After completing 9 weeks of a 10-week transition to Ironman training program that I created TrainingPeaks, I am now entering the crucial 10th week. This test week is designed to measure my progress and establish a baseline for my upcoming Ironman-specific program, also available on TrainingPeaks. The first test in this pivotal week was the Critical Swim Speed (CSS) set, which is the focus of this blog article. Join me as I delve into the details of the CSS test, its execution, and its significance for Ironman athletes.

The Mona Fartlek is my most loved interval training session that was named after the legendary Australian distance runner, Steve Moneghetti. While named after Moneghetti it was actually devised by the equally legendary coach, Chris Wardlaw. This session is one of my go to sets which improves my cardiovascular fitness and directly leads to performance improvements. The session consists of 2x90 seconds, 4x60 seconds, 4x30 seconds, and 4x15 seconds of hard running, with equal time for recovery between each effort

Welcome to Mind Over Matter Endurance! As someone who has been teaching mathematics for 30 years, I find it fascinating to look at the rigors of Ironman training and racing into a numeric breakdown. Let's dive into the numbers that define an Ironman race and how they can guide your training.

As an endurance coach, I’ve seen athletes undergo remarkable transformations. One of the most powerful frameworks to understand and facilitate these changes is the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente in 1994. This model outlines six main stages of change: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, and Maintenance and unfortunately relapse. Let’s us myself as an example as I transition from endurance trail running back to Ironman triathlon after a five-year hiatus.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength

New Years resolutions need to be anchored in absurdity and made achievable through our dreams. They need to be hard so we have the opportunity to fail. It is actually in the failing that makes the goal inspiring. JFK didn’t encourage the American people to go to the corner store to get sausage roll. He challenged them to lift their eyes to the impossible. And our mothers kindly said the same thing to lovingly nurse us towards a better version of ourselves.

From this view I squarely sit in the ‘no man zone’ of my own personal fitness. I consider this place to be the equivalent of the exact centre of a temperature gauge on an old school car (image below). It can be said that my fitness is operating in a perfectly functional state of homeostasis. I am neither sliding into an irreparable bad state where the whole cast of biggest loser  and home rescue call me dead on arrival. Nor am so fit that I am gracing the cover of men’s health or vying for Olympic selection in four different sports. As the gauge states, I am in a running state.

If you are reading this, you already know that endurance training goes well beyond the physical realm. To train and finish the crazy goals that you set yourself you need, mental fortitude, resilience, and a strong sense of self. On the surface it would seem that an Austrian psychotherapist born in 1870 would know very little about endurance sport considering the first marathon was not run until he was 26 years old. It is only when you delve into Adlerian psychology, that you can see that there is a direct link between the mind and endurance.

In fact if you did sleep you were hindering your progress, hamstringing your earnings and harpooning your career trajectory.  One movie from the 1980s that popularized the idea of lack of sleep being a tool for a successful life was  "Wall Street" (1987), in which the character Gordon Gekko famously says, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."