How to pass the "suck threshold" in triathlon.

I read a great post on the Creating Passionate Users blog titled, “How to be an expert.” The first line of the post reads,

“The only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication.”

At first this quote kind of pushed my thinking in the wrong direction. Why? Because while I consider myself dedicated to triathlon, I don’t consider myself an expert. I especially don’t consider myself an “expert” athlete. So I got this feeling that they might be (indirectly) suggesting that I wasn’t dedicated enough. (We’ll look at how much dedication is needed later.)

Before I mention anything more about the article, go and look at the article yourself – at least look at the graph they lead off with. It is really interesting to see the three different paths or choices they offer on their time vs. ability graph. The choices are:

a. “give up” – but if you can get past the frustrastion you may be able to make it past the “suck threshold”

b. “I’m ok, so I’ll continue this way” – in which you remain an amateur as time passes on, never passing the “kicking ass threshold”

c. “push myself, because there is always a better way” – you may finally pass the “kicking ass threshold” and become an expert.

There were a few things that stood out to me about those who make the choice to continue working towards being an expert. Those people tend to do these things:

1. They find new ways to get better. There is always some way to get that little edge.

2. They work on their weaknesses, even if it isn’t fun.

3. They are willing to pay the cost, whatever that cost might be in order to not suck.

So what does it take to pass the “suck threshold” in triathlon?

This is a very good question that I ask myself on a daily basis. This winter I made the decision to focus on Ironman Wisconsin and move away from a running focus in the spring and triathlon focus in the summer. This decision has meant that I have been swimming a lot more than normal (I am actually swimming) and getting ready to bike a lot until April. So maybe I’m on my way to passing the suck threshold by working on my weaknesses, but what about passing the kicking ass threshold. What do I have to do to get close to moving in that direction?

In Ironman competition there is one accomplishment that can show that you are getting close to the kicking ass threshold – qualifying for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. So to find out exactly what this threshold is for Ironman Wisconsin, I went to triresults.com and used the “reports” feature to find this information: (for my age group, male, 25-29)

2006: sub 10:18:19
2005: sub 11:10:09 (the slowest time of any IMMOO year)

This is great information, but one of the characteristics of those that don’t suck was dedication. It is hard to extrapolate what amount of dedication someone has by seeing a finishing time. What if all those 25-29 year old males were just really gifted athletes?

A really good look at the amount of dedication a Kona qualifying athlete has was just presented by trigeek76 over on slowtwitch.com by conducting a survey of over 600 triathletes. You can check out the survey at http://www.triathlontrainingsurvey.net/results.html

In the second release of data interpretation he answers the question, “What will it take to get my Kona slot in ‘07?” You will have to fill out the survey to get all the data, but I’ll share a couple things that point out the amount of committment or dedication that might be involved:

1. You need to train more! The average training volume for a 25-29 year old male was approximately 800 annual hours. It was around 840 annual hours across all age groups. (As a comparison, last year I trained 378 hours… yikes!)

2. You need to be consistent! The training was consistent throughout the prior year, even during the off season they would have their volumes at 20-40% of peak volumes. At six months out, their volumes were at 60% (bike) to 80% (swim and run) of peak volume.

A few training ideas came from this data that shows what those-that-don’t-suck do for their training. The biggest one is that they have big bike volumes, especially within the 19 weeks leading up to the race. The second variable that correlated to race performance was run volume over the year. Even as these triathletes biked and ran a lot, guess what – they still swam! In other words, if you want to be a good triathlete that passes the suck threshold you need to bike a lot (especially the last 6 months), run a lot and don’t forget to swim regularly.

So you want to kick ass! You want to be an expert.

What does it take to get to this level. To be honest, it is so far beyond my reality of my personal athletic experience that it is hard to explain. So what I did was find a few resources that I keep an eye on to help illustrate it for you. Get ready this is going to get ugly!

1. Sergio Marques – Sergio finished 19th at this years World Championships, putting in the fastest run leg of the day. What did it take for him to get there? (Keep in mind this is one year, but…) He recently analyzed his 2006 year compared to his 2005 year. Here are some things to think about:

- He had 803 workouts and put in 1,300:14 hours over the year. (Almost 1,000 more hours than me!)

- Swim: 387:6 (n=291), Bike: 646:23 (n=267), Run: 266:30 (n=245)

2. Zach Ruble – another pro triathlete I looked up after watching his IMMOO performance. You can go and search through his 2006 season starting right after IMAZ and going to IMMOO by reading his blog: Zach’s Training Blog and he just started using workoutlog (yeah Zach) and sharing his log.

(Note: I think that Zach and Sergio are now coached by the same coach, which is new for Zach this season I beleive. If I read his blog correctly? They actually are using the same coach as our local pro Dave Kuendig.)

3. Epic camp discussion. One of the better discussions that I’ve heard discussing what it takes to not suck in triathlon was the recent podcast with Scott Molina and Gordo Byrn – Ironman Talk Podcast #40. Could I survive that kind of training? At this point in my develeopment I don’t think I could. What is amazing is that some (if not most this time around) of these guys are age-groupers!

4. What it takes. I have not seen this documentry yet, but if you are not into all the x’s and o’s that are provided in the links above, maybe you can purchase this video and get motivated to start breaking through that kicking ass threshold.

So what are you going to do?

It looks like you got a few choices to make – give
up, do the same ol’ same ol’ or push through and kick ass by becoming dedicated, working on your weaknesses, be consistent, find a new (better) way and then just pay your dues.

You know two of the coaches mentioned above have little “tag lines” that follow them around: “more is more” and “there is no easy way”…. I guess the first one might be right and the second one is just a reality we’ll have to face.