Triathlon coaching culture will tell you that going sub-9:30 at an Ironman takes years of structured periodisation, a coach, a plan, and the right background.
Ger Redmond had none of that.
He'd never swum a length of a pool when he signed up for his first Ironman. He'd spent two years in Mountjoy Prison before that. Twelve to fourteen months after picking up the sport, he finished Ironman Lanzarote in 10:50. Two years after that, he crossed the line in Barcelona under 9:30 and earned a professional triathlon license.
Listen to the full conversation on the Roadman Cycling Podcast →
It's the kind of story most coaches would dismiss as an outlier. Anthony's argument on the episode is that the outlier is the lesson. The mental method behind Ger's result is the part of training most amateur cyclists are quietly skipping. And it's fixable.
The Bit That Doesn't Fit the Coaching Books
The triathlon establishment laughed at Ger when he said he was going pro.
That's worth sitting with for a second. Here was a bloke with no coach, no structured periodisation, no swim background, riding a road bike for the first time in his early thirties. And he went faster than most people who did everything right.
That's not an argument against coaching. Structured plans work. The data on periodisation isn't going anywhere. Athletes who log sessions in TrainingPeaks and ride to a coach's plan still produce most of the results in this sport.
But the gap between Ger Redmond and an amateur cyclist in their late forties who has been "training properly" for ten years and is still stuck inside a 200-watt FTP isn't the periodisation. It's the mental side. And the mental side is the part of cycling that almost nobody trains on purpose.
He calls it the callous mind. He took the term from David Goggins. The principle is older than that. Sean Kelly built a career on it. Brian Smith spent an entire interview on the same point. The riders who win consistently are the ones who can hold themselves in a place that hurts for longer than the rider next to them.
Most amateurs can't. Not because they're soft. Because they've never trained the muscle.
The 2am Test on a Random Calendar Date
The session that defined Ger's preparation for Barcelona wasn't a structured interval block. It was a rule.
He'd open his calendar weeks in advance, pick a random date — the 15th of the following month, say — and write himself a single instruction. 100km. 2am. Whatever the weather.
That was it. No power target. No specific intent. Just the rule.
The session itself wasn't the point. The point was the question it asked. Do you actually want this? Because if you're not the kind of person who will roll out at 2am on a random Tuesday in February in Irish sleet because you said you would, you're not the kind of person who finishes Ironman Barcelona under 9:30. The session was a test. Pass it, and the day became evidence. Skip it, and the goal had already told him the truth.
This is a commitment device, not a workout. It's an old idea, dressed up in unusual clothes. Pre-commit to the harder option in a moment when the cost is abstract, then let your future self either honour the commitment or admit the goal wasn't real.
For amateur cyclists, the 2am 100km translates badly. You have a job. You have kids. The point isn't the time of day. The point is the structure. Pick the harder session in advance. Write it down. Commit to it before the morning gives you a reason to renegotiate. The work becomes non-negotiable, not because you're disciplined, but because you've removed the choice.
Two Years of Cold Showers and the Voice That Never Stops
The other rule Ger built his head around was smaller and louder.
Three minutes of cold shower. Every morning. No exceptions. He'd been doing it for around two years when we recorded the episode.
Here's the part that matters. The internal voice that argues against it never stopped. Headache. Bad night's sleep. Coming down with something. Raining outside. The voice had a different reason every morning. Ger described the dialogue as a schizophrenic argument with himself. The other voice — the one that gets in anyway — got the final word every single time.
That's the rep. Not the cold itself. The rep is the daily decision to override the negotiator inside your own head. The cold shower is the practice ground. The race is the test.
This isn't a wellness pitch. The cold-water benefits are a separate conversation, and the science is more nuanced than the influencer crowd makes it sound. The reason it works for Ger has nothing to do with brown adipose tissue or vagal tone. It works because every morning at 6am he's training his nervous system to ignore a very persuasive case for taking the easier option.
By the time he's standing on a beach in Barcelona at 7am with 226km of pain ahead of him, the muscle is already built. He's spent two years practising not listening.
Most amateur cyclists are not under-trained on the bike. They're under-trained on the part of the day that decides whether the bike session happens.
The Goggins Voice Note Anthony Mentioned
There's a tactic Anthony mentions in the episode that's worth lifting straight out of the conversation, because it's free and it works.
When you're suiting up to ride and the negotiating voice starts, get your phone out. Record a voice note. Out loud. Say the reasons you're considering not going. Be honest. Tired. Cold. Didn't sleep well. Got a headache. Don't really feel it. Then play it back.
The David Goggins line is direct enough to make a Roadman Cycling brief pearl-clutch, but the mechanism is sound. Excuses sound reasonable in your head. They sound flimsy out loud. The voice note doesn't shame you out the door. It just collapses the gap between the version of you who is making the case and the version of you who has to listen to it.
Anthony has had clients try this. The ones who do it usually train.
Backs Against the Wall: The Pressure Most Amateurs Can't Manufacture
The reason Ger's mental method produced what it did is the part nobody really wants to talk about. He had no second option. He'd burned the alternative life. The intensity of his training came from a kind of pressure most amateurs will never have access to.
That's not a reason to dismiss the lesson. It's a reason to engineer the substitute.
The substitute is structure that removes the off-ramp. Sign up for the event. Pay for it now. Tell people you're doing it. Pick the training partners who will text you at 5am on a Saturday when you no-show. Put yourself in a group ride where you can't sit on. Pre-commit publicly to the harder version of the goal — not the version where you'll see how it goes, the version where the failure mode is unambiguous.
This is where the Not Done Yet community does the work that solo training can't. The accountability isn't a marketing line. It's the closest a comfortable middle-aged cyclist gets to backs against the wall. Members log their sessions in front of each other. They show up to the weekly call. They train next to people who are going for it. The pressure doesn't have to be a prison cell. It just has to be real enough that quitting costs something.
"Stop Thinking, Start Attacking" — The Brian Smith Echo
The line Brian Smith left on his Roadman episode last week was the same line, dressed differently. Stop thinking. Start attacking. He looked back at his career and decided overthinking had cost him more races than ability ever had.
Ger's version of the same line is "I just had to man up and take this on the chain." Different generation, different context, identical instinct. Don't negotiate with the moment. Pick the harder option. Live with the result.
The amateur version sits inside every group ride. The hill comes up. Your power meter says you've done enough. The wheel in front of you is fading. You can sit up and recover. You can dig in and find yourself in the front group on the descent. Both Brian and Ger would tell you the same thing. The riders who pick option two consistently win more, and "consistently" is the word doing most of the work in that sentence. It's a habit. It's trainable. It's not character.
The Translation for Amateur Cyclists
You're not going to pick triathlon up in your thirties and earn a pro license. Neither am I. But the principles in Ger's three years carry across.
1. Train the mental side on a schedule, the same way you train zone 2. Cold showers, pre-committed sessions, no-negotiation rules. Pick one. Hold it for ninety days. The bike sessions that follow will land differently because the daily rep against the negotiating voice has already built a different rider.
2. Pre-commit to the harder option before the morning gets to vote. Write the session down the night before. Lay the kit out. Pay for the entry. Pick the group ride that's slightly above your level and commit to being there before the alarm gets a chance to argue.
3. Build artificial pressure. Sign up for the event. Tell people. Train next to riders who are slightly faster than you. Use the Not Done Yet community or a group of two or three local riders who will notice when you no-show. Backs against the wall is a state most amateur cyclists can manufacture. Most don't.
4. Stop confusing comfort with progress. A whole season of zone 2 with a comfortable group ride on Saturday is a recipe for staying exactly where you are. The cyclists who build are the ones who put themselves in the uncomfortable end of the session, the uncomfortable group, the uncomfortable goal. The grey zone trap is real, and so is its emotional cousin — the comfort zone trap. They look like training. They aren't.
5. The mental method is the fixable bit, not the gifted bit. This is the most important translation. Ger Redmond didn't have a special wiring. He had a rule he refused to break. Cold shower at 6am for two years. The 100km ride on a random Tuesday at 2am. The rule is the system. The system is trainable. So is yours.
The Not Done Yet Connection
Ger's story is the most extreme version of the instinct that holds the Roadman audience together.
The man who decides he isn't done. Who refuses to let the version of him from a few years ago be the highest version that ever existed. Who looks at a closing window and decides to ride harder at it instead of through it.
For most of our community that doesn't look like a prison cell. It looks like a forty-six-year-old club racer who hasn't moved up a category in four years and is about to. It looks like a returning cyclist who lost twelve kilos this year and is going to lose four more before September. It looks like a comeback athlete who is back at Cat 1 power three years after he thought he was done with the sport.
The mechanism is identical. The stakes are different. The mental method scales.
Listen to the Full Conversation
The full Ger Redmond episode is on the podcast. It's not a normal training conversation. It's the most direct argument we've put out this year that the largest untrained system in amateur cycling is the one between your ears, and that fixing it doesn't require a new coach, a new platform, or a new bike.
If this resonated and you want a structured way to apply it, our coaching programmes are built on exactly this principle — the plan is the easy part, the relationship and the daily reps against your own resistance are the hard part. We help with both.
If you've got a specific question about how to apply this to your own training week — the cold showers, the pre-commit, the harder group ride, the part you keep negotiating away — drop it into Ask Roadman and we'll answer it on a future episode.
The work is fixable. Most cyclists never put it in.
Ger did.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ger Redmond and what is his cycling and triathlon background?
Ger Redmond is an Irish professional triathlete from north Dublin. He held a Youth Training Scheme football scholarship at Falkirk in Scotland as a teenager before family circumstances pulled him home. After serving two years in Mountjoy Prison for drug offences, he took up triathlon with no swimming background and no coach. Twelve to fourteen months later he completed Ironman Lanzarote in around 10:50. Two years after that he went under 9:30 at Ironman Barcelona, the qualifying time for a professional license. He now delivers free motivational talks in schools across Dublin through his Reaching Back project.
What was Ger Redmond's training method without a coach?
Ger built his own structure with no formal periodisation. The method that defined it was a mental one. He'd pick a random date weeks in advance — say the 15th of the following month — and commit to a 100km ride at 2am that day, regardless of the weather. He used the rule to test his own commitment. Alongside the volume he did three-minute cold showers every morning for roughly two years, treating each one as a rep against his own internal resistance. The principle was simple. If you choose the harder option daily on the small things, choosing the harder option in a race becomes a habit, not a decision.
What can amateur cyclists actually learn from Ger Redmond's story?
Three things scale directly. First, the largest untrained system in most amateur cyclists is mental, not physical — the rider who can sit in discomfort longer wins more than the rider with the higher FTP. Second, daily reps against your own internal resistance — cold showers, pre-committed sessions, no-negotiation rules — make race-day suffering feel familiar. Third, a coach is a system; a mindset is a daily practice. You can build the mindset without a coach. You can't build the coach's system without one. Most amateurs need both. Many only train one.
Why does the David Goggins voice-note technique work?
Because the excuses you give yourself for skipping a session sound logical in your head and pathetic out loud. Recording them and playing them back to yourself collapses the gap. The technique Anthony cites on the episode is to record a voice note listing the reasons you don't want to train, then play it back before deciding. Most riders go and train. The point isn't shame. It's the difference between a thought and a sentence said out loud.
How does this connect to the "Not Done Yet" idea in the Roadman community?
Directly. Ger Redmond's story is the most extreme version of the same instinct — refusing to accept that the best version of yourself is already behind you. The audience inside the Not Done Yet community is mostly cyclists in their forties and fifties who feel the window closing. The mental method Ger used to climb out of a prison cell and into a pro Ironman finish is the same mental method that pulls a forty-six-year-old back to a Cat 3 podium or under five hours at the Etape. The mechanism is identical. The stakes are different.
