Thinking of doing an Ironman competition. Here’s how the wealthy do the race.

Have you ever done a triathlon? A half-Iron Man? How about a full Iron Man?

My daughters’ boyfriend has done a few of these and is thinking of a half-Iron Man next. I have had older patients with the means and the time to train for it do a full Iron Man which is a grueling test of a full marathon, a 2.4-mile swim, and then a 112-mile bike race.

There are serious costs including the gear, a higher-end bike that may have tires that do not require air eliminating the dreaded flat tire. Some of these bikes can cost 15K or more.

For those who can afford it, there is Iron Man XC which stands for “executive challenge,” a small subcategory of Ironman that caters to high-achieving, time-strapped business executives.

Iron Man is big business. Iron Man XC is like flying business class.

Unlike Iron Man which can cost between $475 and $675, the XC fee is fee ranges between $5,700 and $15,000.

The NY Times recently did an article on the XC level of Iron Man which is usually limited to a small number of athletes, whereas an actual Iron Man competition may attract upwards of 2000 athletes.

Check out the article below

How the 1% Runs an Ironman

Inside the world of Ironman XC, which makes the endurance contest a little more endurable — for executives who can afford to pay.

By Devin Gordon Published Dec. 6, 2022

Jerome Le Jamtel likes to watch movies while he swims. He says it just like that, too — “I like to watch movies while I swim” — as if it makes sense. In the basement of his house in suburban Mamaroneck, N.Y., from which he commutes to his job in the city as chief risk officer for Natixis Americas, part of a multinational investment firm with $1.25 trillion in assets under management, he has created a miniature Ironman training facility, complete with a Vasa Swim Ergometer, a dry-land simulator that retails for $1,900 and resembles an inverted rowing machine. He puts an iPad on the floor beneath him, and voilà, he’s watching “John Wick” while he works on his freestyle.

Le Jamtel does all his training indoors now. His fellow regulars with Ironman XC, which stands for “executive challenge,” a small subcategory of Ironman that caters to high-achieving, time-strapped business executives, call him the hamster, because he’s always spinning on some kind of wheel. Several of his friends have nearly died on their bicycles in recent years, including one whom he introduced to XC, Nicholas Baddour, the chief executive of the Publicis Groupe in Switzerland, who got tossed over the hood of a car and was lucky to need nothing more serious than eye surgery. Le Jamtel did the research and crunched the numbers (chief risk officer), and he concluded that if he kept cycling Ironman distances on open roads — 112 miles for the bike leg, which in the race is sandwiched between a 2.4-mile swim and a full marathon — there was a 100 percent chance he would be killed. So he snaps his favorite race bike, a Dimond Marquise ($10,300), onto a stationary Wahoo Fitness KICKR ($1,300) and uses his Rouvy app on a mounted 30-inch screen to train on virtual simulations of actual Ironman courses. Le Jamtel bikes outside only when he’s racing, and when he’s racing, it’s almost always with Ironman XC.