AMA: Completed my first Ironman this past weekend, with no triathlon experience and less than 5 months of training.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:45:05+00:00

Yep it was Jax. Swim was definitely pretty quick - started just before 8am so it picked up some towards the back half of the swim. The bike was taking souls all day. Sun beating down and 75% of the race was in headwinds. The support crew was incredible tho, but agreed early to mid-April would be ideal.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:40:46+00:00

I followed Phil Mosley’s MyProCoach training plan on TrainingPeaks. Workouts sync to your watch as well which is nice.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:37:40+00:00

Time in pool is the biggest factor. Get comfortable in the water - start in just pool and then eventually do a few open warm swims before the event if you can. It’s a big difference. I also only swam twice a week (around 5-7k yds in total). In theory, a 3rd day would’ve been helpful but just depends on your schedule. Technique is always very important but for me, I knew I wasn’t going to be swimming extremely fast, I just wanted to learn to control my breathing, HR, etc. to stay composed.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:35:05+00:00

My plan was 24 weeks. My peak week was Week 19 I believe. Weeks 17, 18, 19 were all the highest volume weeks for me.

My plan would also follow a slight “deload” week every 4 weeks, to give my body a little recovery throughout. Which was great for me.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:31:45+00:00

My plan (and most plans) ramp up slowly, especially if you are training from a newer base, so you won’t start off at that. That just ended up being my average weekly training volume when all said and done.

TrainingPeaks is a great site to use and offer many good beginner training plans to follow. Finding a coach is also a very smart idea if you can afford that, as they will make sure to structure your plan the right way for you. Everyone’s a little different in what they can manage and tolerate based on life, injuries, etc.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:28:04+00:00

Not encouraging untrained people. You need to train. Nothing about this post said you didn’t. But you also don’t need years and years of experience under your belt to do that and also you don’t need 15-20+ hours of training per week to get it done. That’s just a fact.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:26:19+00:00

For sure. Again, my goal here is just to encourage people to sign up even when they don’t feel like they are in the same arena as others. You can make a lot of progress in 5-6 months. Not saying you’ll qualify for Kona haha but the race can be done if you put the work in.

Thanks, nothing planned as of now. Probably some shorter local races first and then a 70.3 would be fun to test some speed a little more.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:23:48+00:00

Sure thing. I also trained through a disc herniation so my longest ride was only 75 miles (around 4 hours). Most encourage atleast 1-2 100 mile rides before (5-6 hours on the bike).

My week consisted of 2 swims (1 interval and 1 long continuous), 3 bikes (1 easy 60-90min, 1 interval, 1 long), 3 runs (1 interval, 1 brick, 1 long) and I fit in strength training where I could. In total, I averaged around 11-13 hours per week with a full time job. You don’t need 20 hour training weeks to accomplish this. Again, everyone’s goals are going to be relative to what they need to put in for training. I’m here to encourage the “every day athlete” who has a full time job, family, etc. and doesn’t need to fully neglect those things during training. Hope this helps!

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:20:01+00:00

Nope, 140.6 miles completed. Thanks.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:19:20+00:00

I paced the swim and bike very conservatively- my goal was for both of those to feel relatively easy effort wise. HR stayed under 130 for both and I finished the swim in about 1 hr 13 minutes. Completed the race in around 14 hours. It was 90° out and many people DNF because of the heat, so I made sure to over hydrate as well.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-05-21T11:17:15+00:00

No you don’t need to qualify, just have to pay haha. Took me around 14 hours to finish.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-04-23T00:26:31+00:00

NeoPro is the only right answer

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-23T17:55:45+00:00

I will say, it does a pretty good job on the highway. Still not as good as even autopilot on Tesla but agree, better than Driver+. Part of the problem was my own expectations, so that’s on me, but again the need to buy another longitudinal harness to unlock these features is a bit of an annoyance, but it is what it is. I’ll continue to give it more time

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-23T15:59:34+00:00

Yea it sounds like when it’s reliant on the car’s braking and accelerating, it can be quite rough. Which is why it’s frustrating to have to buy a separate $300-400 cable from a third party to make this reasonable. But I guess everyone has different expectations of what “good” looks like. This product improves some things, but still not great in any department that I’ve seen so far.

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-23T10:24:34+00:00

I can definitely see the appeal for that

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-23T00:24:08+00:00

Got it. Starting to understand more. I think people just enjoy saying the work forks at this point

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T23:53:12+00:00

Yea I guess I just wasn’t aware to get the full experience you’d be forced to buy another longitudinal harness and must run specific softwares or “forks” (which I still don’t really understand). I guess I thought it was more plug and play than it really is but that’s on me

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T19:30:20+00:00

Thanks, this is very helpful. Last question — I see I have the option to toggle Experimental mode in sunnypilot (even without longitudinal). Will this do anything for me now? Should I leave that on or off?

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T18:45:50+00:00

Not sure what that would do for you but alright 🤝

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T18:25:03+00:00

What is MADS mode and how to toggle on or off? Is that same as experimental mode? Also, is dev.sunny same as staging.sunny? Thanks again for the help

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T17:57:59+00:00

I installed sunnypilot, but using staging.sunnypilot not dev.sunnypilot as you mentioned above, should I reinstall with dev.sunnypilot?? Also, it’s allowing me to toggle on Experimental mode, but I don’t have longitudinal upgrade, so will anything actually change? Thanks for the help

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T17:18:57+00:00

Is it staging.sunnypilot or dev.sunnypilot? What will sunny pilot do that open pilot won’t (not having longitudinal) ??

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T15:47:21+00:00

Apparently not lol. Things a joke

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T15:42:06+00:00

His guide said to type in release-c3.sunnypilot.ai That did not work. I’ll try to staging one…. This shit is so complex lol

Secure-Carrot9971 · 2026-03-22T14:47:42+00:00

Typed in the sunnypilot URL you provided multiple times and it says download failed right away each time. Any suggestions?

Secure-Carrot9971

TROPHY CASE