The hardest part of Ironman training is probably not what you think. As a newcomer to triathlon and the Ironman experience, I thought the swim would be the hardest part of my training. It wasn’t just my lack of technique, endurance, speed, buoyancy, and grace that worried me. Devoid of any discernible style known to the swimming community, I knew an anvil stood a better chance of finishing the swim leg of Ironman than me, but that wasn’t it. Swimming just seemed incompatible with my lifestyle and I didn’t know where to fit it into my schedule. However, that turned out to be one of the simplest problems to solve. Instead, I have come to realize that the hardest part of my training happens at 4:30 AM when my alarm clock goes off.

I have always been an early riser. That doesn’t mean I like waking up early. It means that for various reasons I have always had to wake up early. When I was in school, our wake-up call happened at around 5-5:30 AM. Classes started at 7 AM and the bus ride to school sometimes took well over half an hour. I remember distinctly sitting on the curb, freezing cold in the dark waiting for the bus to pick us up. It wasn’t fun and I simply accepted it as part of life. The weekends were slightly different but we still didn’t get much of a break because we had karate training in the morning. In the ninth and tenth grades I had military training at 6 AM on Saturdays. Try being a 14-year-old with a bed time of 9 PM on a Friday (Spoiler: no, I never went to bed at 9 PM on a Friday and it showed during training on Saturdays). Then I decided to go to college at the Air Force Academy and let me tell you, they really don’t like it when you sleep in late. Even on the weekends I had to get out of bed very early because I was either learning or teaching other cadets how to fly gliders. Karate, military training and soaring were all wonderful experiences and I am extremely grateful that I got to do them, but the part of the price was the early wake-up call.

A common phrase among triathletes is “I can’t, I have to be up at 4 AM” and this is really the crux of the problem. Triathlon requires discipline and discipline comes in many shapes and sizes. You have to follow a training plan and schedule and that requires some discipline. You have to follow a nutrition plan and that requires a different type of discipline. And, if you are like most of the triathletes I know, you have to wake up early. People like me have families, jobs, and other responsibilities that usually are one of the excuses we make to avoid getting involved in the sport. We just don’t have time, right? After training for about 6 months now I can unequivocally say that this is just not true. The time is there and it always has been, but you have to find it. And it just so happens that some of that time can be found well before dawn. It means that changes have to be made to your daily schedule and you probably will also need to go to bed earlier than you were used to. It means you will sometimes ride or run in the dark, and it will probably be a little cold. That’s when you have to really dig deep for your motivation: how bad do you want it? Once you are out of bed and get some inertia going, everything becomes a little easier and you get on with your training; it is just those first few minutes that get to me. I know I can dig deep during a particularly challenging run or swim and get it done. But getting started, that’s always the test.

There is also something that I’ve started calling the Society of Early Morning Training. Those are the people I come across before dawn. Some are jogging, some are riding their bikes, some are simply walking, and I can tell some are really pushing their limits. And we all wave at each other. It’s support from strangers bound only by the fact that we happened to share the same road very early in the morning. Some of them I  know by name, even if I have never talked to them, because they always show up in my Strava flybys. It may not seem like much but to me that simple act of saying hi is important  because I know they probably also struggled to get their shoes on earlier that day. We all have goals that we are trying to accomplish and part of the price to reach them is that we are out and about before the sun is up.

I am not going to pretend that my record is perfect. There have been many mornings when I have simply decided that I could not get up. The training still got done but it usually meant having to rearrange my entire schedule for the day. But the the early wake-up call has gotten easier and I have to come accept it as part of the triathlete life. I may not enjoy it but it serves me a reminder of the goals I have and the little things I am doing to get there. So off to bed I go.