiple IV's at the finish line med tent, I finally figured out that it's not actually "how much" you drink when you do drink that's as important as keeping a consistent hydration level through out the course of your Ironman day. It seems to make more sense to me to drink smaller amounts consistently then to drink a water bottle at a time sporadically.

So far, everything you have done to this point has kept your heart-rate in balance and conserved as much energy for you as possible. Energy that I can guarantee you will need when you get off that bike and begin the marathon.

And just remember, every single person you pass in the marathon, swam faster than you, or biked faster than you, or had faster transitions than you, or perhaps were faster in everything, but YOU are passing THEM.

So big deal if they swam even 30 minutes faster than you. If they are into the Ironman shuffle at mile 10 when you pass them with your nicely controlled, steady run pace and you STILL have energy left they most likely burned off in their swim, there is a very good chance that you will cross the finish line an hour or more ahead of them.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Personally, I'm not a pro or a coach. I competed as an age-grouper just as most of you will. I had some terrible races. Races where I slogged through that marathon in 5 incredibly hard hours. Mostly because, like many of you, I didn't know any different.

Then I had the day when all the stars aligned and all the lessons I learned came into play and I had an Ironman Marathon time of 3:34. I was in my forties at the time. I had an easy, slow swim time of 1:20. I think 1200 people beat me out of the water that day. I also think I passed most of them in the marathon, but I stopped counting at 500 and crossed the finish line in 10:46 that day.

I'm sorry I dragged this post on so long. But I was hoping in some way to give something back to the tri fuel forum because many of you have been kind enough to visit my website and trust my input enough to email me with questions. I don't think there is a greater reward than being able to help others become more. To help them experience the euphoria of facing a huge challenge, and prevailing.

So thank you!!

My name is Ray and I am the creator of Ironstruck.ca and author of "Ironstruck....The Ironman Triathon Journey"

This is not a plug for my site or my book as I already get 1000's of visitors from over 50 countries every month to Ironstruck.ca, and my book is already doing well on a world level on it's own and at it's plodding pace as a self-published book will eventually be a best-seller.

I hope some of you will drop by for a visit. "Ironstruck" is, and always has been, and always will be, free for the triathletes of the world.

When I first created it several years ago, I had a mandate that I would answer every single email that came to me through my site contact page. Even though I receive questions from all over the world, from Iceland to South Africa, I have stuck to that.

Just keep in mind that I'm not a pro and not a coach. My opinions and thoughts were born somewhere out on the Ironman Highway over the past 25 years and not in a College or University. So take what you want from what I have to offer and discard the rest.

Best of Luck to all of you.....

Train Safe and Godspeed,
Ironstruck Ray