I Trained for an Ironman Even When I Didn't Want To

It was a Wednesday morning in late September, about three weeks before race day. I woke up tired. Not the good kind of tired from a hard workout, but the accumulated fatigue of juggling 12 to 15 hours of training every week on top of work and family.

The training plan said swim, bike, run. The Wednesday triple stack.

I really did not like swimming. I wasn’t good at it. I never wanted to do it. And on that particular Wednesday, lying in bed at 5 a.m., I had zero motivation to get in cold pool water and struggle through another session.

But I got up anyway.

Not because I felt inspired. Not because I had some breakthrough mindset shift. I got up because the training plan said swim, bike, run, and the time was going to pass whether I trained or not.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about discipline. It’s not heroic. It’s boring. It’s spite.

I had this random urge to sign up for an Ironman back in June after I hit a physique goal I’d been working toward. I always work better when I have a clear goal and action plan to achieve that goal. So I asked my brother-in-law, John, if he wanted to do it with me.

We’d talked about signing up for some half marathons or desert races to give us a reason to stay fit and travel with our families. For some reason, I decided to look up Ironman races, and found one in Wilmington, North Carolina on October 25th. My birthday. About four or five months out. Plenty of time to train.

John’s friend recommended a book called Iron Fit Secrets for Half Iron-Distance Triathlon Success. We used that as our guide. The book laid out everything. What to do, when to do it, how to think about it, what happens if you miss a day. We just had to follow the plan.

Swim 1.2 mi / 1.9 km
Bike 56 mi / 90 km
Run 13.1 mi / 21 km

Easy, right!?

The first eight to twelve weeks were fine. I was motivated. The training felt exciting. New challenge, clear structure, measurable progress. I already enjoyed running and I liked riding the bike even though it took longer.

But then the last four weeks hit. That final 20% of training. My motivation completely disappeared.

I was spite training. Just doing it purely because I didn’t want to sell myself short right before the race. The hard days were when I had a lot of work to do, a lot of things going on with my family, maybe I didn’t sleep well, and the training volume just didn’t stop.

Wednesdays especially, with the triple stack. And weekends. Three to four hour bike rides on Saturdays, then gradually building up to running a half marathon almost every Sunday as part of the training. Juggling all of that meant a few hard days every single week.

It’s easy to do when you’re motivated. It’s really tough to do when you have to rely on discipline alone. But I think that’s what builds you the most.

I just took it day by day. Some days I missed. Others I did really well. You just follow the plan.

Race day was chaos in the way that only race day can be.

Lying in bed the night before, trying to go to bed at 8 p.m. because I knew I had to wake up at 3 a.m., I could feel my heart rate rising as I thought about the swim, the ride, the transition bags, the logistics. I did not sleep great.

Standing at the water with 3,000 other people, hearing the buzzer release 4 people every few seconds, was surreal. Then I got in the water and immediately all of my training got thrown out the window. I got kicked in the face. Salt water got in my goggles. The water was so choppy with all the people in it. I couldn’t do any of the perfect swimming pool strokes I’d practiced for months.

It was absolute chaos.

All of the things I’d planned to sight on were impossible to see with my eyes an inch above the choppy salty water. It was hard to breathe. My heart rate was spiking and I was out of breath, but I had to keep swimming.

The thought flashed through my mind, should I just swim back and not do this? Then I decided, screw it. I have to swim this. I put my head down and just started going. You just go. You just do it.

When I finally got done with the swim and got on my bike, I felt immediate relief. I know I can ride 56 miles because I’ve done it many times over the past few months. I just have to pedal now and thank God I’m not swimming.

About 10 miles into the bike course, I saw my wife, Shana, waving to me, shouting my name and filming me. It warmed my heart to have her there supporting me as I tried to do this really hard thing. You forget how special it is to have one person you care about cheering for you. In that moment, I was a little choked up thinking, oh my gosh, I’m doing a freaking Ironman.

When I finished, I was absolutely exhausted. I wasn’t sure if I could sustain a high Zone 3 heart rate for the entire race, but that’s what I ended up doing. Even though I train mostly at Zone 2 with the occasional Zone 4 tempo push. Sustaining a 145 heart rate for 5 hours and 40 minutes is not something I thought I would be able to do.

You feel like a legend walking around with your medal and finisher hat, but I knew that moment would be fleeting. You just go back to normal life right after that. You talk about it with some friends and family. But pretty soon after that, nobody thinks about it. Nobody cares. And you’re back to normal life.

But you also start to think, what else am I capable of?

You really start to think about your self-limiting beliefs and how you’re capable of so much more than you ever thought possible. And all it takes is a goal and discipline to make progress and build volume toward that goal.

This pattern shows up in creative work. Every designer hits a phase where the excitement fades. The spark of the new project burns out. The feedback loop gets repetitive. You’re not chasing inspiration anymore. You’re refining. You’re improving small details. You’re fixing things no one will notice but you.

That’s the designer’s version of spite training. You keep showing up, not because it’s fun, but because you’ve committed to the work. And that quiet consistency, the one that no one celebrates, is what actually shapes your craft.

The people who grow the fastest aren’t the most talented. They’re the ones who keep going after motivation fades. They’re the ones who treat their practice like training.

Your creative career isn’t built on inspired bursts. It’s built on the days you don’t want to open Figma but do it anyway.

Crossing that line reminded me what’s true in life as well as design. Growth hides behind consistency.

I’m rebuilding the Shift Nudge website the same way I trained for this race. Slowly. Deliberately. With the same discipline that got me across that finish line. That’s the work. That’s the point.