- Hacking, qualifying for a World Championship.
Training tips for the swim, the bike,
then run, which I will do.
I can't believe this worked out.
(upbeat music)
Morning, Trainiacs, today is take two
of Taren tries to get home from Iron Man Austin 70.3.
On that note, today, considering that I manged
to sneak in a spot to Half Iron Man Worlds next year
and there's still a lot of buzz from Kona.
It's Kona, it's gonna go on for awhile, I dig it.
Let's talk about how to qualify
for a World Championship today, alright?
Let's clean up this room.
(upbeat music)
Alright, let's do this.
(upbeat music)
Alright, let's get to why you're all here.
So, for starters, there isn't a big trick to qualifying
for the Iron Man or the Half Iron Man World Championships.
You have to place high enough in your age group
that you get within sniffing distance of,
you don't have to win, but you gotta be
somewhere close to the top.
How World Championship spots work is,
let's say there's 2,000 spots, and there are
75 events that you can qualify for them in.
And those events are listed on IronMan.com
and as you look through all the events,
they'll tell you whether or not it is
a World Championship qualifier.
Then, depending on how large the race is,
a certain amount of those 2,000 spots
are allocated to each age group,
and it's not as simple as well,
30 to 34 always has three spots and 35 to 39 always has two.
It's like this magical formula like the Coke recipe
that nobody knows about that basically
just showing up on the day, for example,
at Austin 70.3, we knew there were 30 spots,
but we didn't know how those spots were gonna be allocated
amongst all the different age categories.
They calculate it after the race is over
and then what happens is, everyone goes and races their race
and after the race, they have the award ceremony,
right after the award ceremony,
they start allocating spots and it's not done online,
it's done in person, so you go to this award ceremony,
if you feel like you are close enough to the top of
the age group that you can get a spot, you go and show up.
Now, here's where it gets really interesting,
and here's how I ended up qualifying.
In our age category, 35 to 39, there were three spots.
I was fifth.
What happens is, because it's live,
the announcer is calling out the first person,
and if they don't take it right then and there on the spot,
it goes down to the next person.
So, first person was called out on Sunday,
nobody said yes, so all of a sudden,
numbers two, three, and four were eligible.
Call out the second person, nobody showed up,
so all of a sudden, bam, I'm in.
Because there were still three spots.
Now, here's where you get into a little bit of
hacking qualifying for a World Championships,
what you can do is try to go to a race that has a lot
of spots and not a lot of athletes in your age group
and you look at previous results to do that.
Granted, because so many more people
are racing Iron Man events, that hacking
has kinda gone away, however, some of things
that you can look for that is a legitimate hack
for getting to a World Championship
is looking back in the years and seeing
how many people accepted the spots
and you can do this on a website that I'll link below.
I can't remember exactly what it is right now,
but if you are in a race where a lot of people
don't accept the spots, that means that it rolls down
further into the age category and a guy that I was
talking to at the roll down allocation meeting,
he said that one race he was at, it rolled down
to person number 19 in the age group.
This happens when you go and race in say,
like third world countries and there are more
races popping up there, because they just don't
have the money to go and spend on the World Championships.
Or like this year, World Championships
is in a really expensive place, South Africa,
so there's gonna be a lot of people
that are turning down their spots,
so now would be a good year to actually go and race,
because it's likely that the spots will roll down more.
That's step one, understanding the process, okay?
(upbeat music)
Hey, so do you all remember that time,
like just a few hours ago where I said
I was gonna be flying back home to Winnipeg?
Well, it didn't happen.
A plane ended up not arriving at all.
Was supposed to maybe show up an hour and 15 minutes late,
at which point, I was then gonna miss my connection
back to Winnipeg when I got to Chicago.
So, that's still Denver.
Haven't budged.
Alright, back to qualifying for a World Championship.
Now, before I start giving you training tips
for the swim, the bike, the run, which I will do,
you gotta get your body ready to accept the training.
So, that means, in my case, the biggest thing
that got me in a mode of being able to accept training
and really improve my times because you're not
gonna fluke your way into a World Championship
if you're doing just a dead slow time,
unless you're in like a really high age category.
If you're like 60 to 80 plus, yeah,
you can get in, because there's just not
that many people racing at that age category,
but for the vast majority of us, we gotta be kinda fast.
Biggest thing that helped me was
when I lost a bunch of weight.
Originally, I was 215 pounds, I got things down
to around 175, but I was still really clunky
out when I was training and racing,
and then it was when I got down to
about 157, 155 at my racing weight,
that was when I started getting faster,
so you can try things like the Keto Diet,
the Atkins Diet, more vegan meals like me,
you can try going gluten free,
you can speak to a nutritionist.
I'm not a big proponent of like,
this way is the only right way.
I know that there is a lot of science for all ways,
and I think that there's a lot of science indicating
that different diets work for different people.
Now, if you think that you have additional weight
that you can lose before you start
busting your brains out worrying about getting fast
and training harder, focus on getting your diet
and your health and your body composition down,
and that, without you changing anything in your training,
will make you faster right away.
Think I'm getting home this afternoon.
(upbeat music)
I wanna go back.
Holy crap, Trainiacs, I never thoughts this day would come.
This is like, 31 hours after originally leaving Austin.
I'm home.
Okay, okay, enough being a drama queen.
So, let's say you know which races you want,
you know how the Iron Man World Championship process works,
you're healthy, you got your body fit,
then it comes down to just the training,
and you gotta build the mechanics to set you up
on a path to get faster, so number one,
we're gonna do this really, really quickly,
'cause this entire channel is about getting faster,
but we'll give you the bases of how you need to start off
so that you can get faster and
you got nothing holding you back.
Number one, the swim program that I've got
is TriathlonTaren.com/swimdrillprogram.
And these will all be linked below.
This will help you get a foundation
where a swim stroke isn't gonna be what's holding you back,
you're comfortable in the water and then
you just have to put in the work to get faster.
On the bike, you wanna get whatever bike you're gonna get,
but get it fit properly for you,
so that you're not gonna be trying
to overcome limitations within your body
and you're not gonna be injuring yourself
by putting in lots of miles.
Then, just time in the saddle, and I will link
a video about bike fits below, and then the last thing,
I would recommend a chi running video
that I did a while ago, which again,
will be linked below, which is all about
landing lighter, having like good momentum moving forward,
and then once you get all those three things figured out,
you just gotta put in work and put in work,
and put in work, and I'm not saying
you're gonna go from, "Alright, I'm starting triathlon
today." to "I have qualified for
the World Championships next month."
It's taken me eight years, nine years,
but at least you know that you're on a path to get there.
Hopefully.
If your body lets you.
Now, let's see if my baggage gets here.
Any bets?
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That's one.
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I can't believe this worked out.
(upbeat music)
Alright, Trainiacs, even though
it's minus a zillion out there, I'm happy to be home.
I'm very happy that this bag came back, I love this bag.
I know I got it for free, but BIKND,
you know what you're doing with bike bags.
Alright, putting you away.
Quality time with MTK, haven't seen her in ages.
Alright, bye!