Going Deep with Cody Beals

August 11, 2022

Cody Beals claimed a come-from-behind victory at last month's Ironman Lake Placid, earning his second victory of the season and his twelfth professional victory. In the week following the race, he joined Slowtwitch for a near-anything goes interview.

Slowtwitch: What training did you do today?
Beals: I had a hard trainer ride in my grungy basement. Then I rode my commuter bike to this antique gem of a pool in Guelph for a swim workout. It was shockingly cold for July.

ST: What's with the trainer? You're Canadian. This is July.
Beals: I rode 240 kilometers outside two days earlier, so I wasn't ready to get back on the roads. I find it mentally easier to ride the trainer, especially when I’m tired. Sometimes the trainer is a crutch for me, but usually it’s a tool.

ST: I'm a bit of a basket case during taper week. Does taper week still stress you out?
Beals: Oh, for sure! I still get stressed out every time. Even when things are going smoothly and I’m playing it cool, I'll catch myself fixating on something. There's inevitably at least one thing and it can seem so trivial in hindsight. Then again, an ex-pro told me that the day I stop getting nervous about racing is the day I should retire.

ST: You almost quit triathlon a while ago, what kept you in it?
Beals: The past couple years were such an uphill battle—pandemic, race cancelations, reduced earnings, injuries, illness, mechanicals… By last fall, I thought I was done with triathlon. I tried quitting and took almost a month off without telling anyone. I threw myself into landscaping my backyard, busting concrete, hauling earth and laying stone. I also did some heavy introspection. I realized that if I quit the sport now, I would eventually be consumed with regret.

I also had a series of conversations with some current and past champions of our sport: Simon Whitfield, Jocelyn Mccauley, Luke McKenzie, Meredith Kessler, Ben Hoffman and others. The consensus was that “this is a fleeting period of your life to pursue this at such a high level.” I may only have 1, or 5, or 10 more years if I’m really fortunate. Everything else that I want to do with my life doesn't have a such a tight timeframe. I'm 32 and the clock is ticking faster than I realized before the pandemic.

ST: You've had a few races this year, give yourself a letter grade. Explain why.
Beals: I was hard on myself over the past two seasons, despite the pandemic challenges. Those seasons were a C at best, but I’ll upgrade myself to an A- so far this year. I gave myself a mid-season deadline to assess a long experiment with self-coaching. I sure feel like I’m back on track!

IM Texas (4th): B- — A for effort, C for form. Just a month after having COVID, I was undertrained, underweight and still hacking up crud.
IM 70.3 Eagleman (1st): A — One of my best 70.3 races, taking my fourth win here and finally breaking Craig Alexander’s decade-old course record.
IM 70.3 Mont Tremblant (4th): B+ — Stiff competition left no room for some tactical mistakes and a slightly off day.
IM Lake Placid (1st): A- — I needed every bit of my good form plus some good luck to claw back the win when the race spun out of my control.

ST: Is Kona a big deal for you?
Beals: One of my fans started using the hashtag #MoreThanKona. That mirrors how I feel about it. I’m grateful that there are many more opportunities than Kona these days. I’m pragmatic about how I run my triathlon career and pick my races. I see other compelling options with better prospects for earnings and exposure, less risk, lower opportunity cost and greater personal significance. The sands are shifting in triathlon and Kona may need reimagining in order to remain a legitimate championship.

That said, I intend to return to Kona sooner or later. The race suits my physiology and I'm hungry for a good performance there, especially after my only dance on the Big Island ended with a mechanical in 2019. I’m just not at the point where I can afford to make Kona my priority.

ST: Do you ever go dataless in your training?
Beals: Earlier on, my blog and science background earned me a reputation for being super data-driven and analytical. It's still true to some extent. Most of my training is tightly scripted with the pace clock for swimming, power on the bike and GPS pace for running. I don't rely as much on quantitative metrics to track fitness or readiness to train.

In recent years, I’ve come full circle and I’m leaning more on qualitative methods. I ask myself some basic questions: how’s my mood, how's my sleep, how's my sex drive, when’s the last time I switched off from triathlon, am I feeling enthusiastic about training? I put more stock in these answers than anything a device could tell me. These approaches are complimentary, not mutually exclusive. The qualitative stuff supplements the data and gives it context.

ST: About a year ago you did a series of honest and entertaining YouTube videos. Then nothing. Why?
Beals: In my defense, I said I’d only make videos when I have something to say, not a set schedule. But yeah, a year is a long hiatus. I had some fun even though social media often feels uncomfortably self-aggrandizing. I still have a lot to say, but after a couple rough seasons, I decided to let my racing to do most of the talking.

It also didn’t make sense to pour time, energy and money into the channel when I was on the brink of quitting the sport. I pay my partner to make my videos since he’s a videographer/director/screenwriter. Even with my “partner discount” it costs a lot to produce a half-decent video. The pandemic strained this budget. I could justify the expense now, but it’s just a matter of priorities.

I found the video project disruptive and distracting from my essential business of training, racing and recovering. I don’t just mean making the videos. I wasn’t prepared for all the attention and comments, which weren’t all positive. As a reforming people-pleaser and perfectionist, I’m still not great at ignoring negativity, even if it’s one out of every 100 interactions.

ST: The week before your race at Lake Placid, you received news that your grandfather died. How did that impact your lead-up to the race and your emotional state on race day?
Beals: It put me in a philosophical state of mind. There was so much joy in his life despite his considerable challenges at age 95. It put the struggles of my triathlon career into perspective. I hit the start line full of gratitude for my health, relative youth, fitness, and privilege.

ST: Getting off the bike you were over 6 minutes back of Metzler. Did you anticipate him getting that kind of a lead and what was your approach on the run?
Beals: BigMetz was on my radar as an underrated breakthrough athlete. We had a close fight at 70.3 Eagleman in June. Then he took his first 70.3 win in Oregon, just two weeks before Lake Placid. I still underestimated his riding. Two thirds through the ride, we hit the major descent together, reaching over 92 km/h (57 mph). Justin supertucked and broke away. After that, I paid for some aggressive moves earlier and went backwards.

It was crushing to enter T2 in fourth place and hear that time gap. I had to remind myself that full distance racing usually comes down to the second half of the marathon. I also anticipated that some athletes had overbiked relative to my solid effort (278W NP at 71 kg). I ended up pacing the run well with a patient first lap, followed by a nearly even split to take the lead in the last 5 miles.

ST: What were some of the rough patches in the race and what did you do to overcome them?
Beals: The closing stage of the ride has been the low point of all my full distance races. I’ve felt so dejected that I’ve been tempted to step off the course. I’ve rallied enough times on the run to know that my day isn’t over despite how miserable I feel. I always tell myself that the run is a fresh start. I visualize ditching all of the baggage and fatigue in T2 so that I feel weightless starting the marathon.

ST: You just won Lake Placid but I see that you have Ironman Mont Tremblant still on your schedule. Are you still planning on doing it, if so why?
Beals: I wouldn’t miss the chance to three-peat! I won this race as my IM debut in 2018 and defended my title against Lionel Sanders in 2019 before the race was cancelled for the next two years. No race has done more for my career. My history with the Mont Tremblant region goes back much further to family ski and bike vacations every year of my childhood. This race is more than Kona for me.

ST: At this point in your career, do you have any unfinished business in the sport?
Beals: It’s easy to fall back on a tired script here. I feel like I'm required to regurgitate a cliché like “I need to have a good performance in Kona.” But that isn't the truth. I may never have the performance I’m capable of in Kona if I’m unwilling to make it a high priority.

I used to wonder if I’d be ready to retire once I’d won 10 professional races, but Eagleman was number 11 and Placid made it a dozen. I'm not measuring my success in terms of wins anymore. I don’t have a list with boxes to tick in order to decide when I’m done with the sport. As long as I'm hungry, and as long as I'm enjoying myself more often than not, I’m still in this.

All Photos: Ryan Heisler / Slowtwitch.com