Crazy? Sketicism, doubt, confidence
Kona, Big Island, Hawai’i, October 11, 2013, three o’clock in the afternoon, 38 degrees Celsius and 80 percent humidity. I am standing in the queue of waiting triathletes to register myself and my bike for the upcoming Ironman, the world championship of the best professional and age-group athletes from all over the world. Progress is slow, so you automatically strike up a conversation with others, some of whom have been working towards this big day for years in order to finally qualify. A lifelong goal for many triathletes.
The anticipation, but also a pleasantly tense atmosphere, is great. Alice, a 45-year-old Australian woman, wiry and well-trained, asks me where I’m from and how old I am. We chat casually. Of course, the recurring question on the island these days comes pretty quickly: “How many times have you been here?” She is amazed that I’m here for the first time at the age of 67. Then, when I point out: “Yes, and for the first and definitely the only time”, she smiles and answers: “They always say: once and never again, but they all come back.” In other words, the myth of Ironman Hawaii never lets you go, no matter how much you have suffered and sworn to yourself on that one long day out in the lava desert: Never again!
Never again? And yet!
Yes, and it’s actually happening to me now. I had long since finished with my competitive sporting activities. Hawai’i as the last, one-off highlight, and that was it! In the following years, sport more or less faded into the background, leaving me with nice, sometimes long bike rides and regular strength training to compensate. After all!
A year ago, the thought suddenly occurred to me that 2013 might not be my last sporting challenge after all. And as I’ve always had a passion for tackling big projects, the idea was obvious: why not do another Ironman? A pipe dream? At my age? Ten years without running training, and ten years older again? Crazy?
My sweetheart, Lucretia, was the first to be enthusiastic about the idea, which of course gave me an immediate inner boost. She knows me and knows what’s good for me. For months afterwards, I toyed with the idea, discarded it and then took it up again. My thoughts and conversations went back and forth for weeks, until finally the decision was made. Yes, I want to! Even at the age of 78, I can still have dreams and wishes and projects if I am driven by passion. I get a lot of support, but also a lot of skepticism (“Why are you still doing this to yourself?” or something similar).
Basis: My metabolic profile
Finally, I meet with Dan Aeschlimann, the top address among Swiss triathlete coaches. I know him from a training camp in Gran Canaria, also a while ago: that was in 2006. Performance test on the ergometer, scientific evaluation. Well, the V02max value still looks anything but intoxicating. But when I compare it with the values for my age category, I’m somewhere between “good” and “excellent”. Not too bad for a start. That was last summer.
Based on the metabolic profile determined with the performance test, Dan creates training plans tailored to my level. That’s how I’ve been training since last October. Before that, I had a bad fall on a bike tour in southern Italy, badly bruised my thigh, but nothing broken. However: two months on crutches. From November onwards, I really started structured training. Digital training plans, using the modern training software azum.com. The finest!
My “construction sites”
“I was pretty skeptical at first when you came to me with your project,” says Dan today. “I quickly realized that there were still a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied up.” Above all, Dan remembered that I had given up all running training for ten years when I had practically stopped. “After the performance test, my concerns didn’t get any worse,” added Dan.
Strength training in old age as a real game changer
On the other hand, Dan thinks it’s good that I signed up so early and that we have almost three years. “The first steps were to get Ruedi ready for the right training intensities. I noticed that he was usually training far too hard and too intensively and was therefore unnecessarily exhausting himself, i.e. breaking down instead of building up. He implemented these corrections quickly and well.” My biggest challenge for Dan remains to achieve a sufficient running performance again. On the other hand, he’s confident that I’m keeping up my regular strength training, “a real game changer at an advanced age”, in Dan’s opinion. According to Dan, I can currently be satisfied and confident: my performance has increased by around 20 percent since last October. But: “There’s still a very, very long way to go.”
