Mastering the Balance: Insights from Ironman Champion Mark Allen with Team USA at Paris Olympics

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marx.

Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thanks for joining us. I know you have a lot of different choices, and I'm glad you're spending some time with us, and we promise to make it worthwhile. 'Cause we have another awesome guest. We have Mark Allen. Mark, welcome to Digital Voices.

Hey, thanks, Ed. Great to be here.

So as my great audience knows, normally we talk digital and healthcare and things like that, and we mix it up every few weeks by bringing in someone from a different industry in order to help us, you know, just maximize everything that we're trying to do. And Mark is one of these people. So Mark, I'll do a high-level introduction, but in a minute or two, I'll ask you to do a, a more formalized introduction on your own. But for anyone, and as audience knows, I'm super into the sport of triathlon, and Mark is sort of one of the pioneers of triathlon. He's 6-time world champion for Ironman. He was the GOAT from ESPN announced in 2012 for race endurance. You've won all sorts of cha— other championships.

Yeah.

Mark, you have your own Mark Allen Sports business. So we're gonna get into all of that. So that was just kind of a high-level introduction, how we first met. So I've known Mark in the industry for as long as I've been doing triathlon, probably 25, maybe 30 years. And so we are both with a Team USA triathlon congregation here in Paris. And so we connected in person for the first time and very impressed with Mark, as I'm sure you will be. So anyways, that's how we've known each other. And so we're going to jump into it now. So Mark, the very first question and the most important for Digital Voice audience is what kind of music do you like to listen to?

Well, I mean, I love just about any kind of music, but I think the music that really just every time I hear it, it just hits that spot in me is, are some of the old blues players. There's a guy named Skip James. If you haven't ever heard him, You have to listen to some of his music. There's very few of his recordings of his music that was actually recorded. And he uses a very different tuning than just the standard tuning on the guitar. And it's got a very harmonic melodic sound to it, but just this great blues. And, you know, for me, I hear those threads of the blues that Skip James did back in the '30s, '40s, '50s. In Stephen Stills' music and Eric Clapton's music and, um, you know, Led Zeppelin. I, you know, the Stones, it just, it's like this thread that keeps, keeps going and building and changing. And so anyway, that's my favorite.

That's cool. So, but Mark, what about when you were racing? Was that the same jams you would listen to before? Like, did you listen to psych-up music before your big races?

You know, getting psyched up for a race was never a problem for me. You know, my problem was I had to psych down a little bit. And I'm sure all, any of you who've been in really high pressure situations where, you know, your day has come and this is the moment where it's on you to make something happen, it can be nerve-wracking. You can be nervous. You can have anxiety. You can have anticipation, which is good because that's what changes that day from something that you do ordinarily to something that you can do extraordinarily from time to time. And so, you know, when I, when I competed, I, I never listened to music beforehand. I was more just trying to bring all of my energy in and gather it and sort of like creating this, this little nuclear bomb that was going to slowly go off over the course of a day, you know, and an Ironman that can take 8 hours. You know, you don't want to throw everything out there in the first 20 minutes. You know, you have to pace yourself. And so, uh, before Ironman, before even the Olympic distance races I did, I was really just pulling all my energy in here and concentrating it into that quiet space inside of me, and then hopefully being able to access it little bit by little bit over the course of the entire day on the racecourse.

Yeah, that's cool. And that's one of the reasons we wanted you to be our guest, Mark, is to bring some of these insights that we get from endurance athletes, from athletes that are at the top of their game worldwide, and how that can help us in the business world because there's a lot of similarities. And we're going to unpack that. But before we get there, tell us a little bit more about yourself. I did sort of this high level, but tell us about from the beginnings, you know, growing up and sports and how you grew up and then all the way to where you are today.

Yeah, my first real inspiration to do something in sports was in 1968. I was 10 years old and I was watching the Mexico City Olympics, the very first Olympics that I ever remember seeing. And I was just so inspired by the distance swimmers because, you know, the women were swimming 800, the men 1500, you know, back then they didn't think women could go 1500. Katie Ledecky clearly showing that women are very capable of doing that. Anyway, um, it just mesmerized me because I couldn't swim, you know, one lap across the pool and it was a near-death experience for me, you know? And so I thought, how can they just keep going back and forth? And Shortly after that, there was an ad in the local paper in Palo Alto, California, where I was growing up for a local swim team that was going to be having tryouts. And my mom said, you should just go and see what you can do. And I go, I can't even swim a lap. She goes, just go. And so I went and there's all these kids my age and they're going back and forth. And so I hopped in the pool and I went 4 laps without stopping.

I'm like, Oh my God.

You know how you surprise yourself with just the simplest little task like that? And so that turned into actually 12 years of being a competitive swimmer, but I was on the grand scale. I was very mediocre. You know, I, I was nowhere close to even aspiring to make it to the Olympics, Olympic trials to be the best. So in those 12 years though, it was very satisfying because my, my fulfillment came from just a very personal Getting a little bit better each day, seeing if I could get a half a second, 2 tenths of a second faster in my times at swim races. And, you know, so much of life is like that, right? I mean, how many people are going to be at the very top of a podium?

Yeah.

One.

Right.

But that clearly doesn't mean that everybody else is having a bad experience. And so that really served me well because in the sport of triathlon, you know, the hours of training are very long and a lot of times your race results don't match your expectations. But it can still be so satisfying to just have that, get that personal excellence, get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And I found over time that if my personal excellence can just keep getting a little better, a little better, I might be able to be better than just about anybody out there. But that sort of comes with a little caveat and All of you know this from business. If you've done sports, you know that, that little bit better comes from doing a lot of the same tasks over and over and over and over. And so as a triathlete, I started competing in triathlon when I was 24. Again, I was inspired by something I saw on television, the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii, which for those of you who don't know, is a 2.4-mile swim in the open ocean. 112-mile bike ride along the hot, windy, desolate west side of the Big Island of Hawaii. And then since you really warmed up, you get to run a marathon, 26.2 miles in the heat of the tropics. And it's obviously a very challenging day. Um, but before that, so I started at age 24 and I'll get to that point about doing that over and over in a second.

Yeah.

The first 6 years that I did Ironman, I did not win. I was second, I was third, I was fifth. I could be in the lead at the end of the bike. I could be in the lead halfway through the marathon. I could be in the lead even with just a few miles to go in the marathon, but I was always falling apart and always being passed and I just couldn't hold it together. And so, yes, it was frustrating because I saw that I had a talent as a triathlete much more than as a swimmer. But one thing that I always did every year before I started my training is I asked myself, what's my purpose this year? You know, and think about that in business. You spend a lot of time going to the office in front of your computer. And so why are you showing up every day?

Yeah.

What has meaning for you? And it doesn't have to be anything deep or complicated. It doesn't have to be logical. It can just be a feeling like, I feel like there's, I feel like I want to help people. I feel like I want to bring some aspect of my talent into this team that I'm working with, whatever it is. And so that's such an important piece, I think, to have.

Yeah.

What is my why? Why am I showing up every day? What is my purpose? Because throughout the course of a year, if you're going for something big and know, if you're going for the goal of winning an Ironman World Championship, if you're trying to be best in your field or do something that you've never done before, there's going to be challenges. And when those challenges come, they can feel like big setbacks, right?

Yeah.

And if you have that vision in your mind of why this has importance, you will remember that. And it will be like a magnet that will keep you going to take that next step, to find the solutions, to continue on. And to then eventually, hopefully realize those amazing dreams that we have. It took me 7 years of doing that to actually get it right at the Ironman in Hawaii. So, but it was so worth taking that journey, sticking with it, having that commitment to completion, to realizing that dream that I felt I could bring into form.

Yeah. Mark, you hit on so many important aspects of what makes a super successful professional, whether it's in athletics, Or in business. But before we get there, so, so you spent many years as a professional triathlete, uh, and then you, you've transitioned, right? You've started your, you've written books, you speak. Um, what else do you, I know you coach. So tell us about that transition.

Yeah. The transition from world-class athlete to normal human.

Yeah.

You know, I was, I was ready for it. I knew it was time. I, I raced from the time I was 24 until I was 38, 15 seasons as a pro triathlete. And at that point, I knew that I was, I was still healthy. I was uninjured and I wasn't burned out, but I knew that if I kept going, I might pay a price later in my life. And I thought, I'm too young to burn all my matches right now.

Yeah.

And so I, it was very easy for me at that, that point in my career to say, thank you. I've done so much that's Just incredible. And I want to use that energy and that experience to then transition into other things. I had sort of quizzed a lot of the people at Nike who were my main sponsor during my career. And I said, what do you see as the biggest challenge for top athletes when they exit their sport? And it was the same. Everybody said the same thing. You're going to go from being the best into being probably super mediocre.

Right.

And a lot of people, They can't reconcile that difference, you know, and it takes a lot of humility to go from showing, you know, leading the world to feeling like I can barely get my nose above water. And so I, you know, I spend a lot of time trying to develop that ability to speak to corporate audiences as opposed to a bunch of triathletes. You know, when I'm doing public speaking, I spend a lot of time Learning how to take that experience that I had as an athlete and turn that into a model and a paradigm that I could apply to athletes of all ages in coaching. I, I, I, you know, when I was competing, people came to me and said, hey, we want you to work with us. We want to sponsor you. When I stopped competing, I had to be the one knocking on the door saying, hey, I would love to help your company out. I would love to advise you on this aspect of things or be part of your team as you're building, you know, your, your, your company, your products, all that kind of thing.

Yeah.

So there were so many things that I had to learn, but, you know, isn't that the best part of life when you're actually learning things? Yes, it's hard. Yes, you may fall. You may take a few wrong turns, but I, I always reminded myself in this business aspect, It's just like training. Most people, they go 85% and then they quit. They give up going that last 10%, 15%, continuing on when, when impossible is staring you in the face. Very few people have that commitment to just keeping going. But if you do, amazing things are going to happen. And for me, that's always I know there's always going to be a big test in those big dreams where a challenge will come up where victory seems impossible. But I always tell the athletes that I coach, I say, impossible is a solution that has yet to present itself.

Like it.

Quiet your mind, daydream, ask yourself, what do I need to do? You know, in my racing, let's say at the Ironman, you know, in a race that takes 8 hours, It takes 8 hours for you. For me.

So for the audience, uh, typically probably the average is around maybe 16. You have 17 hours to complete it and there's plenty of people that don't. Uh, so I would say like maybe the average person, like when I was doing it was like 13, maybe 13 to 15. So when you say 8 hours, I just want to say that's for a professional triathlete. But yeah, keep going.

Yeah. So regardless of how long it takes, you're going to have many moments where It seems impossible to continue. You get tired, you get hot, your legs hurt, you might get blisters, you might get a cramp, whatever it is. And in those moments, you have 2 opportunities. 2 things can happen. One is you might judge that moment and say, this is set in stone. This is the way it's going to be the rest of my life. I've failed. I can't realize the dream that I'm after. I can't do the place, the time. I might not even be able to finish. Or in that moment of impossibility, you can just simply assess, what do I need to change? Do I need to go slower? Do I need to eat more, drink more? What do I need to do to take the next step and the next step after that and the next step after that? And I've found that so important in business because, as you know, you can have the ideal strategy at the beginning of the year, but the real world is a very chaotic, often uncooperative place to use your strategy. And you, at points, you might have to say it looks impossible and you can get discouraged. You can get disheartened. It can feel like you're going down the wrong track. Instead of judging, saying this is bad, ask yourself what needs to change? What do I need to do? And there's this calm that comes with that because when you're simply assessing, You often come up with that solution, and often the solution is not what you think it's going to be. And let me give you an example from my career. In 1989, I was going to be entering my 7th Ironman in Hawaii. 6 years before that, I had not won. This was going to be my 7th Ironman in Hawaii, my 7th year that I had dedicated to this incredibly challenging race. 6 times prior, I'd had to pick up the pieces of disappointment, go back home and ask myself, what do I need to do differently? Each year I made some changes. 1989, I got into the race. I felt confident. I changed my training. I changed my mindset. And I was, but I was going to be competing against a guy who was the standard bearer, a guy named Dave Scott. He had won the race 6 times. I had zero victories in 6 times out there. And we ended up swimming together. We ended up biking the entire bike ride together. We ran side by side, step for step, the entire marathon. At mile 24 and a half of the marathon, after 8 hours of racing neck and neck, there was one long last uphill on the run course before you dropped back down into the town of Kona and did the last sort of loop to the finish line. We had each tried to break each other. It hadn't worked. Each of us knew this big long hill was coming. Each of us knew that that hill was where the break was going to take place. At the bottom of that hill was an aid station. And conventional wisdom logic says that late in the race, you grab one last glass of sport drink and try to get just a couple calories into your body because at that point, over 8 hours of racing, you're, you're kind of racing on fumes. And so even if you can get, get in a few calories, that might make the difference between falling apart or being able to pull away. We're coming into the aid station and we had seen that even though there's only 2 of us, the first one through the aid station always gets what they want. And then volunteers after that, they're in chaos. And the second person often doesn't get anything.

Right.

Dave shoved his way in front of me. He reached for that last glass of whatever he was drinking. I came in behind him ready to get my last glass of Gatorade or Coke or whatever it was. And it was like the island clapped and said, go. And I pulled my hand back, you know, very counter to conventional wisdom because now I'm at risk of running out of calories and just Falling down on the ground. I pulled my hand back. I started to sprint. And in the 3 or 4 seconds it took Dave Scott to reach over, grab his last glass of nutrition and look back, I'd put a gap of about 6 or 7 feet on him.

Wow.

And you can see this in that, in the, in the footage on the, on the broadcast on television. All of a sudden he's faced with an impossible moment because I'm breaking away and he was planning on breaking away from me. His shoulders come up, he starts rocking, everything gets tight because he's, he's judging this moment as this is bad as opposed to assessing and going, what do I need to do?

Right. Yeah.

And I ended up pulling away. I ended up winning my first of 6 Ironman titles that day. Dave Scott, the standard bearer who had won 6 previous, he did his best time by 18 minutes. I did my best time by nearly 30.

Wow.

And the difference in our times at the end was 58 seconds. Very small difference on a very, very long day. So anyway, to bring it back to what I was saying earlier, sometimes in those impossible moments, if you can just get your mind to be quiet, daydream for a second or a moment or a day or a week and see what answer comes that maybe is a little bit counterintuitive to what you thought the solution would be to the problem at hand. Those are the defining moments and those are the ones that you will never access. Those are the solutions you will never access when you're trying too hard.

Yeah. So Mark, you're making a super good point. And that is in the business world sometimes, yeah, we're faced with something we didn't, you know, big construction cost overrun or COVID changing the way that we practice medicine or some big, big change. And if we make a knee-jerk reaction, it's not probably going to be the best thing for us. But if we take that calm, we remember the why, like you talked about, we take some time to think through it. We think of it as a longer race. It's not a 100-meter race, but you've got some time. But if you're very thoughtful, you'll get the answer that you're looking for basically and have success. So I wanna ask you a couple more questions. Uh, you've given us a lot and I wanna unpack a couple things. Is there a difference, is there a mindset difference between a podium finisher and let's just say someone who's perennial top 10 but not podium finisher? So to set a little bit of context really quick, we're both very fortunate. We're part of the Team USA triathlon delegation here at the Paris Olympics where we're recording from. We got to watch both the men and women back to back. Because of some issues with the water, they postponed one race. We got to see both back to back. We saw podium finishes, things like that. Is there a mindset difference between a typical podium finisher and a top 10 finisher?

The difference between somebody who's vying for the podium and someone who's vying for top 10, they're all giving the best that they have. However, the return from the podium is going to be greater. And, and with that as motivation and inspiration, for sure, it gives you a little bit extra that somebody who's fine, am I going to get 11th or 10th? You know, they're still giving their best back there. The last person who crosses that line is still giving their best, but their best as a 49th place finisher is going to be not quite as fast as they would have gone had they been—

Good.

in 4th and they move their place into 3rd and they get a medal. So yeah, you know, the, the reward, the bigger the reward, kind of like there can be more inspiration, but in the end, so much of life is just about finding the reward in the moment on that day.

Yeah.

And like I said, you know, so much of what creates great moments of success, you know, there's this, this huge base of work that goes into building that one moment of great success. And if that's the only part that had meaning for you, the journey's going to be very shallow if you don't hit that peak. And so, you know, I, every single day I try to ask myself, what's the success that I had today? What did I start not feeling good and I finished feeling better? What did I start that felt impossible, but I found a solution for today? And if each day you sort of Acknowledge the successes that you had, or even acknowledge that you didn't have a success, but that you, you gave your best effort. No day will feel wasted. And that journey, by the time you get to the moment where you might hit that peak, you're already a winner. You've already gotten so much out of that. And ultimately, as a coach, I tell my athletes, The only bad race is one that you don't learn from. It doesn't matter if you're first, last, if you hit your target time, target placing, or you didn't. It's a waste of time if you don't look back at that race and ask myself, what did I learn from it? And when that becomes the final goal or measure of the day, there's always something that you learn. And so, you know, as an example, After I won that first Ironman, I asked myself, why did I have to go through those 6 losses to finally get this 1 win? You know? And then I reflected back and I realized that in some of the most impossible moments in those earlier races where I fell apart, where I ended up walking on the marathon, where I, where I got passed and saw victory slip away, I had to pivot and ask myself, why do I keep going? Why should I keep going? And in those moments, I realized, even though my body's working at 20 or 30% of my peak capacity, I'm still going to get 100% out of this 30% situation. And so that skill of just keeping myself in it as best as I could, even if I'm going slower than I would on another day, that skill became something that enabled me in in all of my wins, my 6 Ironman wins, to weather those moments where I was, let's say, at 70% instead of 100%. Had I not had those, that skill learned in the tough races, when I, my energy dipped in those win events, I might've given up because I wasn't at 100%.

Right.

And it, and so if you look back at your life, maybe you're in a moment right now where something's challenging you. You want to give up, whether it's in your work, in sports, in relationship, and you don't know if you can keep going. You don't know if you can make it through. Look back on your life and realize you have made it through every challenge that ever came across your plate. And this is just another one. And it's just another opportunity for you to find another piece of yourself, to pull up something that maybe you never knew that you had to develop into a person. That's closer to that perfection of you that you've been hoping to get to your whole life. And it's good to have a team, you know, as an individual athlete, individual sport athlete, people think, oh, you did this all on your own. I had a huge team behind me. I had people who were experts in nutrition, in cycling mechanics, in stroke work and swimming, in psychology. I mean, you name it. I had a huge team of experts. I had a very core team of training partners that I couldn't have done all this without all of them. Yes, on race day, that was my time. That was my time to take all of their expertise, all that energy they gave me and put it together. And so, you know, a team is also so important for having success.

That's, yeah, that's a very, very good point. And Mark, I'm going to get super practical here for those listening. You know, they're, oh, wow. Well, you know, world champion Ironman, all that kind of stuff. I can't do that, but I do, I am interested. I know I need to be fit as an executive because it takes a lot of endurance. It's a lot of the same things. It's the endurance. It's the mindset. It's the mission. What would you say to someone listening and they want to get in shape? How do they incorporate, you know, sort of the balanced life? Like, how do they get into, maybe they're not going to do an Ironman, but how do they, What are some steps they could take to start getting themselves into better shape?

The most important thing is to start from where you're at. You know, maybe a lot of people were athletic when they were younger and now they're out of shape and it feels daunting to think, to compare those 2 levels, especially if you've spent a lot of time working on your business and sort of neglected your physical health. But Start from where you're at. That's the point that is the most important. Second thing is to pick activities that you actually enjoy doing.

That's good.

You know, people always talk about running. Well, maybe you hate running. Maybe your body isn't built to run a gazillion miles. So that is not going to be an activity that you'll stick with because it hurts. Your knees hurt, your hips hurt, whatever it is. Find something that you love to do and find somebody to do it with, you know. Part of what was so good about my training partners is that we would schedule times to do key workouts together. So we're gonna meet for, let's say, a long bike ride at 7:00 AM at a specific stoplight, and then we're gonna go for this long ride together. If it was just me, I had 10 million reasons why I could blow off that ride or do it the next day or, you know, do it a week later. But if I knew my training partners were gonna be there waiting for me, I showed up.

Good point.

So, Figure out where's your accountability. Is it your training partners? Is it something fun that you put into your watch so that, you know, you close the rings, you've succeeded, you know, make it fun. And also look at it in long term. Balance is something that you should be striving, that I strive for every day of my life. And maybe on any given day, it may not look balanced, but over the course of a year, hopefully things are balanced. I put time into my family. I put time into my physical health, into my work health. And, um, just realize that not every, not every day is going to be a world record day for you. There's going to be some days where you get up and go, yeah, no, it's just, I'm just not feeling today. That's okay. It's, It's what you do 90% of the time with your diet, with your exercise, with your mindset that will really define who you are and what, how the outcome of the impact of what your efforts are doing.

Yeah. Mark, you dropped us with so many golden nuggets of things super practical in life and in fitness. And we talked from everything from how the blues were foundational to today's modern music, no doubt about that. And we talked a lot about Resilience, agility, mindset, mission orientation, perseverance, uh, and then some practical things, how to, how to get into this, into any sport to make sure that you're physically active and those sorts of things. What did we miss? Or is there anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last.

You know, I, I've, I've studied shamanism for about a little over 30 years with a gentleman, Grant Secunda. One of the One of the things he has told me over and over that really resonates when I've had tough moments, he goes, just keep in mind, this is all theater. You know, and you think about it, like, and he said, no situation is inherently good or bad. It's just how you respond to it. And that, that really helps me in those moments where I want to freak out and take everything so personally, like the world is against me. It's all theater. Just enjoy it.

Yeah.

You know, this moment might look impossible, but the next moment can be incredible.

Love it. Great words to end on. Mark Allen, thank you so much. How can people find out more about you? And we'll put this in the show notes.

Yeah, my coaching is on a platform called TriDot, tridot.com. You can contact me there. If you, if you want any specific questions answered, email me mark@markallensports.com. I love to talk to companies and individuals and help people with their athletic endeavors and just keep in contact with the community of people who have like-mindedness.

Yeah. Mark, super practical and super inspirational. Thank you again for being a guest on Digital Voices.

Thanks, Ed.

And leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.