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 in under 9:30 and held a professional triathlon license.
Key Takeaways
The triathlon establishment laughed at him when he said he was going pro. That's worth sitting with. Here was a bloke with no coach, no structured plan, no periodisation model, riding his bike at 2am on random calendar dates because he'd told himself he would. And he went faster than most people who did everything right. That's not an argument against coaching. But it is an argument that the mental side of this sport is so catastrophically undertrained by most athletes that someone running on raw commitment and controlled anger can close a lot of the gap.
The 2am sessions are the thing I keep coming back to. He'd pick a random date, say the 15th of the month, and tell himself: 100km, whatever the weather, whatever time it is. No training rationale behind it. He was training himself to not bail when it got hard and nobody was watching. The cold showers are the same thing. Three minutes, every morning, for two years, no exceptions. He told me the voice in his head never stopped arguing against it. He got in anyway, every morning, and that was the whole thing. Most athletes spend their whole career building fitness and never build that.
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The mental side Redmond talks about, training yourself to show up when you don't want to, connects directly to the habits episode. Go listen to the three habits of highly effective cyclists. And if you want to understand what the physical ceiling looks like once the mental side is sorted, the breathing episode with Dr. Sellers is worth your time.