Over the years, I have tried to learn as fast as possible what it takes to get to the top while working a normal day and dealing with normal stress like the amateur guy I am. I want to race among the middle pro’s and beat all the other guys with jobs. So what does it take? How do you get there?

Study:
Go out and read what the best guys are doing. Doc Gowans taught me how to do that – that man absorbed more knowledge on Ironman racing in the time he was a serious age grouper than most of you will in your lifetime and it worked. I learned so much from him and read all the books he read, all the forums and websites. Be studious… like the 8th dwarf.

1. Consistency:
Doing the work every day. I have found that my body and my mind work best with an average of two hours of training per day. I make sure my workout time is treated as high priority for every day, twice a day in heavy load periods. Essentially, its a meeting with yourself to better yourself. Make sure you arrive on time.

2. Be a Geek:
Work on your aero position, your running form, your swim style. Try different shoes, saddles, socks, creams and eye wear. Make sure you have what works best for you. The most expensive might not be the best for your riding style, your foot strike or your body type. Make sure you are geeky about saving seconds. When you add all those seconds up, over the years, it becomes more than just a few minutes.

3. Recovery:
If you analyze your hours in a day, a very small percentage is for actual training. Your primary focus should be on what you can do to recover stronger, better and faster. Eat like it’s your job. Sleep like it is your religion and find the little things that give you an edge on recovery: hot tub, ART, massage, compression, ice baths, mongolian rugby midgets running back and forth over your quads, etc.

4. Eat like a Champion:
When I look at the diets of the guys and girls around me at races, those at the front are eating for their wins. They cut out the processed stuff when it counts and sure, they indulge, but not like you do. Real food only: veggies, nuts, meats, etc. James Cunnama taught me to never take my body to depletion and this especially counts with what you eat. You are what you eat. Your body is your vehicle, feed it the best quality fuel.

5. Compromise a little each day for gains in the long run:
Could you add 30min a day and keep your weekend rides to 5 hours instead of 7, risking injury and illness? I try and forgo a bit of time every day to not have to ride ALL day on the weekend and run for 3h30, risking injury. Find the biggest volume you can do in the week and reduce the weekend “cramming of miles” as a starting point.

6. Hire the best:
Buy your idol a beer and pick his mind. Find a professor in applied movement online in a forum and hound them for the right answers. Having a training plan from a guy is great but you will need to do more than that. I make the effort to hang with the pro guys because I learn from them far more than they will allude to. I am not a threat to them and neither are you. They are the pinnacle. When it comes to a coach, choose someone who works within these 7 habits.

7. Push that envelope:
From time to time, you need to throw it all out the window and go big. I prefer bike camps, as they limit the risk of injury, but you need to go way beyond for a week to get through the ordeal. We learn from ordeal because our central governor is broken and keeps us in the comfort zone. Get out that comfort zone and push that envelope. DO IT, but in limited quantities that leave you exhausted but not depleted, fatigued but not injured.

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Super simple, right?

Often we get asked to say who our favorite racers, triathletes, cyclists are. As the boyish banter associates itself proudly to a Real Beer we are often caught up to try and prove a point, try and say why these 5 people changed the sport, changed the rules. My favorites are always the cowboys, those who break the rules and run solo. Those who go so far that they implode so beautifully at times that their competitors can’t help but love them too, slightly envious of their ability to go beyond.

There are a few characteristics out there for me, which make you a hero, to me.

1. Workload – those who put in the workload to get the success are heroes. Some guys and girls simply have to work harder to get to the top. Classic examples for me are Peter Reid, Craig Alexander and Lance Armstrong. Yes, Armstrong.

2. Ingenuity – there are riders, runners and tacticians out there who have to pull every wily foxy move to get the win. I love that they are able to calculate and recalculate on an ongoing basis, playing out every option and outcome in their minds as they are going full tilt. I salute guys like Macca, like Thomas Voeckler, who sometimes win against all odds, even when they are stacked against possibly better competitors.

3. Badgers – love these guys. They attack and fight until you are in the corner. They will never give up. Never. Especially when the chips are down. Pantani, Dave Scott, Conrad Stoltz and James Cunnama come to mind. If you relent your attention for a second, they will be up the road, attacking again.

Make a list of your top 5 Ironman, Cycling or even Business guys and write down the traits you like in them. Possibly these are things you wished you had more of yourself. Stick it up somewhere. Remember that you value their contribution to your world. Emulate their best, so be better than you currently are.

After a few weeks of successful racing I headed up to WP Trials on Friday last week with a bit of hesitance, as I was nursing an upper respiratory tract infection, commonly known as a Stuffy Head. I did not feel great and was going up to see how I went, but not to kill myself. My plan was to work hard in the swim and bike, and coast the run with a hopeful lead.

I knew some of the faster guys were not coming up and this gave me a bit of hope for the day as well.

We lined up on Saturday morning with the usual smack talk and chatter and I got a good spot on the swim line and before we knew it, we were off on our 2 laps. I hung with swim rabbit Emslie for about 300m and then backed off once I saw we had a gap on the group. I merely wanted to limit loss to Emslie but still build a bit of a break to the chasing pack before the bike got going.

My new Orca Alpha suit, boys and girls, is the shiznitz. It felt really amazing in the water, with less restriction on the arms than I have ever felt. I swim with quite straight arms, and the suit didn’t inhibit that for one second. Kudos to Orca, I think first 4 out the water were all in Orca suits.

Onto the bike, and the mission was to sit up till about 5km, then hammer till 30km, then spin into T2. Mission was on the way when at about 5km I passed young Emslie on the bike and motored by, riding hard (there may have been a bit of white foam on the mouth at this point), checking my Suunto to make sure I was keeping it above 170. At 10km, I had 75sec on 2nd place, at 20km, it was 120sec. On leg 3 I thought I heard a puncture and nearly platzed myself, but the faint noise wouldn’t go, even if the tire was staying hard.

At 30km I still had 120sec over Harold chasing, with a foxy Brendan Lowen on his ass like a fly to a vrot carcass in the sun. I could see they were catching as Harold murders the bike, his freakishly sized calves not being supportive for his running agendas. I was pumped full of Whaspgel by this stage and was ready to spin/hammer home, but I felt as if I was riding with someone holding onto my shirt.

The last leg was murder and I couldn’t understand why it seemed so much harder (inspection after the race revealed that the brakes had locked onto my rear wheel a little and it was tough to spin the wheel – hence the extra effort and loss of time in the last 20km) but kept spinning as I wanted to have semi-fresh legs for the run, whereas I knew the two behind were going to hammer all the way into T2.

The official gap was around 30sec into T2, but I set out running lightly up the hill, but not murdering myself. My Puma racers were perfect for the day, no socks, light, no blisters, and YELLOW!

All our flat running was about to pay off. I buried the downhills and the flats, going deep into GP circuits for inspiration. The lead went up to 1:30 by the end of lap 1, 2:30 by the end of lap 2 so that I had the time and space to chill on lap 3 heading home for a well deserved win, sinus and rubbing wheels couldn’t stop me today.

As I came into the finishline I knew that the sickness, the strange bike feeling and the new, much harder run route would add to around 5minutes of extra time, so to come in just over 2 hours was a happy achievement, and proof that these damn ME workouts have paid off, that the calorie counting has paid off, and that a new attitude is paying off.

Thanks to all my sponsors, you make it so much easier. Puma, Orca, Whasp, Suunto, Rockets (worn in the car on the way home for no sore legs the next day), Jack Black Beer (official recovery fuel).

all images credited to Tess

you guys might remember this guy.

He was in a sprint finish with another one of the worlds best athletes over the weekend, in a half Ironman. For the un-ironman people out there, thats a 1.9km swim, followed by a 90km bike ride, and to finish the event off (its continuous) a 21.2km run.

Its almost flat out the whole way, and in this race, it ended up in a sprint finish. Click the link to check out the rest of the pictures. they are beautiful.