Brett Miller never set out to become a hardcore triathlete who thinks nothing of swimming two miles, then riding 112 and finishing the day with a marathon. He just wanted to lose weight.
The 35-year-old operations manager started training for his first triathlon six years ago after packing on the pounds. He’d been making the most of San Francisco’s nightlife, hitting the bars with friends until the wee hours. He was smoking, he was drinking and he was giving zero thought to his health, and it was catching up to him fast.
“Someone took a photo of me and I didn’t recognize myself,” Miller recalls.
Something had to change. He’d done a triathlon with his father after graduating from college and liked it. So he turned to the tech-heavy sport to get his life in order. Before long, it was taking over.
“It is a bit like a drug where you need to get that next fix and it has to be better than the first time,” Miller says.
Miller downloads his data from a session on a CycleOps PowerBeam Trainer.
Talia Herman/WiredTriathletes are supreme athletes, but then, you have to be if you’re going to swim, bike and run in the same event. The distances vary, with the “easiest” of them including a 750-yard swim, 12-mile ride and a 3-mile run. At the extreme end are ultradistance events -- the Ironman being the most famous -- that require swimming 2.4 miles, riding 112 and running a full marathon. The most elite athletes do this in about 8 hours.
Miller has completed twelve half Ironmans and six full Ironmans, including the 2011 and 2012 world championships. They are among the most challenging of the 40 triathlons he’s done since seeing that photo of himself. (He’s also dropped from 250 to 180 pounds in that time.)
Miller always was an above-average athlete. He joined the summer swim team as a kid, and always enjoyed cycling. He also ran throughout high school, so he had the basic foundation for becoming a triathlete. But getting back in the game after years of inactivity wasn’t easy. He started his training, at age 28, with a simple two-mile run.
“I walked the last mile,” he says. “My back hurt. Everything hurt. My lungs were screaming at me.”
As part of his regular training regimen, Brett Miller runs on the Anti-Gravity Treadmill at the gym in San Francisco.
Talia Herman/WiredIf he was going to continue, he’d have to quit smoking. That helped. So did bringing structure to his life -- dedicating specific times to work and work out, being more social and getting to bed before 11.
Slowly, his fitness improved. When he finally competed in a race, the popular Treasure Island Triathlon, with his father, he was crushed by the result. He completed the sprint distance event in 3:06:06.
“My dad, who was in his 50s at the time, actually beat me, which was a sad, sad day,” Miller says.
Miller knew he’d have to kick his training into high gear. He soon became obsessed with the sport, spending as much as $4,000 annually on entry fees alone. He brought a laser’s focus to his training as it began to take over his life.
“In the deepest part of the obsession, I was waking up at 5 a.m. to swim or run, worked a normal job from 7 to 5, then went off to our cycling studio for a class, or track practice,” Miller says. He’d hit the the cycling studio after work and leave around 8 p.m.
Then there’s the gear. So much gear. Triathletes are gear junkies of the highest order, and Miller conservatively estimates he’s spent upward of $10,000 on bikes, bicycle components, and electronics like watches, power meters, heart rate monitors and more.
“In the beginning it was a stopwatch,” he says. “Then you had to add the heart rate monitor. Next up was the GPS watch. In the last few years, the power meter for your bike became the necessary piece.”
Given that triathlons require mastery of three sports, it isn’t unusual to see top-level athletes like Miller with a garage full of lustworthy hardware -- and they’re always on the lookout for what’s new and hot. Anything that might shave a fraction of a second of their time is worth checking out.
Miller rides a Trek Madone around town and a Cervelo P2 during races. For running, he dons a pair of Hoka One One’s. They’re “very goofy,” he says, but designed to absorb impact, making them ideal for distance runners. Miller also enjoys listening to music while he trains, using a TuneBug Shake in his helmet on rides and a Sonic Walk Lightning speaker or iPod shuffle during runs.
Swimming is Miller’s Achilles heel. He spends a lot of time in the pool, and occasionally augments his laps with time on a Vasa Trainer, which is essentially a treadmill for swimming.
Miller prefers to train outdoors, but his busy schedule as an operations manager for Nakajima USA and a part-time tri coach sometimes requires grabbing a workout indoors. For that, he’ll hit a high-speed treadmill that goes up to 16 mph or an antigravity treadmill that lets you increase your training volume while mitigating the threat of injury.
Triathletes are data-driven, constantly tracking everything from how fast their heart is beating to how much power they’re generating. Miller’s got a Garmin 310XT GPS watch (with heart rate monitor) around his wrist and a CycleOps PowerTap Hub on his bike to monitor his performance and power while training.
He also uses a slew of apps to parse all that data. Training Peaks helps him manage his training schedule. Strava provides motivation, letting him compare his numbers to past performances and against other athletes. Before discovering Strava, Miller used Daily Mile, which he calls a “Facebook for athletes,” to share his accomplishments with friends.
Changing after the gym.
Talia Herman/WiredTraining for an event like an Ironman is a huge investment of time. Miller will spend as long as 18 hours a week at the gym, on the road or in the pool. During the week, he’ll devote two hours or so to training each day, usually working on two of the three disciplines and mixing in some core training. Weekends are even more intense -- one of the two days is spent riding five hours; the other is dedicated to a one-hour swim followed by a two-hour run.
Doing this requires careful attention to nutrition. Miller consumes 2,500 to 3,000 calories daily, which isn’t much more than the 2,000 calories the FDA recommends the rest of us get. His daily fare is fairly pedestrian: steel cut oats for breakfast; fruit, granola, and goat cheese as snacks during the day; a turkey sandwich with veggies and hummus and tortilla chips for lunch; and turkey quinoa meatloaf paired with parsnips for dinner. No room for Mickey D’s or Bay Area restaurant fare in that routine.
The mental preparation is no less intense, or important, than the physical training. Much of his mental conditioning comes from simply putting in the miles and training with friends. His coach helps keep him centered and focused as well.
“He acts as a sports psychologist in some aspects, giving us mantras and visualization drills to put us in a good place in our head,” Miller says. His coach’s favorite mantra? “As the race gets longer, I get stronger.”
A few weeks before tackling an event like Ironman, Miller says you must feel confident you’ll be able to complete all those events without becoming “a lump on the side of the road.” Past failures have to be pushed from your mind, so that voice of negativity doesn’t derail you.
Miller says there are two points in every competition where things get tough for him. The first comes about two-thirds of the way through the ride, when his feet start to hurt and his neck and back tighten up from mile after mile stretched out in the aero position. The second comes at the 18-mile mark of the run, a point marathoners know as “the wall.”
To scale that wall, Miller makes a mental checkup to put his performance in perspective, then does some self-affirmation. Still, an Ironman is difficult for even the best athletes, and there invariably are races that are a bear to finish.
“The last 8 miles of Ironman New York was probably the worst I’ve ever felt in a race, with people constantly passing me,” Miller says. He was injured, and wasn’t as fit as he would have liked to be. “That can be a landslide effect on your mental state once you start getting passed.”
That said, Miller’s found he can occasionally use a difficult situation to his advantage, drawing inspiration and determination from it.
Talia Herman/Wired“One of the most fulfilling races in my life was the weekend after my grandmother passed last year,” Miller says. He wanted to head back east to visit family and attend her funeral, but the cost and timing was a problem -- especially given he was competing in the Wildflower triathlon in Monterey, California. His dad told him to race in her memory, given that the event was the same day as her funeral.
“Her face was in my mind the whole time,” Miller says. “When my legs didn't want to go any faster with four miles left, I concentrated on her memory and the pain went away. I put in the best race of my life because of it.”
Triathletes are gear junkies of the highest order, and Miller conservatively estimates he’s spent upward of $10,000 on bikes, bicycle components, and electronics like watches, power meters, heart rate monitors and more.
But the most difficult part of preparing for a triathlon is not letting it take over your life. Miller’s seen a lot of people sacrifice their friendships and marriages for the sport.
“The balance is a very real thing that either needs to be planned, or understood,” Miller says. “My fiance is incredible about giving me my time, but it does take its toll from time to time, and adjustments need to be made.”
And if you’re new to the sport, Miller suggests starting slow, setting rational goals and never forgetting why you started doing it in the first place. Miller’s twitter handle, @clydesdaletri, is a constant reminder of what drew him to the sport. (A “clydesdale” is an athlete who weighs more than 200 pounds.)
“Triathlons are an expensive sport, but a very fun one that engenders the support of others and allows for very measurable improvements in the short and long terms,” Miller says. “Just remember what you’re actually racing for. Losing 70 pounds and becoming a healthy person again, that continually pushes me to go faster in a race.”
Miller, changing after a swim in the San Francisco Bay.
Talia Herman/Wired
