Have you seen the IRONMAN Frankfurt results? Kristian Blummenfelt broke his own course record to win back-to-back Ironman European Championships. His secret weapon? A scorching 2:30 marathon after big workouts two weeks and one week before the race. Teammates Casper Stornes and Gustav Iden made it three Norwegians in the top four.
The Race
Kristian Blummenfelt’s first self-coached season continues to be his best yet, winning his third consecutive IRONMAN event to head toward the world championship in Nice, France, ranked #1 in the world and as the overwhelming favorite. Even against a field that included defending world champ Patrick Lange—considered by many to be the best runner the sport has ever seen—the story of the day was all about Blummenfelt’s run, which shows that he’s still getting faster at age 31.
“KB” made a decisive move on the bike to distance himself from Lange, but he was still in the rare position of chasing throughout most of the marathon, as Denmark’s Kristian Hogenhaug rode more than eight minutes faster to take a seemingly-insurmountable advantage onto the run. Blummenfelt began the chase alongside Stornes, who was the only one able to match his early pace, but KB set off on his own on the final lap to catch and pass Hogenhaug and break the tape in 7:25:57, more than two minutes ahead of his Danish rival.
For a while it looked as though he’d become just the second athlete ever to break the 2:30 barrier for an Ironman run (Brazil’s Manoel Messias ran 2:26:50 at Ironman Brazil this year), but he slowed his pace a bit after taking control of the lead to clock a final marathon split of 2:30:59. It’s still more than three minutes faster than his marathon from his win at Ironman Texas in April. At each of the Ironman 70.3 events he’s raced this year, KB has clocked a split in the low 1:07s, showing that his run is in better form than ever before as he takes aim at a second Ironman world title in Nice on September 14.
A big day a fortnight out
As he always does for a big Ironman event, KB’s build for Frankfurt peaked two weeks out from race day, with a simulated “almost” Ironman. The big difference for this build compared to past ones was that it was mainly spent in Norway, and that meant tackling terrain much more extreme than he’d face in Frankfurt.
KB’s “Super Sunday” Pre-Race Ride
Alongside Stornes and Iden, KB finished 110 miles in 4 hours and 51 minutes in the mountains and fjords north of Bergen, climbing nearly 9,000 feet in the process. That’s more than 3,000 more feet of climbing than the Frankfurt course, and then the went nearly immediately into an 18-mile run that started easy before dropping down to race pace—and even faster.
Kristian Blummenfelt’s Pre-Race Run: Soft Build
A Super Sunday Twist
This is a bit of a new wrinkle in Blummenfelt’s training, and shows that he’s willing to take some bigger risks to find even more fitness. In past years, his “Super Sunday” run two weeks out from an Ironman would’ve built up to race pace and stayed there. This time, KB dropped the hammer all the way down to a 5:10 pace for mile 18 (2:15 marathon pace), which was surely well beyond what he hoped to hold in Frankfurt. In his quest for even more even more speed, he’s doing exactly that: injecting more super-threshold work into even his longest workouts.
One Week Pre-Race Brick
One week later—just a week out from race day—KB did another 100-mile ride and 18-mile run, but this time split them between two days. The run was still nearly the same intensity, and he did an easy 33-mile ride just before, to bring the total bike mileage of the weekend to 133.
It may not seem like much of a taper, but the final six days before race day were truly relaxed, with a touch of intensity in the pool, one trainer session, and a couple of light runs of roughly an hour. If his marathon performance in Frankfurt is any indication, he probably won’t change the approach too much for Nice, even as most of his competition will be dialing back the stimulus much sooner than one week out. With no other races firmly on his schedule between now and September 14, expect to see some massive weekend workouts from KB and crew posted on Strava shortly.
What Can We Learn from Kristian Blummenfelt’s IRONMAN European Championship?
A favorite athlete of mine used to say, “Overtrain until it’s no longer overtraining.” He got injured and retired, but he was [almost] onto something. As I wrote in The Norwegian Method, KB’s final weeks of race prep were considered insane when he first made the jump to Ironman racing.
Back in those days, the typical taper was three (or even four) weeks, often with long rides and runs completely removed.
Then Blummenfelt (and Iden) came into Ironman armed with years upon years of high-volume training, so that removing these longer workouts would be far too much of a reduction in volume.
What seems to be working for them is to have their biggest days two weeks out from race day and follow that up with another (relatively) big weekend one week out.
The taper in volume and intensity comes from the workouts in between, and even there, the idea is not to change too much from what’s been working for months (and years).
CAVEAT: You should not do a simulated “almost” Ironman 14 days before your next race.
(Or a simulated “almost” marathon two weeks before your next marathon, for that matter.)
But every weekend of a race build should be a bit of a dress rehearsal, and that shouldn’t disappear one or two weeks out.
A well-executed taper is just that: a slight reduction. The resting part should be saved for the final couple days before the race.
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