The Law of Diminishing Returns

While in the process of reading another business book entitled 'Good To Great', by Jim Collins, I began thinking about the Law of Diminishing Returns. As usual, I see a lot of similarities between success in other areas of life, including business, and success in Ironman Triathlon. Success is always tough to define, but I'll save that for another rant. Anyway, the book started triggering some thoughts of Ironman greatness. Few athletes out there achieve 'greatness' for two reasons. First, it becomes easy to settle for good, and second, it sure is tough to become great.

I quickly jumped to the 2005 results page of Ironman Florida and found the following;

• 2,058 competitors started the race and exited the water.
• 1,935 competitors completed the race by the 17-hour cutoff
• 1,715 competitors < 15 hours
• 1,189 competitors < 13 hours
• 768 competitors < 12 hours
• 374 competitors < 11 hours
• 128 competitors < 10 hours
• 10 competitors < 9 hours
• 1 single competitor < 8 hours 30 minutes

One man, Marino Vanhoenacker finished under 8 hours and 30 minutes. It figures it would take a guy with the name of Marino Vanhoenacker to achieve greatness. You have to admit it, the name alone sounds fast?

The law of diminishing returns in economics is as follows; 'if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point'.

The law of diminishing returns in Ironman terms is an interesting thought. As an athlete begins to train, improved fitness follows. Training 15 hours a week might result in X amount of general fitness improvement. Each hour of additional training increases fitness (to a certain point) but each additional hour will result in less and less gain per hour of training. The difference in fitness gains going from 29 hours of training per week to 30 hours of training per week will not be as substantial as the relative fitness gains obtained going from 10 hours of training per week to 11 hours of training per week. But those smaller and smaller gains is one factor that can make a difference between good and great (recovery and absorbing that training is another issue for another time). 5 hours extra of training per week, 50 weeks out of the year is an extra 250 hours of training per year. That's about half of what the average age-grouper probably trains for the entire year. But it's those extra 5 hours of training per week when you might already be doing 22 hours of training that put you in the next tier of athletic achievement in Ironman. (For the record, it's estimated that the average elite Ironman triathlete trains between 1,000 and 1,250 hours per year. You do the math.)

Ten men finished below 9 hours on November 5th, 2005 in Florida. I am sure that all ten men trained an incredible amount of hours to attain that level of fitness on race day. For those ten men, the difference in performance on race day may not have been the result of quantifiable hours of training per week but rather the qualitative factors of the sport such as recovery, nutrition, sleep, massage, mental prep, etc. Certainly these qualitative factors are equally important for the age-grouper finishing under 13 hours as well.

It would be great to be able to obtain the amount of hours each athlete trained leading up to the event (including the number of years in the sport). If I were a betting man, I would bet that there is a strong correlation to the number of hours a person has trained and their performance on race day. Sure there are athletes that blew themselves up and used poor pacing strategies, or just had a bad day. But overall, the biggest gains to be made in the process of going from average to good and from good to great is most likely the amount of work put into the goal being pursued, which in this case is a faster finishing time.

I'm paraphrasing one of my favorite Scott Molina quotes when he stated, "The good thing about Ironman triathlon is that in the end you can just outwork the competition."

I get a big chuckle out of other athletes when I hear the following statements over and over again, "You train too much," or "You are going to get hurt," or "You take things too seriously." I wonder if these same people would tell Lance Armstrong that he rode his bike too much? Why is it that people won't question a champion's work ethic (they actually admire it) but they will question age-groupers who are trying to obtain improvement by applying themselves? I often believe it's because the person who is questioning the act of hard work doesn't want to commit themselves to working harder.

By the way, I think Donald Trump did too much real estate analysis and Michael Jordan practiced too much basketball.(those idiots).