From Robi to Irobiman chapter 4

20 Mar From Robi to Irobiman chapter 4

Soon after getting home, I started looking at the prospects for next year’s game. Where and when will I become an IRONMAN? Now I believed, for the first time in my life, I felt that I could really complete the entire distance. And not just finish. I felt I could do it in a solid time, under 11 hours. Due to the possibility of training, the second half of the year suited me better, so I was looking for dates in the Autumn. The desire to make the course as flat as possible made the task a little more difficult, but I found the perfect match for me. Cervia – Emilia Romagna, end of September. One of the most flat routes in the calendar around the world. Complete! Right away in November, I paid the registration fee of less than 700 € and there was no way back. You probably also find the amount for one race high. If you pay the registration fee later, the prices can go up to €1000. You pay a lot that you have to put in a lot of effort to even prepare for the race, and then it’s an art to execute it. A lot of people don’t even make it to the race later. But triathletes are a little crazy, at least that’s what other people tell us. I think it’s one of the most beautiful sports. However, it is true that it requires a huge amount of time from a person. I’ve received messages from most of my friends like this: “If someone pays me €1,000 I will not do it, not that I should have to pay for it.” That’s about the kind of answers I’ve been getting.

There are for sure 100 000 such fools in the world. There were 3000 of us registered for the race in Cervia. 21.9.2025 was the date when I would be crowned an IRONMAN. A day when I’m only competing with myself and nothing else in the world will matter at that moment. I wrote down the date on my calendar and in a prominent place in my room. From then on, it was constantly present somewhere in the background in my head.

I devoted the first 14 days to researching training and nutrition. Now I had an established training plan, I just needed to extend them in time. 3 years of mileage collection was the right investment to start basic preparation. I decided that by the spring I would only accumulate kilometres and hours of training again. I’ll train 2-3 times a week and try to overcome medium distances. The pool was also one of the goals-just that I’m in contact with water. When I wrote the plan, I set myself the desire to do in 2024, 400h of training in 9 months. I realised that this was not realistic, and more of a wish. That meant 10-12 hours of activity per week. In the early weeks, I was far from the goal. I only managed to be active for about 5 hours a week. If I was active 3x after 1.5 hours, it wasn’t even 5 hours. On the training in the room in my house it was hellishly hot on the bike and I had a hard time holding out for 90 minutes, it was cold outside for running and I only managed to work after 12km, which meant somewhere around 60 minutes of activity. Also, I have never lasted more than 1 hour in the pool so far, which meant only 3.5 hours in 3 training sessions. It’s not easy to accumulate 12 hours a week, not at all in the winter. But I’m going to have to put up with so many hours in the game. Ouch… So I slowly but steadily accumulated miles. I was well behind the desired 400h training. I knew it wasn’t going to be possible. Thankfully, warm weather soon came and I was able to start training outside. At first, I was just running, which I did most of the winter months anyway, but now I could also afford intervals and longer distances. In April, I also let my old bike out on the road and I started to accumulate the first kilometres outside. Sandi advised me to borrow a real time trial bike for the next six months. I started looking for them online and in cycling circles. The amounts of new ones that would be suitable for me were around €10,000, and used ones around €5000. I have not found the right one for myself for whom I would be willing to deduct such a sum. It’s at least 10-15% easier to ride a race with a time trial bike than mine, more experienced triathletes explained to me. The difference was supposed to be about 30 minutes in race, which otherwise seemed huge to me. Nevertheless, I decided not to invest extra money in the bike and to install the so-called “horns” on it. Instead of a new bike, I looked for a bike setup

specialist Bikefittingniko, where they really accurately and very professionally adjusted the bike for me according to my needs. Previously, when I pressed the pedals, I had pain in my lower back all the time. After adjusting the bike, however, my position on the bike improved and I no longer had as much pain in my wrist and lower back. I should have done this a long time ago, I figured it out. Unfortunately, a little late.

An interesting fact is that I had practically no injuries during all the years of training. I didn’t even go to massages or physiotherapy. However, I was disciplined and often performed self-massage in the evenings. Rolling and stretching were my faithful companions, and probably this was the main reason that I did all the preparations practically without injuries, massages or physiotherapy. I think I only had a massage 2-3 times a year, which was a great indicator that I was doing something right.

Sandi and the others who had already ridden the race were holding their heads when I didn’t have the “horns” on the bike yet, for the time trial, and there were only 4 months left until the race. But it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make things even more difficult for myself. I will, I thought, and still ride the bike in an upright position until July. It would be very important for the body to get used to the position in which you are practically lying on the bike. Imagine that you are in a race in this position for 6 hours continuously. I, on the other hand, was still riding in an upright, amateur position less than 3 months before the race. In that time, I drove 100 km in 1 practice for the first time. It was a special feeling, a special turning point, but when I got home, I was just at the end of my tether. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I started to doubt again how I would do in the 180km race, and after that I would run a marathon. It’s true that the last year I did it fairly easily with half, but now all the distances multiplied by 2 awaited me. It was necessary to decide that I would no longer travel to tournaments from July onwards. So I ended up with the WTA tour in June, and that later turned out to be the right decision. The plan to try to work at least 10 hours a week was fulfilled for the first time in June. I was 80 hours behind schedule. It was clear to me that this time would not be able to be made up.

Since I couldn’t make weekly plans due to the nature of my job, my planning looked something like this. Oh, tomorrow I have 2 hours between trainings, which will be just enough to do 1 hour of running intervals. On Tuesday afternoon I don’t have training, I go cycling for 3 hours. On Wednesday morning I go to the pool for 1 hour, then I’m on the tennis court until the evening. On Thursday, I’ll try to run a longer run of about an hour and a half in the evening after training. On Friday, nothing will go through, but for the weekend I am going for a longer cycling distance (100km+). Triathlon coaches would laugh at such planning, but that’s the way it was. Several times, during the daily break of tennis training or instead of lunch, I did triathlon training, and during training I ate gels or protein bars. I probably don’t need to re-explain that almost every training session I had doubts about the meaningfulness of what I was doing. To set off on a bicycle journey that will be about 110 km long, and already in the first kilometres I felt my legs as hard as a stone, and on top of that, a strong wind was blowing into my head. Not to mention that there was no one in front of me to hide behind. It’s hard to imagine what the head does at such moments. It resists in every possible way.

I did 90% of all training on my own. The biggest reason for this was precisely my planning. It was difficult for me to agree with anyone to train together, when I didn’t know 2 days in advance what kind of training I would do, or if I would be able to do it at all due to time constraints. So May and June passed. The body began to react, the heart rate dropped, it became easier and easier to overcome kilometres, and also the head became more and more accustomed to long-term suffering, and above all, to the monotony of training. Those who know me better know that there must be something going on for me all the time, and during 100 km not much new happens, only the nature around is changing and it is necessary to watch out for wild drivers all the time, who are sometimes really unpredictable. Over the years, there have been some very stressful events where I’ve also had to pull off the road because otherwise I’d have crashed head-on into the car. Overtaking an oncoming car on my side of the road, chopping a bend on my side, overtaking so close that I touched the car with my bike. Luck followed me, I’m still here and I can share this experience with you.

At the beginning of July, I only managed to find the handlebars for my bike. Now I had everything set. It was a strange feeling when I took a chronometric position on the bike with my body. I have to admit that I only lasted a minute or so in it at the beginning. The race on the bike, however, lasts 360 minutes. Uh, how far from success I still was. In the next 2 and a half months, a serious challenge awaited me. I tried to change the position on the bike and stay in the correct position as much as possible. I suffered, I forced myself, my back hurt a lot because it was in an uncomfortable position, but there was no other way  through but to persevere. If I wanted to do 180 km, I had to get used to this position.

The time of vacation had come. For the first time, I also took a bicycle to the sea. We went to the small mountainous island of Lastovo, which was not exactly the same as my route this year, but there was a bit  flat areas that I could practice a new position on the bike and accumulate kilometres, even if mostly in altitude. At sea, I have a goal every year to make a swimming base. That was the case this time as well. Swimming was scheduled 2 times a day, each time for a kilometre or more. And every day there was another 1 hour or a 1.5 hour bike. So on hot days, I would be cycling or jogging along the side of the road as early as around 6 a.m. There were no straights for running either, so I had to run up and down for the most part. In the middle of my vacation, a slightly crazy idea struck me. What if I swam around half of the island of Lastovo. According to a folder on the Internet, I calculated that this distance is about 10km. Since I’ve only swum 1.9 km in a piece 2x in a race so far, this figure was quite frightening. So I asked my son Lars to accompany me on the SUP. We first tried it out in the bay where we lived, and it seemed like the idea was feasible. One morning, when the sea was fairly calm and not too windy, we set off on our way. I believed I could overcome such a distance. We attached food, drink, sunscreen etc. to the SUP. In short, we were well equipped, because we didn’t know exactly what to expect. I put short fins on my feet, and to my wife’s disagreement (saying that I was mad and putting the child in danger), we were pushed to the other side of the island. I have to explain that there was nothing between the bay where we were and the next one, which was about 5km away. Only rocks and the open sea, and we alone on the SUP. But I thought that if I couldn’t do it, I’d just sit down on the SUP and we’d paddle on together. The first two kilometres went fairly normally. There weren’t too many waves, I felt good. Every once in a while, I was a little overwhelmed by the thought of possibly meeting a shark when we were in the middle of crossing larger bays and the sea below me was very deep. When I had my face turned down, all I could see was blue, and that’s when my imagination and memories from movies (Jaws…). In short, unpleasant feelings. I just tried to swing my arms forward and focus on technique. Lars accompanied me the whole time. We made a stop at 3 kilometres, ate and drank a little, and moved on. We did so 2 more times. While swimming, we were met by a fairly large boat that was sailing only a few 10m away from us and it was not a pleasant feeling when it approached us. Fortunately, we came to the bay, where the “civilisation” began and from there followed a less than 5km of trail along the coast, which is quite populated. The feelings were better, I felt more secure. And the hands swung meter by meter. The shoulders were getting heavier and heavier, but somehow it worked. I really have to praise Lars for making it through this distance on the sup as he was only 10 years old. After 6 hours, we managed to reach our destination. We were very happy. This was another important turning point, especially for my head, because for the first time I proved to myself that I would definitely swim 3.8 km in a race.

After the holidays, the base on the bike followed. I’ve tried several times to do workouts longer than 100 km. I didn’t run that much, swam practically nothing. I was due to go on a tennis tour to America in August, but the player’s injury meant they dropped out. I was able to get into training and getting used to a new position on the bike. I only had one more challenge left before the ironman race itself. In the past, I had already run a distance of 42 km within the IRONMAN race, now I had also swum more than 3.8 km, and I had only cycled 115 km at most. I tried to do a similar test for the bike as I did for swimming. I decided to ride my bike from home to Koper. For the venture, I chose a beautiful day in August, when our young tennis players were having a tennis tournament there, which meant that I would be able to retroactively load the bike onto the roof of the car. I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable of driving more than 180km. I started at 5:30 in the morning. It was a beautiful morning. It went really well against Ljubljana. The “old” road was empty and I had no problems with dangerous drivers. I was over the Trojans fairly quickly and in Ljubljana. There I stopped to see a friend. Unfortunately, the traffic lights through Ljubljana killed my cycling rhythm, because I couldn’t ride without stopping. Finally, Vrhnika and the hilly world came. I got lost 1 time there, because with bike you can not use all roads. I made a brief stop for lunch and continued on my way. It passed without any major problems. When I got to Nanos, however, a headwind blew into me. It’s great that I’m going to ride the last 50 km with this scourge, I thought. Thankfully, the road went down from there in most cases and was a little less distracting. However, I was really tired when I drove into the last kilometres. The wind was really strong on Primorska and the last 15 km were incredibly challenging. All the way, I tried to stick to the tactic of drinking gels and eating protein bars. Same as I’m going to try in a race. The only exception was a slice of pizza on the way. I finally arrived in Koper at the tennis centre, where the cycling counter stopped at 195km after 7 hours, with an average speed of just over 28.5 km/h and a total of 1500 meters of altitude. I had ticked off the last missing target, my ass is ready too. Now I had covered all the distances. Individually, but I beat them. I would just put them together in one day and I’ll become an IRONMAN. Easier said than done, but I really began to believe that my goal was feasible. I was going to start at a finish time under 11 hours.

There was only a month left until the race. I was starting to feel positive stage fright in my body. The moment was near when it was going to go for real. I booked a hotel, ordered a sufficient amount of gels and protein bars. The plan became more and more precise, the body more prepared and adapted. I have to admit that I was still very busy with the rest of the obligations, but this desire that was really big in me was stronger than the possible lack of training. I was dedicated and 100% goal-oriented. I’ve done so-called duathlon a couple of times in the last month. This means that I first rode between 60-80km by bike, and then ran another 10km. So I got my body used to changing disciplines. I didn’t compromise on the quantity. I added swimming, and for quite a few weeks in the summer months, I was approaching 12 hours of training in a week. This meant that I was active for 5-6 days at least after 2 hours. I trained well and I became fond of it. I continued in this rhythm until 14 days before the race, when I decided to drop the amount and start resting my body. What I had done, I had done. Now I just had to be careful not to accidentally get sick. I was ready to become an IRONMAN. 3 and a half years of training were behind me. It was time for a decisive step, which I was immensely looking forward to. I’m ready!

What the last days and the race itself looked like in the next (last) chapter