Muffin Man Ingredient #3: Perserverance

Remember these people?

Yes, my peeps who pulled a handcart across the plains.  Whenever I was having a hard time, I thought of them.  My pain was self-inflicted.  I could have stopped at any time, and who would have cared?  But I come from stubborn stock.  I made a goal and I wanted to stick with it.  

However, this clip from Sealab 2021 came to mind several times.  How to keep from being incredibly bored?  Podcasts like "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!", "Car Talk" and "Fresh Air" were more helpful to me while riding and running than music.  Swimming was just a mental game, trying to think of ways to break down the laps into manageable bites.

It would have been nice to have people to train with, but:

1)  I'm socially kind of backwards and have a hard time asking people to join me and
2)  It's hard to find people with the same interests, pace and time (but that can be overcome, if you are not socially backward).

Another way to break the monotony is to pick different locations for your run, ride and swim.  I do know people who had to do much of their Muffin Man indoors due to time and other constraints.  I am lucky to live in a beautiful city, and I was able to have this scenery to get me through:

The Coronado Bridge from Tidelands Park

Coronado Beach

Lake Miramar--a 5-mile loop

Lake Murray--a little over a 5 mile loop

Lake Murray

  Windansea Beach, La Jolla

San Diego Temple!!  I finally took the Rose Creek path to the Rose Canyon trail and over to the temple.  So easy!

Muffin Man Ingredient #2

The next ingredient is Time.  Like a good physics problem, the Muffin Man equation involves time and distance.  The distance if fixed, so it helps to have adequate time to complete the goal. Fortunately, I had the week off of work, with only three appointments to consider:  the Toro y Moi concert on Tuesday night; temple baptisms with the Youth on Wednesday night; and a dental appointment on Tuesday afternoon.  I had time to do long rides and runs, time to recover and replenish, and time to get to the places I wanted to do my events.  In total, I worked out for 16 hours over the six days of my Muffin Man.  (An Ironman has a 17 hour time limit, for reference.)   Remember, I am a slowpoke, and I hadn't been training much before that.  My runs were often run/walks.  Your results may vary.


My recording devices were my good, old Timex for the swims and MapMyRun app on my iPhone.

This was the time for my first 1.2 mile swim.  The next one, two days later, was ten minutes faster.

The longest ride was just over four hours (50 miles), and the longest run was two hours (11 miles).

What Makes a Muffin Man?

I finally did a Muffin Man!  That was 112 miles on a bike, 26.2 miles on foot and 2.4 miles swimming, all completed in six consecutive days.

What does it take to do a Muffin Man?  Over the next few days, I will share with you how I did mine.  Maybe you will be inspired to do your own.

Ingredient #1:  A Plan

You know what they say, "Plan to work; work the plan".

First, I broke down the distances into segments.  If you want to do something every day, the breakdown is this:

Run--3.75 mi/day
Swim--24.1 lengths/day (25 m pool)
Ride--16 mi/day

I wanted to finish it in five days, and I had most of each day to do long rides or runs.

Next, I worked the plan.  Not to say that I stuck to it exactly, but pretty close.  If you get behind, it just makes things more difficult.  On Friday, instead of riding 20 miles and running 5, I had to run 11 miles, in addition to riding the 20, because I didn't run 5 miles on Wednesday like I'd planned.  I also had to finish up with a 2.2 mile walk on Saturday.