The Norwegian Hype Train is about to steam off to the United States ahead of the seasonal debuts of former IRONMAN World Champions Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden.
The pair are currently training in Sierra Nevada in the South of Spain, alongside fellow Norwegian Casper Stones. It was known the trio would be competing at IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside on the Pacific Coast on April 5.
However, speaking on the latest edition of the Norwegian Method podcast (which you can listen to at the bottom of the article), Iden detailed the group’s plans after the April half-distance effort, with a full-distance Stateside jaunt on the agenda.
IRONMAN Texas and 70.3 Aix-En-Provence
“April 1 we are leaving to go to the US and we are going to stay there until the end of April,” explained Gustav.
“First we’ll go to IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside, then we will go in train in Texas ahead of the full-distance there, and then we’ll head home. After that, the next race would be May 18 in France – IRONMAN 70.3 Aix-En-Provence.”
Blummenfelt and Iden both admitted that training so far has been centred around their IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside efforts, with full-distance-specific training set to begin when the unit heads to Texas ahead of the April 26 race.
“After we have finished Oceanside we will do as much as we can to prepare for IRONMAN Texas, so that is going to be some tougher IRONMAN-specific sessions. It will also be interesting to see how Casper will responds to training heading into his first IRONMAN,” said Blummenfelt.
“We do want to get a lot of training done as we haven’t done anything IRONMAN-specific – that will come after Oceanside,” Iden added.
Avoiding altitude
Having spent a four-week block in the Spanish mountains ahead of Oceanside, Iden confirmed that the plan ahead of the full-distance race in Texas will be to acclimatise to the race location rather than spend more time at altitude.
“We don’t think it’s smart to go to altitude to do preparations for an IRONMAN,” added Iden when explaining why the group were heading straight to Texas.
“You need the muscular load more than you need more then then physical improvement of the blood at altitude, so I think this block of altitude now is smart (ahead of Oceanside) and then focusing on the muscular load heading into Texas.
“Not that the half IRONMAN is that intense – racing for four hours takes quite a lot out of you, so recovering in altitude is a bit slower – so I think it’s smart to go to the race location to limit your travel, especially with three weeks in between races.”
The latter half of the 2025 schedule for Blummenfelt and Iden has also been confirmed, with IRONMAN posting on Instagram that the duo will take on IRONMAN Frankfurt (June 29), IRONMAN World Championships in Nice (September 14) and IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Marbella (November 9).
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