Lionel Sanders (pictured above winning Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant in June) heads to the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, with yet another training plan. This one, though, isn’t new – the Canadian says he’s going back to some of the training that helped him to a runner-up finish in Kona in 2017.
“I don’t think there is (one) way to train for an Ironman,” he said in a video posted on his YouTube channel. “I think everyone is unique.”
Do I think you should do what I am doing? Absolutely not,” he continued. “Should I be doing what Kristian (Blummenfelt) is doing? I tried that. I did OK. For the first half of 2022, I did that …”
In the end that training didn’t work – while Blummenfelt would finish third in Kona that year, Sanders struggled across the line in 33rd.
“For me, I’ve done 22 Ironmans, and I’ve amassed the data, and all I can say what I need to do my best in an Ironman, it’s not what Kristian needs, not what Gustav (Iden) needs and it isn’t what (Sam) Laidlow needs, it’s what I need,” he said. “So, if there’s a moral from this story, it’s ‘who cares what those guys are doing…’ I spent a decade learning about myself, and spent the last three or four years copying other people but I already knew what I needed to do for me, but I didn’t stick to it.”
In the video Sanders said that he’s following a lot of the training he did leading up to his best finishes on the Big Island, doing his best to push his limits, but also ensure he’s not overtrained.
