Ironman vs. 100 (Part 2)

In our last episode, we discussed the training necessary to prepare for an ironman-distance triathlon in relation to a 100-mile ultramarathon. We compared triathlon to rock music, and ultrarunning to reggae. There was also a picture that generated some discussion, but that’s neither here nor there.

So today we’ll talk about the reason for all of that training: race day. In musical terms, think of it as the day your favorite band comes to town to play in concert. Whether you go to several concerts a year, or only attend on rare occasions, the concert is almost guaranteed to be memorable, and will hopefully justify your being a fan for all that time beforehand.

In high school and college, I frequented a lot of concerts. The best rock shows were typically held in smaller venues, where people cram like sardines while screaming and yelling and otherwise acting like complete lunatics, with loud music and darklights and pyrotechnic displays completely overwhelming your senses, when everybody feeds off the energy of everybody else until you start doing things that you never dreamed you’d allow yourself to do in public.

(and, um … before I incriminate myself further, I’d better stop there. Let’s just say that sometimes things got crazy.)

By contrast, the best reggae shows were usually long, slow-paced, mellow affairs. They often took place at large fairgrounds and had names like “Sunsplash” or “Reggaefest”, with several bands playing throughout the day, while people got themselves baked - both on ganja and by soaking up the warm sun. Most attendees were just looking to chill out for a while, taking in all the sights and sounds, with their primary goal simply to make it to the end of the day without ending up in an ambulance.

Short and intense versus long and mellow: does any of that sound familiar? With that in mind, let’s continue our comparison.

RACING

1. Time investment

This is the category where ironman devotees might feel like they’re being kicked in the teeth. After all, one of the reasons the ironman is so compelling is the huge intimidation factor involved with doing an activity that takes the better part of a day and night.

The duration of the ironman-distance race, and the corresponding length of training sessions needed to complete it, is frequently the greatest source of pride (and in more than a few cases, arrogance) when Ironman racers compare themselves to cyclists and runners and shorter-distance triathletes. At Kona, at least one vendor sold shirts saying “You ran a marathon? That’s cute.” Clearly, the duration of the event is the distinction upon which Ironmen and women stake their image and reputation.

And make no mistake, the Ironman is a long event. While the pros typically finish in 9 or 10 hours, most age-groupers are on the course for several hours afterward, fighting their bodies’ overwhelming instincts to cease and desist. As night falls, many athletes are still on the course, trying to beat a certain goal time, or as a last resort, the 17-hour milestone that denotes the end of the event.

Sure, that’s pretty daunting … but at 100-mile races, do you know what they call the 17-hour mark? The 50-mile cutoff.

Almost every single person who lines up at the start line of an ultra knows that he or she is going to pull an all-nighter (and in some insane cases, two) simply to finish the event. Some races see a handful of finishers under 20 hours, but even world-class ultrarunners typically need at least 16 or 17 hours to cover 100 miles. Races with relatively flat profiles generally set a finish cutoff of 30 hours, but more challenging races have cutoffs in excess of 40 hours. In that context, the question of which event is a greater test of endurance is a no-brainer: it’s ultras, hands down.

(I know that the instinctive reaction of IM folks is to say “but if you’re out there that long, you can’t really be racing.” As hard as it is to believe, some ultrarunners actually do straight-up race each other for 20 or more hours at a time. From my experience, the percentages are very similar in the two sports: a select number - probably less than 10% - of athletes are truly competing [responding to an opponent’s move, using surges at strategic times, etc] for overall or age-group spots, while the vast majority are just trying to reach the finish as quickly as possible on their own terms. You can’t use arguments like temperature extremes [e.g. Kona] or difficulty of terrain, either, because there are 100-mile races in all of those conditions, too. Sorry, Ironpeople. On the bright side, nobody is selling “You did an Ironman? That’s cute.” shirts yet - at least, not as far as I know.)

So this sounds like a big victory for ultrarunning, right? Not so fast. Remember, in Part 1, I awarded points based on which sport was a more practical endeavor for regular working schlubs to accomplish. Since the Ironman is a shorter event, that makes it more easily attainable – therefore the point for this round is awarded to triathlon. (That’s Ultra 3, IM 2, if you’re keeping track so far.)


2. Degree of difficulty

This is basically a recycled argument from what I said in Part 1 about the difficulty of training: for many triathletes, there’s one segment that comes less easily than the others, but you can’t avoid dealing with it on race day. For example, it seems like many triathletes dread the swim portion of the IM, even though it’s a disproportionately small percentage of the overall race in terms of duration. It makes sense, though - if you hate swimming, or you’re really slow or inefficient or prone to panic in the open water, the prospect of spending 90 minutes or more on that segment would pose an enormous challenge.

Triathlon also has the potential for mechanical issues on the bike, ranging in severity from minor annoyances to catastrophic problems that necessitate withdrawal from the race. This obviously varies with each person based both on the quality of his bike and his familiarity with making mechanical adjustments. And the pros aren't imune to this problem – as defending champion Chris McCormack can tell you after bike problems sabotaged his race at Kona this month.

By comparison, ultrarunning is pretty tame stuff; as we established earlier, people don’t get into this sport unless they really love trail running. And since we generally don’t have to worry about the soles of our shoes tearing loose, equipment malfunctions are pretty low on our list of worries. Score another point for ultrarunning.


3. Enjoyment

For most folks, this is the primary reason we get into the sport: to enjoy ourselves and have fun. (Healthy living and looking good in a swimsuit are a close second and third. Eating ice cream is probably on that list, too – but I’m getting off the subject.)

Think again of the rock concert/reggaefest analogy that introduced this post. This is one of those questions about which reasonable minds may differ: what type of experience do you prefer? Do you favor the rush of high-intensity, borderline dangerous experiences, or the Zen-like satisfaction of introspection and enlightenment?

I can honestly say that in my ultrarunning experience, I haven’t found anything nearly as exhilarating as bombing downhill on a bike at 45 mph, or getting thrashed in the washing machine at the start of the swim segment, or the panic of transitioning from swim to bike as quickly as possible without making some crucial error than will ruin the rest of your day. In many ways, those are the experiences I live for – even more so than the self-awareness of ultrarunning - so I’m scoring this round in favor of the Ironman; but feel free to overrule this one if you’re keeping score at home.

4. Injury potential

Here’s an experiment for you: ask anyone who’s finished a 100-miler to tell you about their race, then click your stopwatch. I’ll be shocked if you make it 30 seconds before the runner starts describing some kind of injury or another that impacted his or her race performance, and caused lasting problems for weeks or months afterward.

There are several reasons why a 100-miler grinds your body down much worse than an IM. First, as we’ve established, you’re out there for twice as long. Since you’re only doing one activity, the potential for developing soft tissue (muscle, tendon, ligament) injury or other crippling situations such as blistering or chafing is magnified significantly. Medical conditions are both more common and more threatening in 100-mile races than any other event (I’ve written a whole article about this), and the task itself becomes more dangerous as the miles grow longer.

If you’ve done an Ironman, think of the injury risk this way: imagine that your bike segment ended at midnight, and you still had to run your marathon completely in the dark, when your body would normally be sleeping. Now imagine that your run course still has several thousand feet of elevation change, and that it’s exclusively on narrow, rocky, root-strewn trails where slipping could blow out your knee or send you down a steep embankment. Those last 26.2 of the ironman seem pretty tame by comparison – and that’s why 100-milers are the more hazardous event.

But remember, points are awarded here for the relative ease of entry to the sport in question – so in the category, score another point for the Ironman. (And I’m one step closer to thinking those “Ironman? That's Cute.” shirts aren’t such a bad idea.)


Have you noticed that the score is all tied up? Which is fitting, because both the Ironman and 100-milers inspire the highest degree of competition imaginable. If only there were some completely subjective, idiotically intangible criteria by which I could declare a final winner …

(You can probably guess where this is headed … )

5. Sexiness

Remember the picture of Desiree Ficker from yesterday’s post? Of course you do. The crazy part is, that took me about 0.14 seconds to find in a basic image search. And I didn’t have to pick Desiree – I could have just as easily gone with her or her or her. (Or, in the interest of fairness to the ladies, him or him or him.)

Clearly, triathlon is a sport that’s just bursting at the seams with sex appeal. There’s something about seeing hot athletes wearing hot outfits using hot gear that’s unquestionably, … what’s the word I’m looking for? … hot. And while the men and women of ultrarunning are perfectly attractive in their own right, there’s really no question as to which sport has long since brought sexy back.

Whether that’s enough to justify scoring another point in favor of triathlon is really up to you. (It is, however, enough for me to justify including one more Desiree photo above.) It’s another question where people may reasonably differ: do you think of beauty as breathtaking and glamorous, or understated and inspirational? I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Finally, the fact that these events finished in a deadlock wasn’t merely coincidence; these two posts are my extremely long-winded way of saying that both the ironman and a 100-miler are fantastic accomplishments. Training and racing in them will impact your life in wonderful and extraordinary ways that you never imagined. Perhaps above all else, the most important characteristic they share is this: they each need to be experienced in order to be truly appreciated.

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Ironman vs. 100 (Part 1)

Growing up, I was very much a music junkie. While I developed an extensive knowledge and appreciation for almost all genres, my heart belonged to two specific styles: rock music and reggae.

Rock music was always a part of my identity, and shaped the way I see the world. It was loud and crazy and intense and unpredictable and endlessly fascinating. Along with playing sports and chasing girls, it was the primary thing that made life worth living.

(This was before I became a grownup and discovered things like family and goodwill and spirituality … but to this day, rock music is still a solid top-5 on my list of greatest joys in life. I’d better not tell you exactly where it ranks - but it’s a solid top-5.)

By contrast, reggae spoke to my soul. It was uplifting and gracious and peaceful, and made me appreciate the gifts in my life and the wonder of the world around me. Although the two musical styles are remarkably different, there’s no reason why somebody can’t develop a passion for both; indeed, I’ve spent the better part of forty years doing precisely that.

All of which is a roundabout way of introducing my comparison of ultramarathons and Ironman triathlons.

Between August 2007 and August 2008, I was fortunate (feel free to substitute the word crazy) enough to complete an Ironman distance triathlon and a 100-mile ultramarathon. At points along the way and afterwards, people asked me which one was harder to prepare for, which was tougher to complete, which I enjoyed more, and so on. So this post will hopefully provide a long overdue answer to a lot of those questions.

Triathlon is rock music: it’s vain and flashy and crazy and intense, and it’s loaded with sex appeal. Professional men are like rock stars: all the women want to be with them, and all the guys want to be them. (Best of all, the triathlon attraction crosses genders quite nicely; while I’ve always found rocker chicks to be somewhat scary, I’d jump at the chance to share a few workouts with Desiree Ficker. Yes, this is a cheap excuse to post her picture again.) It’s a hard lifestyle to maintain, but those who successfully do so feel almost immortal – or if not that, at least forever young.

(I’ll set aside my usual cynicism and resist the easy joke about suspected drug use in both groups. No need to thank me.)

Ultrarunning is reggae: much simpler, while simultaneously much more profound. Just as the reggae sound is more complex than it initially appears, so too is ultrarunning more meaningful than the repetitive rhythm of one foot in front of the other all through the night. Those who practice it regularly can readily describe humility and hard times, yet typically manage to keep a positive outlook in the midst of hardship.

So think of the events as two different genres of music – while most people will prefer one style over the other, having an attachment to one doesn’t automatically preclude you from enjoying the other. In fact, the two sports have a lot more things in common than they have differences – and that’s how we’ll base the comparison.

Finally, a few ground rules before we start. First, I’m only comparing the longest distance events – so the discussion here pertains to an ironman-distance tri and a 100-mile ultra. Second, there are actually two separate categories to consider: one that revolves around training regimens, and another about actually participating in the events. Accordingly, I’ll break this analysis into two sections – training and racing – and make this a two-part post. In each subsection, I’ll indicate which event has an advantage, and add up a final tally once we reach the end. (This might be interesting - I honestly have no idea which way the scores will go.)

My goodness, I’m already rambling way too much - why don’t we just get started:

TRAINING

1. Time commitment

I could break this down hour-by-hour and tell you how exactly how much time per week I spent training for each event – at least, I could have if I had ever bothered to keep track of things like that. Unfortunately, I’ve never been one to follow a rigid training program, and I’ve long since given up the compulsion to record every single workout ever completed, so you’ll just have to settle for generalizations here.

The main idea is that either one of these events will completely dominate your free time. They’ll also eat into family time and work schedules and vacation plans and just about every other leisure activity you enjoy. From the time you sign up until you finish the race, one concern will dominate your thoughts: I’m probably not training enough.

If you were to survey the triathletes lined up at the World Championships in Kona earlier this month, I’ll bet 95% of them will tell you that they wished they had trained more in preparation for the race (they’ll also tell you that they would like to be 10 pounds lighter, but that’s a separate post). These are the best athletes in the world – and if they’re not satisfied with their training volume, what makes you think that regular schmucks (in other words, all the rest of us) would be?

Part of this compulsion is simply the nature of people who are drawn to these events, but another major factor is the daunting prospect of the ironman distance, and the need to be proficient at three disciplines. Anytime you go more than a couple of days without doing one of the three, you feel like you’re falling behind or losing fitness. The only way to keep up is to do two workouts per day, or back-to-back workouts that take several hours.

At one point in my IM buildup, I was doing three workouts per day, and it didn’t seem the least bit excessive – it was just what I had to do to keep up the mileage I wanted to complete. At my peak, I was logging approximately 7000 weekly yards in the pool, 180 miles on my bike, and 50 miles running – and all of those numbers felt entirely too low. Even if I had figured out some way to do three-a-days on a regular basis, I probably still wouldn’t feel like I’d done enough training. That’s just the way it goes.

Training for an ultra, the compulsion is similar – especially if you’re somewhat new to the sport and have no idea what is required for success. Visit a few ultra forums, and you’ll see discussion threads about how much weekly mileage is recommended to complete a 100-miler. And no matter how many miles you run, you’ll probably feel like you should be doing more.

There’s a common expression among ultra runners that “if you can run it in a week, you can run it in a day”, meaning that whatever distance your event is, that’s what you should aim for in weekly mileage. However, in my experience, 100 miles per week on hilly trails takes an enormous amount of time, and leaves you completely drained. I settled into an average of about 70 miles per week, with a high of 110 – which sounds like a lot, until you consider that one of my favorite ultrarunners was averaging well over 200 miles per week before Western States this year. Have I mentioned that it never seems like I’m doing enough?

There’s one distinction worth noting on this subject, however: veteran ultrarunners will tell you that once you have a 100 under your belt, you can continue from race to race with very little training in between events. For example, if you’ve got a 100-miler, a 100K, and another 100-miler in a three-month span, your weeks in between events might only feature 15-20 miles of training. All of that training for the first one is like an airplane working to climb to its flight altitude, where it can then level off and cruise for a longer period of time with less fuel consumption.

With IM training, in order to maintain your speed and remain sharp at three disciplines, you’re in climbing mode before every race. It’s a subtle difference, but enough to give a very slight edge in this category to ultrarunning.

2. Fatigue

If you’re like me - meaning you have a family and job that place demands on your time – the only way to do so much high-volume training is to get up VERY early in the morning, and log as many miles as possible before the rest of the world awakes. It doesn’t take an Einstein to guess what happens when you do this for about six months in a row: you’re tired nearly every doggone day of your life. Your body doesn’t really care whether you’re getting up at 4AM to do a 30-mile run, or to squeeze in a 2500-yard swim before work; all it knows is that you really should be sleeping.

Even when you’re able to get some midday or afternoon workouts done, the cumulative effect is the same with IM training or ultra training – so we’ll call this category a draw.

3. Difficulty of training

I’ve found – somewhat to my surprise - that my background in triathlon differs from a lot of amateurs in the sport, in that I was fairly comfortable with all three disciplines from a very early age. As a kid, I was always on a local swim team, rode my bike all over the neighborhood every day, and was always up for a good footrace. (The fact that somebody invented a sport that combines all three of those things was my greatest confirmation to date of the existence of a benevolent God. I’m not exaggerating one bit.)

On the other hand, many triathletes struggle with one discipline or another. I’m always encountering people who were terrific runners but can’t swim, collegiate swimmers who have no power on the bike, or strong cyclists who can’t run a fast mile. Triathletes often say to “train your weakness, race your strength”; in that case, I imagine that a lot of triathletes spend a lot of hours doing training that is either awkward or uncomfortable in the discipline they like the least. That would get pretty old after several months.

Ultrarunners, however, concern themselves with just one thing: running. It’s a pretty good bet that before they sign on to run 100 miles, they usually recognize whether or not running is something they enjoy. Even if they’re not fast, many ultrarunners come to the sport because they’ve discovered that the long miles on the trails offer them much more than simply the physical benefits of a good workout. If you’re doing something that you love, the training doesn’t seem nearly as mundane. Big advantage to the ultrarunners here. However …

4. Injury potential

If you’re only doing one activity, your chances of developing an overuse injury multiply exponentially. I’ve already written an article about this hallmark of most runners, and about how triathletes (the smart ones, anyway) are much less likely to aggravate an injury because they can cross-train to maintain their fitness. So this is a major point in favor of triathletes.

Of course, this refers only to the cumulative, day-to-day injuries that befall most athletes – not the career-ending, life-threatening variety such as getting crushed on your bike by an 18-wheeler, attacked by some sort of predator in the ocean, or any other sort of freak tragedy. I tend to lump those types of incidents into a separate “lightning strike” category, meaning they can happen to anyone at anytime, regardless of what we’re training for. I mean, I cracked three ribs on a boogie board, for crying out loud – should we count that as a tri injury or a running one? Better to just chalk it up to bad karma.

5. Gear and Expenses

No doubt about it, triathlon is a rich man’s (or woman’s) game. It seems like every time you turn around, you need to drop some money (sometimes a lot of it) just to keep on training.

You pay pool dues and insurance fees and buy a wetsuit and goggles and pull buoys and paddles. You drop a few grand on a bike, then upgrade it with so many new components that it barely resembles the thing you saw in the online catalog. You shell out top dollar for cycling shoes and helmets and power meters and aerodynamic hydration systems. Even the most basic tri-outfits seem to cost hundreds of dollars. By the way, this is in addition to all of your basic running gear.

Triathletes are also prime consumers of all sorts of crazy gadgets (speed laces, anyone?) and nutritional supplements. Nobody uses Gatorade or Gu during workouts or eats normal food between sessions – it’s all specially developed formulas and superfoods that promise to help you shave a handful of minutes off of your IM time – perhaps enough to make it from 19th place to 17th in your age group. Yahoo!

So it’s easy to see why ultrarunners think they have a huge advantage in the finance department. However, once you start calculating the costs of several pairs of trail shoes per year, state of the art hot or cold weather clothing, hydration packs, lighting systems, GPS devices, and a lot of those same nutritional expenses … well, it’s STILL a lot cheaper than triathlon. But that doesn’t mean it’s cheap. Score another point for ultrarunners.

Those are the major training issues to compare, which brings us to the conclusion of Part 1. At the intermission, our score stands at Ultrarunning 3, Triathlon 1, with one draw. Will ultrarunning gradually pull away and drop its competition in the second half? Will triathlon come back to even the score? Will we have any more silly rock and reggae analogies? All these questions and more will be answered in Part 2.

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