Frodeno Going Mental

Two days before the Tokyo Olympic triathlon, a typhoon threatened to push the race back, and the briefing room started to crack. Flora Duffy kept her face still. Even freaking out inside, she wasn't going to show it. In this episode of FRODENO GOING MENTAL, recorded in Kona, Jan Frodeno sits down his wife Emma Frodeno (Snowsill) and Dame Flora Duffy, Bermuda's first Olympic gold medallist. They talk about turning down Great Britain to race for an island of 65,000, the early years she calls destructive, the 13 years from a DNF in the Beijing Olympics to gold in Tokyo, a letter listing everything she had to change, and the Paris swim where she didn't turn left. Jan and Emma both won gold in Beijing, the Games Flora didn't finish.A conversation about the face you show on the start line, and who you are once you stop needing it.Enjoy this episode!
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Courtney Dauwalter won Western States, Hardrock and UTMB in a single summer in 2023, and this July she won Hardrock again. Seven weeks later she stopped at UTMB: the batteries, as she puts it, weren't ready to go again. She does all of it with no coach and no training plan, and she says that's part of what keeps her healthy. Hand her a written workout and she'd chase an A-plus in it, regardless of the day.In this episode of FRODENO GOING MENTAL, Jan sits down with Courtney in Kona. They talk about the pain cave she chisels a little bigger with every race, the mantra she falls back on when nothing is fine, how she tells a real warning flag from ordinary suffering, and the leopard in a hammock she saw beside a trail while sleep-deprived.A conversation about choosing the hard thing, and keeping joy in the driver's seat while you do it.Enjoy this episode!
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Olivier Bernhard's Achilles wouldn't heal. So he and a friend who was an engineer glued pieces of garden hose to a running shoe. He waited until dark to try it, and ten steps in, he knew. Every brand he pitched it to said no. In this episode of Frodeno Going Mental, Jan sits down with the co-founder of On Running in Kona, an island Olivier loves and says he was never made for. They talk about finding triathlon at 13 in a village with no club, eight wins at Powerman Zofingen, the long mountain hike that turned three friends into business partners, why he goes looking for the problems people call impossible, and why he calls the money "only paper." Jan, who fought his own Achilles problems, knows exactly where this story starts. A conversation about letting go of control and trusting what you feel before anyone else agrees.
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For six years, Mark Allen was often in the lead late at the IRONMAN Hawaii, and he fell apart every time. He came to believe the island had it out for him. Then he won it six times. In this episode of FRODENO GOING MENTAL, Jan sits down with Mark Allen in Kona. They talk about the pickup truck that hit him on a ride and took away his reason to race, the 1989 moment his mind went quiet, the shaman whose image returned to him then, and why, at 68, he takes his coffee outside before he picks up his phone. Both came to triathlon from surf lifesaving, and Jan asks how a swimmer who calls himself very average built the engine to win. They talk about what the island tried to teach him: give everything you have, even on the days you only have 60% of it. Enjoy this episode!
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For Kat Matthews, the mindset is just about removing the barriers. What's left, in her words, is to get a bit fitter. In this episode of Going Mental, Jan Frodeno sits down with Kat three weeks out from Kona to find out how she got there. She explains the load bucket she uses to decide when to back off a session, why she started calling consistency boring, and what changed when she handed her coaching to her husband. They get into Cautious Carol, the part of her she would have to let go of to race past her limit, and why going mental, for her, means waking up in the night six weeks before a race, wondering if she should have tied her shoelaces differently. A conversation about what's left once the mindset work is done. Enjoy this episode!
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