How to train for an Ironman with a full-time job
Training for an Ironman is no walk in the park – it takes serious commitment, sacrifice, and time. Juggling long sessions and frequent double training days with a full-time job is always going to be difficult, but that shouldn’t stop you from achieving your Ironman dream.
Here’s a few tips to help you train for an Ironman around your full-time job.
Get a realistic view of your available training time
At the start of a training block, it’s easy to tell yourself that you’ll have time for 20 hours per week of training and that you’ll never miss a workout. It’s great to have ambitious targets, but being realistic is more important.
Start by doing the maths. Work back from the 168 hours in a week to find out how much time you can realistically spend training (at maximum).
Let’s take a typical example:
Work + commute (9 hours/day): 45 hours
Breakfast + dinner (2 hours/day): 14 hours
Family/personal time (2 hours/day): 14 hours
Social commitments: 2 hours/week
Life admin: 3 hours/week
Buffer (just in case): 7 hours/week
Sleep (8 hours/night): 56 hours/week
That totals 137.5 hours, leaving 27 hours for training and recovery.
That sounds like a lot, but remember: you’ll need a good portion of that for decompressing, stretching, mobility, or just lying on the sofa. Most people with a 9–5 job will max out around 25 hours in their biggest training week — and far less most of the time. If you can average 10+ hours consistently for a long time, you’ll be on course to complete an Ironman.
Learn to say no to (some) things
This tip is often taken too far. Ironman should not come at the expense of everything else that makes you happy – a happy athlete is usually going to train better than a miserable one. With that said, you’re undertaking a huge challenge, so there are times when you will have to be comfortable saying no to things.
At the beginning of your training, you can be pretty flexible, but as you get closer to your event (definitely in the last 2-3 months of training), you might want to follow some general guidelines…
Say no to:
Late nights out when you have a training session in the morning (spoiler: you won’t train).
Whole weekends away. You need that time for your key sessions.
Extra responsibilities you don’t have time for. This probably isn’t the time to start a side-hustle.
Alcohol. Save it for the finish line – it’ll taste better.
Don’t say no to:
Going to a wedding/birthday/family event. Continue to make memories - you can’t get those back.
Seeing your friends. Everyone needs a solid support network (people to tell about how you’re training for an Ironman).
Accept the inevitable: it won’t always go to plan
Even with the best coach, the most realistic expectations of your available training time, and incredible self discipline, it’s inevitable that something will come up disrupts your training. That’s fine, accept it.
Part of the challenge in training for an Ironman is learning to adapt to the unexpected and not beat yourself up when it goes wrong. If you’re forced to stay late at work or your childcare falls through and you miss a training session, accept it, reassess and adapt (see the next tip to make this easier).
If all else fails and you miss a training session that you can’t reschedule, it’s fine – rest is training too.
Front-load your training
This is my number one tip for success in Ironman training: front-loading.
A lot of coaches like to give Monday as a rest day after the weekend which usually has some big sessions. I’m not a fan of this approach for two reasons:
I prefer to give my athletes active recovery rather than a full rest day. A swim or a gentle bike ride will help to get the blood flowing and aid recovery – often leaving athletes feeling much fresher than if they sat around doing nothing.
It’s takes away your buffer against the unexpected. If you take Monday as a rest day, and then you have something unexpected on Wednesday that means you can’t train, then you have less space to adjust your training.
If you get a head start on your training early in the week, not only does it make you feel better, but it means you have more flexibility to adjust if something goes wrong. The same concept applies on a daily basis: get your workouts in early in the day if you can.
Need a coach?
If you’re thinking about taking on the challenge of an Ironman, get it touch.