Top 15 AG Placing at IRONMAN World Championships with Norman Banick – Successful Athletes Podcast 003

How Norman Banick went 9:11:09 and top 15 in his age group at IRONMAN World Championships in Kona, Hawaii in 2019.


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Hey guys,

I just read the youtube comment and was a bit puzzled about the opinion of one of the viewers.
Feel free to ask any question if you have any regarding that topic. Would definitely worry me a bit if the impression was that I’m “stealing other AGs their Kona slots”.

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Hi Norman,
do not worry about the comment. I feel that these deep dives into how people have managed to qualify very interesting and inspiring. Bike power versus bike split (i.e. mostly power/CdA) is something many age groupers do not pay enough attention to and improving on that could very well be the best way to improve the overall IM performance for many. Also, all the detail on how you executed the race was very interesting. Thanks for sharing and good luck with upcoming races!

These aren’t on Spotify yet?

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The podcast have been uploaded to Spotify, and we are just now waiting on some processing on their end. They should all be available on Spotify very soon. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This one showed up in my RSS feed a week or more back - but when I download it I get Episode 2. Just refreshed and still have the issue. Possibly a link to the wrong file in the feed? Episode name and description match Episode 3, but the audio is Episode 2

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I don’t have that feeling at all. If you had been sprinting to the finish line with Frodeno then I would agree with him. But you put up an incredibly impressive time while working a full time job. Just look at the phrase “Professional Triathlete”. ‘Professional’ means that it is a primary income source and, as you said, you make little to no money doing this. Just because you are very good at sport doesn’t mean that you should be a pro at it. If that guy has a real problem with it then maybe he should talk to Ironman about how they classify athletes and not you. Keep doing what you are doing!

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Hi @norman this may be a stupid question but I’m planning on giving your nutrition mix a try and wanted to ask how you take it in. Do you make the mix according to the recipe vs. Duration and then have it as is in a separate bottle or watered down in a few bottles? How would you take it onboard for a training ride 2 hours long for example? Congrats on the finish, truly inspiring!

Hey NickThomas,
thanks!

Yes, I mix it in a separate bottle according to the recipe. In my opinion this is the best way because you can always get more water bottles at any competition and don’t have to rely on the isotonic mix they provide. So it’s usually taking a sip from the nutrition bottle and some more from the water bottle.
During training it’s basically the same. One nutrition bottle and one with water. The only difference is that I vary the carbs a bit depending on the intensity and duration of the ride

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Listening now on Spotify

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Hi Norman! What running training plan are following? What your running volume looks like over a whole training cycle?

@norman you may have mentioned this in your kona podcast but what sort of atheltic history did you have as a child and also when you did your first Ironman was your time and splits?

@Tucker, I still see nothing on Soundcloud in the regular TR channel or any other name. Is this headed to SC or do I need to find a new outlet?

@norman: can you please share a link to your nutrition mix? Is it similar to what is posted on the triathlonszene website? Maltodextrin Ernährungskonzept für LD - triathlon-szene.de | Europas aktivstes Triathlon Forum

Rock on and thanks,

elvis

@Jonathanashby
I write most of my training plans on my own. Nowadays I use TR as my framework for cycling and followed the plans a lot closer from 2016 - 2018. For running I usually try to do as much runs with my training buddys as possible so I try to stay fairly flexible with my schedule.
For IM Vichy the rough outline was to do a lot of economisation. The years before I spent a lot of time to get faster but I felt that the economisation still was were I had the biggest deficit. So the idea was to limit the hard runs at upper tempo pace (approx. 3:50min/km) or threshold (bit faster) if I feel really awesome. Usually did that once or twice a week for 10-16km during lunch break and fairly regularly make it a double run day with adding a slow 15k in the evening. It felt that at some point running 4min/kms wasn’t really tough anymore and it added some high quality mileage day during the week.

My training log says most weeks were between 30km and 80km with an average of 48km. Nothing too crazy but fairly consistent.
In 2019 I increased the mileage by only a few km but switched to a more polarized approach with more really fast interval workouts. As mentioned in the podcast this definitely made me a faster runner (got a solo 10k and 21k PR) even though Kona didn’t really reflect it that much compared to Vichy which was mostly due to heat though.

@Simo429
Nothing spectacular really… As a child, I played 7 or 8 years of football (or soccer if you’re from the US ;)) but had to stop due to massive knee problems. Started road cycling with 17 and tried some road races but failed horribly as well. If I remember correctly I never managed to finish (as in stay with the main group) a single race in 2 years. Started running and triathlon with 21yrs. First IM was in UK which had a hilly bike course so the splits were something like 1:00/5:30/3:30 and only missed the slot by very few minutes. Tried again the year later in Nice and finished with an underwhelming ~11h performance.
Stopped doing sports for 2-3 years after that and started again in 2016 were I qualified at Ironman Wales.

@elvis
Yes, it’s exactly the same as the triathlon-szene. So, not at all “my nutrition mix” just the one I’m using.

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Currently, the Successful Athletes Podcast is available on every channel, other than SoundCloud, Spotify, and Stitcher.

This is due to extra time needed to process the new podcasts. I do apologize for the inconvenience this might cause some listeners. Regardless, they will be available through all the usual channels soon.

For now, I recommend checking out Google or Apple Podcasts as every episode of the SAP is available there:

Thanks for everyone’s patience as we get these podcasts rolled out. :+1:

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