The Red Bulletin June 2019

Daniela Ryf
“THE PAIN GAVE
MY BODY
EXTRA ENERGY”
Ryf on being stung by a
jellyfish at Ironman Hawaii
up. It wasn’t long before I felt like not
giving it my all. I felt bad all the time.”
Ryf suffered for almost a year and
a half before doctors finally diagnosed
small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,
or SIBO (excessive bacteria in the small
intestine). With the right diagnosis, she
was back to form within a matter of
months. “In that year and a half, I had
to learn that I couldn’t just crowbar my
way through everything. The patience
I learnt at that time now helps both in
training and in the races themselves.”
She continues, “I enjoy training really
hard a lot more now, because I remember
how bad it was not being able to put my
foot to the floor the way I wanted.”
Being behind gives
you control
October 15, 2017, Ironman Hawaii
For the world’s top endurance athletes,
the Ironman World Championship isn’t
just an opportunity to go head to head
in a show of power, but also a chance to
demonstrate their mental strength. Lucy
Charles, Ryf’s fiercest rival that year, knew
that. The young Brit set an incredible time
in the 3.86km swim – Ryf’s weakest area
– missing the 18-year-old record of 48m
43s by just five seconds. Furthermore,
Charles went on to extend her lead in the
cycling – Ryf’s strongest area. At halfway,
the Swiss triathlete was six minutes
behind. She needed to turn up the heat.
“Your position at the split time doesn’t
matter – the important thing is crossing
the finish line first,” Ryf explains. This
applies to any long-distance exercise,
but it’s especially true in Ironman where,
she says, “the race only really gets going
five or six hours in”. But how to stay cool
when you’ve lost ground to your rival?
“It’s easier for the hunter to stay cool
than the hunted,” Ryf opines. “After all,
it’s the hunter who’s in control of the
situation. The hunted is threatened from
behind, whereas the hunter has a carrot
dangling on a stick in front of them. The
hunter can calmly observe, study and
take aim at the hunted ahead of them.
The hunted has to maintain their pace
and hope they don’t suffer a slump in
form. So the hunter can decide when they
want to give it their all and overtake.”
And that’s exactly what Ryf did in
Hawaii in 2017. Over the course of the
final 40km of the cycle, she turned up
the heat and went into the lead, then
she proceeded to extend her advantage
during the run. She crossed the finish
line with tears in her eyes, almost nine
minutes ahead of Lucy Charles.
What slows you down
now will make you
faster in the future
March 2017, training session, Gran Canaria
Ryf was preparing for a season in which
she hoped to surpass herself. It was still
early in the year, but she already sensed
that feeling she loved so much: the
relaxedness of perfectly honed muscles
and concentrated energy in her arms and
legs. That morning, swim training was
on the agenda. Regardless of the tempo
of her swimming, Ryf barrelled her way
through rough water. Suddenly, a twinge
between her shoulders shattered her
concentration. She’d torn a muscle. She
could barely turn her head the next
morning and had to take a complete
break for 10 days. How the hell would
she be ready for her first challenge of
the season, Ironman South Africa?
“The injury completely ruined my
preparations,” Ryf recalls. Instead of
being able to train harder every day,
she was condemned to immobility.
“I didn’t even feel I was an athlete any
more,” she explains. But as the days
passed, her thinking changed: she would
no longer set her targets by the stopwatch
or through clocking up kilometres;
instead, she would do it by marking her
THE RED BULLETIN 37