In all seriousness, for your long-term athletic development:

Don’t.

Race short. Build speed. Save IM for at least 5 years down the road.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Its too late actually I already signed up

If I prepare enough is it really that bad?

Train long but not hard. You should be in better shape than grandpas. But IM is not a sport for teens. Should you be working on the 3rd base at this point of your life? I was….

If you can run that fast in 13.1 you’ll be fine if you concentrate on building up a big base of volume. Ease into the miles. Try not to worry about speed, it will only hinder your progress. Take a lighter week every few weeks. If you trained seriously, you could break 12 hours easy. Biggest thing is gaining experience. With nutrition, pain, and negative thoughts. I had that kind of mental toughness at your age. But I didn’t stop growing until my senior year. I couldn’t run in college due to shin splints. So, some may argue that it’s not right to put your growing body through that at such an early age. So once again. Take it easy. Easy and repeatable. If you can finish it, you’ll learn a ton and be much faster your second time around.

Btw. My aunt’s first and only tri was a full. On a borrowed ill fitting bike, with no more than 30 miles logged a week. She could barely swim but she had tons of marathon training. Top of her age group in every marathon completed. She finished her flat 140.6 in just over 13 hours. Placid is not flat. Take that for what it’s worth. Any type of high volume endurance training will help significantly. She wont sign up for another tri though. Haha

Sam and Lionel did something similar to start their careers. Grip it and rip it kid.

So, you didn't mention anything about swimming. Are you swimming yet? If not, get on that immediately.

Bike as much as you can and build up the speed as a secondary focus. I would also suggest doing lots of hills if you can. If you don't live in a hilly area do repeats.

Good luck. Also, don't be dumb and injure yourself. Listen to your body and go easy.

My daughter's plan is to race from sprints in middle school to Olympic in high school then 70.3 the year she graduates, then a full sometime in college.

I agree there's no rush... unless you've already signed up.

Then just focus on getting lots and lots of easy miles in. Don't worry about the pace being fast enough. Let it feel as easy as possible because the duration will be what makes it hard. You'll be fine if you follow one of the many online plans.

Just make sure you're always going at a pace where you keep telling yourself, "I should be going faster". You will likely pass hundreds of people in the last half of your race who didn't hold back when they felt like they should speed up.

Hi, coach of youth triathletes here. See this?


Take it seriously.

You can do some serious damage to your long term performance future if you enter into this now. Your aerobic engine has yet to fully develop, your hormones are still coming into balance, and there is a whole OCEAN of things you don’t even know that you don’t know with this sport. This can be really dangerous for you. Skip the cuteness of your oops I signed up and save the bravado for some top end short course work and become a powerhouse in the sport. IM will be around until the end of time, there’s no rush.

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Level II USAT Coach | Level 3 USAC Coach | NASM-CPT
Team Zoot | Tailwind Trailblazer
I can tell you why you're sick, I just can't write you an Rx

I'm swimming about an hour easy every morning only freestyle.

You could be like the real life version of the main character from Iron Sharpens Iron (https://www.amazon.com/...-Handy/dp/1734760400)

My math shows we are 22wks out. I'd suggest trying to find a 20wk beginner Ironman training plan and follow it, more or less. Here's one I found in 30s on google: https://cdn.triathlete.com/...an-Training-Plan.pdf

You are not going to break 10hrs, put that out of your mind. If you somehow managed, it'd indicate you're the second coming of Mark Allen. Just enjoy the training and the event as much as possible, people have done much dumber things when they were 19, you'll survive.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

This training plan seems like a lot less than what I normally do with my friends just for fun. Should I really be decreasing volume by that much?

I'm interested in that book now

The desire to go sub-10, on your first IM, and at LP...what about your nutrition plan?!

Heck, I'll be there, let me know your name and if you go sub-10, I'll be the first to buy you a soda of your choosing - since a beer is out of question!

This thread could get good!

My name is just the same as my username, and it would be super cool to see you there. I didn't mention this before, but my neighbor has done lake placid 16 times, and he has a lot of experience, so he can help guide my through the preparation hopefully. I'm planning to use the nutrition provided at lake placid during my training leading up to the race.

IM is almost as much mental as it is physical. Remember that after swimming 3.8k and biking 180k (112 miles) all you have to do is a marathon.
Nothing against trying I have seen an eighteen year old go for it and do it.
Just get used to walking.
Good luck.

What’s your goal swim time? If you’re a good swimmer and can come out of the water pretty fresh it’ll be a big plus.

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Let food be thy medicine...

100% agree, & it's not too late just because you signed up. It's far enough out to utilize their refund policy. Would try a 70.3 first but even that seems like a lot. Sprint racing and working on your speed is the way to go if you're serious about triathlon. No reason to run a 1:19 half either. Think about your long term development and goals. Do you want to suffer through an Ironman or do you want to debut in 9 hours in your late 20s? Same deal with a half. Develop the speed to break 70 rather than finishing the distance.

If it's not negotiable, then think about your weaknesses. Did you grow up swimming? If not, you need to get in the pool 4-5 times/week, getting in 3k-4k at a time. You'll need to build the bike up to 4-5 hours. The running shows the potential for something like a 3:20-3:30 marathon. Running in an Ironman is different. That probably sounds slow to you but it won't when you get to it on race day. The Ironman is about stacking up sessions & overall training volume. Racing the distance is about being patient. Being a couple percent too quick on the swim or bike will have you walking the marathon. The best way to handle the distance is to be conservative & have a good fueling plan. Wouldn't recommend it tho.

I swim about 3-4k every morning and over the summer I've biked up to ~8 hours. Also I ran the half as a long run for my xc training.

Giving us that information at the beginning would have helped as we consider our advice to you. Knowing you are much further along that what was originally shared, I feel better about you competing in the event. However, I still agree with others-it's not the best thing for someone young and undisciplined. *No offense.

Can you do a half ironman anywhere in May that would give you an idea of what it will be like?

What bike do you have-is it yours or you borrowing one?

I'm going to strongly disagree with everyone saying not to do it. Dude, you only are 18 once, if this is exciting and motivating, 1000% go for it! That said, they are right that you could injure yourself or hurt development, so you do have to be smart in the buildup.

Running a 1:19 half is faster than 95% of the entrants will ever be able to run, so you're well ahead of the field and likely have a decent aerobic base (especially in running). The biggest thing is to build up endurance especially on the bike, as LP is one of the harder and slower bike courses amongst all races. You'll want to build up the volume on the bike a ton from the 20 mile you said that you're doing now. Consistency is far more important than big rides, so try to ride 4-5 days per week. Include one weekend long ride where you GRADUALLY work up to a 5-6 hour ride a month or 2 out from the race. As you're building, keep most of the rides especially the long ride easy. Given the course, once you have more volume build up, dedicate maybe 1 ride per week into some hill/strength work, but don't kill yourself there, just to build resilience in the legs.

Like others have said, make sure you listen to our body as your building up. If you're tired and sore, take a day off training and go for a walk, or kick/throw a ball with friends. Remember to keep this fun, an IM requires a lot of volume and to enjoy the sport you have to keep it enjoyable, especially as you're getting into it. Try to find others to run (probably from your school team, see if you can do a couple swims with your swim team too) and ride with near you.

I'm racing LP myself with a goal/dream of being top 3 amateur, in my late 20s now and been serious in the sport since I graduated college where I first got into it, so feel free to hit me up with any questions or if I can help at all. Would love to meet there too, it's super cool to get younger folks like yourself into and motivated about long course tri. Good luck!

Ok you know what you're doing. Sub-9 & pro card in 1st IM attempt with zero consequences to long term development. I'm glad you seem to be confident with each discipline. IM success is dictated by lifetime mileage/volume. 3-4k every day is good. That would put you over 20k every single week. An 8 hour ride is good but it's about stacking up 2-5 hour rides. 1hr/20 miles a day is fine. If you're doing that with 1 super long ride & think you're good then you could be in trouble. You just need to have a good feel for what lines you can't cross in training/racing. IM LP bike course is hilly. It's not about time trialing a best bike split. You need to ride for an effort that allows you to run well.

go to training peaks and buy a full distance plan that matches your hours/week availability; stick to the plan and good luck