Combined, he has biked, swum and run about 5,000 miles in eight months of training, but Adam Peruta, assistant professor of strategic communication, still “freaks out” when he arrives at his latest triathlon undertaking and sees the 2,300 participants he’ll compete with.
While most other Ithaca College professors and students were home relaxing during Thanksgiving Break, Peruta was putting his body through one of the most challenging tests of endurance there is — the Ironman, a triathlon that is made up of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run, on Nov. 23 in Tempe, Ariz. He finished the course in 11 hours and 57 minutes, three minutes faster than his goal of 12 hours.
Greg Millington, Peruta’s roommate from when he attended Syracuse University, made the trip out to Arizona with him.
“He surpassed even his own expectations,” Millington said. “He did all of his times exactly. It was uncanny how he predicted every time.”
Peruta started competing in marathons about two years ago and has worked his way up since. When he was ready to move from marathons to triathlons, he said he went out and bought a bike — the only tool that he needed — and left the rest up to his body. He started with three sprint triathlons, the shortest triathlons, but said at first he really had no idea what he was doing.
“I was always one of those people who said, ‘Running for fun? I would never do that,’” Peruta said. “Then about two years ago, I just wanted a challenge. I decided to take on something different, do something unexpected.”
Peruta began training for the Ironman in early February, and hired a coach, Kristen Roe, to get him to the level he needed to be at.
“He was kind of starting at zero,” Roe said.
Every week, Roe put together a training plan that involved a repeating cycle of six weeks of working out, followed by one day off. The training plan usually kept to one discipline a day and added up to about 15 to 20 hours a week.
Millington, who teamed up with Peruta in the Cayuga Lake Triathlon in August, said he was shocked at the training plan for the Ironman.
“He did some pretty intense workouts so even if I had wanted to do them, after hearing what he was about to do, I don’t think I would have been able to,”
Millington said.
Though weight lifting is recommended, Peruta stuck strictly to swimming, biking and running to train, but he plans on adding weight lifting to his training plan during the winter. Prior to the race, he spent three weeks tapering, or resting.
“When you’re tapering after you’ve been working out so much, you feel like you’re doing nothing,” Peruta said.
The Ironman is not just about working out though. Peruta said there is a fourth event to triathlons people disregard: nutrition. Though he did not go on any sort of diet, he did make a conscious effort to eat healthier by not eating junk food or fast food.
During the biking and running portions of the competition, he also had to make sure he stayed hydrated and maintained his nutrition, especially in the 82 degree weather of the desert, by drinking water or Gatorade and eating Power Bars or energy gels. While many participants walked through the aid stations, Peruta was determined to never walk or stop.
“Drinking anything while running is difficult, so I ended up with half of everything on my face, chest and legs,” Peruta said. “Luckily, they also handed out sponges soaked in water.”
While he was able to finish under his overall goal, he also managed to finish four minutes below his expectations in the swim, which he considers his worst event.
“Before last year, it had probably been 15 years since I swam laps in a pool,” Peruta said. “I’ve never liked swimming, in fact, I’ve hated swimming.”
Roe said with his strength on the bike and in running, he had potential to do very well down the road, so she focused on swimming with him.
“If you’re not a swimmer, it’s a very small part of the race, but it can make you or break you,” Roe said. “If you’re really struggling in the water, you’re going to expend a lot of energy. The more energy spent in the swim is taking away from any energy that you’ll need later on for the bike or the run.”
Swimming in a pool or in the open water alone is nothing like swimming during the Ironman though. When 2,300 people start swimming all at once — the calmness of the water is nonexistent and swimming becomes a full-contact sport. Peruta said it took a few minutes for his face to even touch the water as he was forced to swim on top of people. He got punched, kicked, elbowed and possibly even bitten as he struggled to break away from the crowd during the first 20 minutes before finding a rhythm, he said.
From there, he said, the rest of the day went by quickly.
“I don’t want to say it was easy, but it was weird,” he said. “I didn’t really think about it, the day just went by so fast. It seemed like, before I knew it, it was over.”
But with that, Peruta finally realized he was an Ironman before the race even began.
“A few people told me that you are an Ironman when you get to the start line,” Peruta said. “All the training, preparation, suffering and sacrificing you have done to get to the starting line makes you an Ironman. The race is just a celebration.”