Patience, Courage, Trust, Loyalty ….

I typically don’t single out athletes with big stories about race success unless it is truly exceptional, and when I say exceptional it’s not always about placing or time … it’s about individual performance against themselves and the clock. I’m going to take this opportunity to single someone out for not so much an exceptional performance in race time, but more for the road and the story traveled to get there.


I’ve been working with Chuck Sloan for a number of years through great short course racing results at the international level and currently through the transition to long distance racing. So many folks just assumed that because someone can go very fast at the short distance they instantly go “fast” over the longer distances. While Chuck has had success at the longer distance up to this point it hasn’t always been pretty. Speed doesn’t = endurance AND things don’t always “go your way”.

PART 1 --After racing the Ironman World Championship in 2009 we were humbled and the “Irishman” (he’s originally from Montana actually) had no intention of going back for 2010 … that was until his wife re-qualified at Ironman Florida and they decided they needed to honeymoon in Hawaii. Then I got the phone call … “Hey Dave, let’s do it!” I tell him I’m on board but the question he asked was “How do we qualify … most of all the Ironman qualifying races that make sense are full”. The end of the conversation came down to a decision to race Buffalo Springs Ironman 70.3. In that decision we both realized … winning the age group is the only way to be sure of the spot!

Fast forward to June of 2010 and the buildup has been pretty good including nice early season race results, but also some race “issues” to sort through and conquer. Coming into the BSLT 70.3 Chuck ended up with an acute hamstring injury and he did virtually no running (his racing strength) for 3 weeks going into the race. We took a risk in the race strategy and thought he might need to win this thing on the swim-bike combo and not the run. When the dust settled it was a front pack swim, an exit from the bike with the leaders, and a “steady” run that notched him an unorthodox (for him) but confidence building win and the slot to the World Championship in October.

PART 2 – The next piece of the puzzle included recovery, light training, a wedding and then starting the build for the second half of the season. Once we got going again the training started to move along OK. Then in early August the next hurdle runs out in front of Chuck in the form of dog while he was travelling 30moh on the bike. The result? A broken wrist and ensuing surgery, a beat up ankle that limited running (especially long running) well into September and other smaller issues. The biggest problems with the wrist surgery were: no swimming for a few weeks, no outdoor riding until mid September and the one thing that do-able, the run, was severely limited because of the crash. Toward the end of August we were days away from pulling the plug when we decided to give it a chance.

We were able to get into a training routine but didn’t have much time for a proper build so a detour was taken. The decision was made to keep training load high up until 7-10 days out from the race since we hadn’t built up enough fatigue to do a normal “freshening period” or “taper”. The other decision was going to be a very conservative race plan to allow for an even output race effort. Essentially we did the best we could with the time we had and rolled the dice. OH, the other thing … Chuck wasn’t cleared to ride outside until less than 3 weeks before race day. Therefore, before travelling to the race he only did three rides outdoors because of his wrist. For those of you that ride indoor trainers you know that it can be mentally and physically challenging to do even a 90 minute session … try doing all your sessions including 4-5 hour ones on the trainer!

TO THE RACE – Pre-Race Chuck had a certain calm confidence around him that we strive for and I was sure he would execute his race with the tools available to him on that day. It’s not an easy task to pace to current fitness (as opposed to what we thought was possible in early August) when you have a motivated brain, and a body full of adrenalin and emotion … but I felt calm about how he would handle things. Reality is, just getting to the start line in that condition was a victory in itself. To simply be at that point took a lot of patience, courage, determination and trust … and the gun hasn’t even fired yet! On to the race itself …

-A year of smarter and more swimming paid off … almost four minutes better than the year previous, PROGRESS!

-On to the bike and we had laid out a plan that was solid, albeit a little conservative, to make sure that we stayed within the levels of current fitness and set up what we hoped would be a steady run. Early on the bike we started getting some really slow splits from the course and figured Chuck had a mechanical. (oh no) Slow splits turned to no splits at 60 miles (OH SHIT) and we were almost resigned to thinking that the day was over when his splits showed up at mile 60 and mile 88. Things were back to looking OK except for a REALLY slow stretch between mile 5 and 28 … normally the fastest section of the course.

-Chuck hit the run course looking relaxed and let me know he had a “mechanical” … but was doing OK. He managed to pace an incredibly smart run and finished the day running 3:03 which was very special considering the lead up to the race. On the inside we know there was more to it than just a well paced run … ;-) When the dust settled Chuck had an Ironman PB of over 11 minutes created through periods of adversity.


Loyalty …. The biggest story that comes from the day was when I heard of his “mechanical”. Around the 8 mile mark of the bike he started thinking that he hadn’t secured the rear skewer on his wife’s bike at check in the day before. Since he couldn’t get rid of that thought, and in his words; “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her and I knew exactly what I was sacrificing” he decided to stop and wait for her at the side of the road! When it was all said and done we figured (by looking at his power meter after) that he lost up to 10 minutes waiting for Jennifer! Jens coach and I joked that he was lucky she was swimming and riding well ;-) You can do the math of how that might have changed his race time, or what was sacrificed in the process, but when the ENTIRE "trip" was done and dusted we could be sure of one thing. When you talk about Mr. Sloan it is synonymous with: Patience, Courage, Trust, AND Loyalty

The day after the race, at the awards dinner, we talked for a little while and theorized a bit about the race and his future with it. We agreed on some things that worked (or didn’t) and then my words to him were simple … “we still have more work to do”. He looked at me and didn’t say a word, he just gave me the look … if you are friends with Chuck you may know the look, the look of the motivated Irishman. Beware the motivated Irishman ;-)