After spending her entire childhood and college career at USC in the pool and competing in the US Olympic Trials, Ironman champion Hillary Biscay turned to triathlon to further test her athletic limits. Since turning pro in 2004, Hillary has chalked up almost 40 Ironman finishes including multiple back to back starts (yes, just one week after the other!) and multiple podium finishes and titles along the way. Learn how Hillary has tuned her body to handle such punishment and the role that high intensity training plays in her regimen. 

There seems to be a shortcut for high performing swimmers making the transition from the world class ranks (Hillary was a US Olympic Trials qualifier in the 200 breastroke) into the world of triathlon.  Why do you think this relationship exists?
For ITU athletes who are doing races in which the swim itself makes a big impact, the relationship is obvious. At the ironman distance, however, time-wise, the swim makes a few minutes difference at best. In our world, I think that former elite-level swimmers have success because we enter this sport with the discipline to do the work that triathlon success requires—especially the long, mind-numbing hours required for ironman. We are talking about athletes who spent four hours each day during college staring at a black line on the bottom of a pool! When our alarm clocks went off at 4 am or 5am, getting up was not an option. It was get up, or lose your scholarship. We come to triathlon with this mentality.

One of the things I love about ironman is that simply doing the work, day in and day out, is rewarded. Unlike a two-minute swimming race, during which you can make a small technical error and completely ruin your result, on most days at ironman, if you have done the preparation, it will triumph over the rest. So those of us who bring our swim-team habits to this sport definitely start with an advantage. 

For a triathlete of your age (31) you have a ton of Ironmans (38 including last month’s Ironman Lake Placid) to your credit.  What has been the driving force in doing and scheduling so many Ironmans in your schedule?
I love to race; I love the pain and suffering and earning that crippling post-race feeling. Good or bad, every time I am out there, I am gaining something physically: it is always a long, hard workout. And mentally, I am constantly acquiring new tools or strategies for dealing with all of the various crazy scenarios that can occur during an ironman race. Plus, most days, I earn a paycheck, so the ironman race is the monthly wage, too!

Unlike so many other triathletes, you seem to be able to complete (and podium most times in doing so) in as many as 8 Ironmans per year.  What have you learned about your ability to compete and recover with a heavy Ironman schedule vs. a light Ironman schedule?
I had always aspired to race more frequently and with shorter recovery time between big events, but it’s not a matter of being “naturally” suited to it or not. Before I truly became fit while training under Brett Sutton, I had tried a couple of times (in 2005, my first year racing pro) to do big races a month apart, and the results weren’t pretty. I wasn’t fit enough to do it. To race two ironmans in a week or even in a three-week span, I had to train myself to the point where an ironman race wasn’t such a big shock to the body and thus didn’t require as much recovery time; additionally, I learned that I can’t do a big taper and then back up with another race afterwards. I have to just rest a couple of days for the first race; I might not be super-fresh for that one, but this is my best chance to accomplish two solid results in a short timeframe.

With such a long history of swim interval training, you are no stranger to high intensity work.  What percentage of your average training weeks is done at a rate of perceived effort of 8-10 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being 100% effort?
I can’t give you an exact percentage, but I can say that I do a LOT of work in this area. For me, going long and easy is not a problem. I have done a lot of very long swim, bike, and run sessions in my day. I love that kind of stuff: 10km swims, 7-8 hour rides, 5+ hour runs. I could do that sort of training all the time; but what I need to get more comfortable with is that higher-intensity work, so while I do a fair amount of volume, much of it is in this “uncomfortable” zone.

I noticed a much tighter gait in your marathon at IMLP this year.  Tell us about what changes you’ve made to your running style and how you feel about how its working for you?
My run is always a work in progress. As anyone who has watched me run can see, I am quite imbalanced. I broke my left hip running (a stress fracture in the neck of my femur that cracked all the way through) back in 2004, and I have three titanium screws in there now. When I started working with Brett Sutton the following year, we changed my running style to a more efficient, lower-impact “shuffle.” As a result, I have been very fortunate to not have too many injuries since then—certainly no major ones. However, the imbalances are still there and with hundreds and hundreds of running miles each month, they became exacerbated. Eventually they really started to bother me because I was feeling much less efficient. So I have been working with a couple of amazing therapists in Los Angeles, Julie and Ben, and we are working on some basic strengthening exercises to re-activate some small of my smaller muscles and get things straightened out. My run is still far from perfect, but is feeling a lot better. Now that I am back home in Tucson and can spend some quality hours each week on the treadmill, I think it will all start to come together.

In your “free time” you spend a great deal of your non training time coaching and working with amateurs.  What is the greatest reward you get from doing so and what is the singular, most prevalent weakness you see in most non professional triathletes?
I enjoy mentoring/coaching other athletes because I love seeing this sport transform the lives of so many people—particularly those who never before thought of themselves as “athletes”—for the better. To a certain point, it seems to me that the more one puts into this sport, the more one gains—in terms of fitness, self-confidence, and more conventional “results.” Oftentimes athletes come to me having been peripherally involved in the sport, and because I only know one way to train people—full-on or nothing—they acquire a whole new level of dedication, focus, and fitness, and turn themselves into “real athletes.”

One of the best things about our sport is that hard work and discipline are heavily rewarded; talent certainly counts for something, but especially at the ironman distance, being able to commit fully to the daily grind pays big dividends. This commitment and discipline is how most of the professionals arrived at this status; I do think it is often what separates them. I think that oftentimes people are lead astray by marketing, thinking that some magic bullet technology or technique will get them to Kona or the age group win or whatever it is. Often people don’t want to take the painful or even monotonous route, when in reality, I think that improvement in this sport is quite a simple process of putting in the time and the work and rehearsing that pain and suffering every single day in training.

You’ve made a fair amount of changes to your diet in moving toward a more “paleo” themed nutrition strategy.  How has this change affected your energy levels and recovery timetable?
I’m not sure if “paleo” is the right word, but over the course of this year, I have been working on cutting animal products out of my diet—everything from dairy products to meat. It is a work in progress. Right now I am consuming little to no dairy and as far as animal flesh, I have fish once a week. I definitely have not completely perfected the right equation to maximize my performance and recovery with this new diet; however, I have noticed a huge improvement in my breathing and a massive decrease in stomach issues during training since I have stopped drinking milk, eating cottage cheese, etc.

Ironman race nutrition is one of the most puzzling areas for many amateurs.  This topic can be very personal and one size does not fit all, so, for you, what is your nutrition, hydration and electrolyte strategy for your Ironmans?
While food/drink choices are a very personal thing, I think that an across-the-board strategy for successful ironman fueling is simply to keep taking in the calories regardless of how bad you feel or how unappealing food or drink becomes during the course of the race. You may need to change what you eat over the course of a given race, if you happen to lose your planned nutrition, or are simply unable to handle any more gels or whatever you’ve been eating, but the most important thing is to keep taking in some kind of calories/ energy.

Hillary Biscay
Born:1978 
Age: 31
First Triathlon: Hermosa Beach Sprint Triathlon, 1999
Turned Pro: November 2004
Family: Parents, Dr. Rich and Brooke Biscay. Little sister, Cameron (attorney).
Lives: Tucson, Arizona, USA

Career at a glance

• 2008 Ironman Wisconsin Champion
• First woman to record six top-5 Ironman finishes in one year (2006)
• First woman to race back-to-back iron-distance races: 6th at Challenge Roth 2008, followed by 3rd at Ironman Lake Placid the following Sunday; 4th at Ironman Louisville and 1st at Ironman Wisconsin the following Sunday.
• 2008 Hawaii Ironman Women’s Swim Winner

Thanks for your insight and time, Hillary. We wish you a great race this weekend! You can learn more about Hillary and follow her blog at www.hillarybiscay.com/.

Interview by Max Wunderle

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