Preface: This is N=1 data, not a scientific study, and reflects a custom training plan that evolved with the athlete as the season unfolded (no templates). So, what worked for this athlete below may not work the same way for everyone. That said, the themes, trends and ideas that come from this can be of great benefit to any athlete trying to balance performance and health—doing enough to improve in sport, but not too much to screw up health.


This “case study” is of a 41-year-old male Ironman athlete I coached in 2016 who wanted to better his Ironman Arizona (IMAZ) time from 2015 while becoming fat-adapted and healthier all around. It is possible to do it all—how you get there can get tricky though! He came to me with decent health but a horrible metabolism. He was a hardcore sugar burner, i.e. very carb dependent with very little ability to burn fat for fuel. He was holding onto more bodyweight than he wanted, and just not feeling good (diet of course was not that great either—I specifically remember one conversation early on about an indulgent night of pizza at his kid’s team event).

This is where my holistic mind goes to town: prescribing appropriate volume that wouldn’t throw him over the edge into overtraining since health and wellness were equally important to this athlete; making sure the mental approach is sound and food issues (orthorexia) don’t become an issue—it happens a lot with guys, not just girls. Plus this athlete is a devoted father and husband, and family time is incredibly important to him. Plus, he has a demanding full-time career that includes frequent domestic travel.

Below I share the stats from a year’s worth of training. The specific diet work we did is not included in this post, but in a nutshell it was nutrition periodization and here’s a basic glance at that since I’m sure you’re wondering:

  1. Work on developing fat-burning via a low-carb phase in the offseason and preseason; he’s generally healthy and we monitored him closely via health tests so we were safe going to some temporary “extremes” with LCHF tactics and even slipping into ketosis for a while. That set the tone to now oxidize fat optimally—it worked well and he was feeling fabulous.
  2. Then to avoid pitfalls of chronic LCHF while training, we added back in quality carbs strategically as training volume and/or intensity increased (he was reluctant to add carbs after the successful LCHF phase and how great he felt, but I assured him this was crucial and the carbs were a proactive way to save him from tanking).
  3. Combined, he became incredibly fat-adapted and stayed that way even with more carbs added in (Timing! Quality!), which paid off in drastically improving his aerobic efficiency and overall fitness (see more below on MAF data). In metabolic tests he was now burning a majority of fat up to a HR of 170 bpm; previously he pretty much had zero fat-burning capabilities and was burning mostly all carbs at HRs as low as 100-110bpm). Incredible what diet and motivation can do! (For the record he was incredibly self-motivated so I was not forcing or begging for any of this, just guiding the process—that is key.)

Workout Totals

Both training and racing included in numbers

 

Annual Volume

Total annual volume: 504 hrs

Biggest month: 55:32 hrs (Aug; ‘A’ race in Nov.)

Avg. weekly volume: 9:33 hrs

  • In-season avg. weekly hours: 10-13+
  • Consistently averaging more than 40hr/month Feb.-Oct.

 

Sport Breakdown

Bike

37.8%

2536 miles

189:58:48 hrs

 

Run*

30.5%

953 miles

153:31:46 hrs

*Included a short-lived mid-season injury with time off running

 

Swim

15%

251,843 yards

75:34:49 hrs

 

Strength

6.24%

31:23 hrs

 

Walk

4.76%

27.1 miles

23:55:53 hrs

 

Other

3.54%

17:49:29 hrs

 

XC-Ski

2.19%

11:00 hrs


Discussion

This athlete spent an insane amount of time at MAF heart rate (HR) ranges and our goal was to turn him into a fine-tuned aerobic machine—ideal for ultra endurance, which Ironman is. His MAF run tests went from 9:25 min/mile to 7:49 min/mile averages within 9 months. And cycling efficiency showed similar trends, with insane increases in power at his aerobic ranges that were not even possible going into his 2015 Ironman.

Please note that 504 annual hours is a lot but not that much for Ironman! Plus, his 504 hours also includes all racing and non-SBR crosstraining. I think the reason for his immense success on relatively limited volume was 100 percent due to his overall commitment to health and performance and in particular the other non-training areas that he worked so dang hard on (i.e. the holistic stuff): diet/nutrition, sleep, health monitoring, stress management, body maintenance, lifestyle, testing, etc.

My colleague Alan Couzens has his Kona qualifiers training 850 hours a year on average, meanwhile his non-qualifiers put in 496 hours a year on average. Alan and I discussed this on an Endurance Planet podcast. I know for fact that Alan also places a heavy emphasis on the holistic aspects of making a great athlete too; he’s not just trying to force volume and suck the life out of his athletes—heck no!

With this training plan, my athlete did end up improving his Ironman time by 1:30—that’s one hour and 30 minutes faster in one year! And who knows, it probably could have been faster but sadly, he dealt with severe (and mysterious) nutrition issues at IMAZ that we’re still trying to figure out (acid reflux, nausea). This had never happened in training or other races. The mysterious nutrition issues are worth their own post, as I have some theories and one relates to mental s-t-r-e-s-s potentially combined with pre-race foods that usually worked but on this day didn’t settle very well given the magnitude of the day, or, two, it could have been as simple as a race kit that was too tight restricting esophageal function.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, his health markers stayed on point. Sure, he had his tough weeks, and I even gave him a mid-season break when he was showing some red flags and in need of extra rest. Overall, he stayed healthy, vibrant, no HPA Axis dysfunction detected, HRV and sleep stayed normal, and of course he developed incredible metabolic efficiency (which we suspect saved him on race day since taking down calories ended up being problematic).