28 Oct From Robi to IRONMAN – chapter 1
Desire, goal, striving for the goal, training, sacrifice, not giving up, persevering and finally the goal. At first, satisfaction, pure happiness, great pride. That’s what the path I’ve been walking for the last three and a half years looked like in one sentence. Until the moment I heard the words “Robert, you are an IRONMAN.” That trip was wonderful. So let’s start from the beginning…
I’ve always been attracted to things that are harder to achieve or that need a little more given to them than most people want. The word IRONMAN has always expressed something powerful in me, difficult to achieve, or I must admit something that was quite unattainable in my mind. The people who completed it were, through my eyes, heroes, real iron men. Ironman is not something you decide to do and go and try your luck and say maybe I’ll make it. It’s a test that you have to prepare for both physically and mentally. You have to dedicate a part, if not most of your life (for a while), to a single goal. You need to be able to practice several different sports continuously for more than 10 hours in a row (the time limit to complete a race is at 17 hours, and the world record is a whopping 7 hours and 21 minutes). For those of you who may not know what the Ironman discipline is. It’s basically triathlon, a sport made up of three different disciplines. The race starts with swimming, followed by cycling and ends with a run. Ironman is the longest version of triathlon, excluding ultra triathlons. The length of swimming is 3.8 km, cycling is 180 km (without drafting allowed) and finally a marathon with 42 km of running. The above sounded incredible to me. I believe it sounds that way to many of you, too.
The goal on instagram
The desire to one day become an Ironman had been smouldering in me for many years. It was just a wish I didn’t really believe in, a thought that it would be great to become an Ironman. I’d never dared to say it out loud, because I’m a man to do what I say, no matter what it costs. In May 2021 in Spain, at one of the professional tournaments in the role of coach Olga Danilovic, I decided I would finish an Ironman race by the time I was 40 years old. So I
had until spring 2025. Since I have the most opportunities to train in the summer (in the winter, tennis coaches travel a lot around the world for tournaments where it is difficult to train), the only realistic option was to attend a race in the fall of 2024. So I had a little over 3 years. I wrote down the goal and told my intention out loud to my loved ones and friends. From that moment on, there was no turning back. There was only a goal and an immense desire to achieve the set goal. To be honest, I didn’t believe at the time that I would be able to do it, as it seemed impossible to swim 3.8 km and cycle 180 km. Before that, I had never swum more than a few 100m in my life, let alone in the breaststroke. However, I didn’t spend more than 2 hours on the bike at that time because my butt couldn’t handle it. A year before that, I bought a used bike to start cycling during the corona era, but not much came of it. Of all the disciplines, I only ran a marathon in 2015. In short, I presented myself with an impossible challenge at the time. But since 3 years is a long time, I had hope, and above all, a great desire for the final goal. A goal that was precisely defined and also contained a time frame. I also noted the location of the performance, Rio de Janeiro, at the time of the decision. The picture went viral. I made an iRobiman instagram profile to post workouts, posted the date and location of the workout there, and I was able to start training. Where to start? How to prepare? I graduated from the Faculty of Sport, so I had some knowledge about physical conditioning, but that was something completely different and I had no idea how to start.
First, I contacted Sašo (Pistotnik), with whom we were working together in tennis at the time. He’s an Ironman. I asked him if he thought I could join the Iron Men Club and what I had to do for that.? He was much more confident that I would succeed than I was. He gave me some instructions and prepared the initial training, but above all he explained to me how the body has to work if you want to finish a race like this. The next day, I started training. Right at the tournament. First with running in nature and cycling in the gym. It was necessary to accumulate kilometers and hours of training in all disciplines. My body has been accustomed to “high turns” by now. This means that I was able to maintain a high level of activity for a relatively very long time, or quite a lot longer than is usual in humans. But absolutely no more than a couple of hours, let alone more than 10 hours. So the first goal I had was to teach my body to burn fat instead of glycogen. I had to encourage it to work as economically as possible on the lowest pulse possible. In short, it’s totally the opposite of my previous training and activities. Of course, my head needed to get used to it first, because I always wanted to compete in everything I undertook; to be faster at one distance than the day before or to
overtake another. I had to change my training philosophy completely. I admit that I wasn’t training as well as I should and for the first 2 years I was still giving speed and result before the “right for me” training. I enjoyed the numbers, how fast I ran or cycled something. It was different in swimming, where I hired coach Sandi (Ivančič) right from the beginning, who mainly improved my technique. There was no speed competition here. It was incredibly exhausting for me. I was thinking more in the water than I used to on math tests. Where are the arms, when to breathe, kick with the legs, how tight the torso is. CRAZY. Swimming was killing me, and I have to admit that I just avoided it. I wasn’t comfortable jumping into the water and gasping for air while thinking so much. After swimming training, I was the most tired.
Weeks and months of training passed. I accumulated an average of about 4-5 hours of training per week. Summer came, and soon it was the turn of the first event to reach the final goal. Since it is necessary to start at the beginning, I signed up for the Olympic triathlon in Bled, which is organized every year at the beginning of September (short distance triathlon). I was very nervous, because a triathlon race, in addition to physical exertion, requires a huge amount of organization. The list of clothing and accessories was very long. You have to prepare all the necessary things for the whole race. First you are dressed for swimming (neoprene), then for cycling and finally for running. This means that there are 2 discipline swaps within a race, and for them you have to arrange the things you need before you start and prepare everything you need in the bags that are waiting for you at the exchange area. I remember walking around the venue in Bled totally confused because I didn’t know where to pick up anything, where to leave my bike, etc. Sasha gave me all the information the day before the race, but it still had to be done live.
The start of the swim was fairly early in the morning around 9:00 a.m. Lake Bled was rough, the wind was quite strong. All the competitors started at once. Chaos in the water. I didn’t see anything. Beatings from all sides. I drank water a couple of times when I wanted to inhale. I didn’t know what was above and what was below. I just gasped for air and waved my arms. Horror! I had a 1600m swim in two laps of 800m. By the time I jumped into the second round, I was pretty tired. Before that, I had tried to swim a few times in the sea longer than 1000m. There is still a difference when it is up to 1600m. My family also supported me in the race and everything was new for them as well. It was difficult to know exactly where I would appear at any given moment, as triathlon is not easy to follow. Competitors are everywhere. Some are still swimming, others are already on their bikes, others are changing their clothes. Big confusion in short, but to top it all off, we’re all dressed similarly.
1st transition
I came out of the water. It was necessary to make a change. What have I already seen on youtube that contestants do first, I thought…? In short, I was totally confused. It was something new for me and I really enjoy the new things. I dressed up for cycling and the second discipline could begin. It’s a crazy weird feeling when you get on your bike from swimming. The legs are strange, somehow soft, and we were sent from the rowing center first to a severe gorge and then towards Lake Bohinj. A total of 40 km. I rode my bike without any problems. We were also lucky with the wind, as it was mostly blowing at our backs.
I got off my bike, changed into my running shoes, and I was on my way. The legs just went by themselves. Severe. Great feeling. I’ve tried this second shift at home and it wasn’t as foreign to me as the first. “Just make sure I don’t go too fast,” I told myself. I had a 10km run on the footpath around Lake Bohinj, where there were a lot of walkers, because it was a beautiful Saturday in September. We had to avoid them and quite a few competitors even fell and got injured. There were a few sections along the way where we even had to climb over the rocks. I finished the run in under 45 minutes, and my second triathlon in my life (I finished the first one when I was 19, but it was much shorter) with a time of 2h 24 min. The first step was taken.
2nd transition
Now I knew roughly what a triathlon looked like. The Olympic triathlon is just normal training for the entire Ironman, but it was necessary to start somewhere. I was still a long way off, but I was aware of the importance of small steps. I set myself the next smaller goal- Next year, I’m going to finish half of Ironman – half. As it is also necessary to set a precise time frame for a properly set goal, I soon signed up for the race in Montenegro, 15.10.2022. I had a vision and a goal. I was looking forward to the trail and the next triathlon steps.
Instagram record at the completion of the triathlon
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