Adam Hill: Ironman Training, Mental Toughness & Shifting Gears

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 633 with Adam Hill.

Cold Open: The Size of the Goal

Adam Hill: How do I sign up for the Ironman Hawaii? I looked at the qualifying times and thought, wow, that's certainly not where I'm at right now — but how do I get to that point? It became really about the size of that goal. I couldn't just keep looking at it and getting frustrated, so I had to break it down into incremental steps. I ultimately signed up for a sprint triathlon to happen six months out, and that's where I put my sights and what I started training for. Knowing the full Ironman was on the calendar the following March, I just kept scaling up: I did a sprint — great. I did an Olympic — great. Then the next one was a half Ironman — I did that, great, I'm done with that, now we're going to focus on the full. I just kept leveling up, and each time it gave me a new baseline to build on, a new foundation.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: This is the Tom Rowland Podcast — fascinating stories to amaze, encourage, and inspire you in fishing, fitness, and the outdoors, brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. I started this podcast as a way to connect with my friends, people I admire and respect, and you. It's been a learning journey that's made me a better person, a better fisherman, a better father, and a better athlete. I'm so happy you're on this journey with me, and I'd love to hear from you with show suggestions, guest suggestions, or questions. The best way to reach me is by text — (305) 930-7346 for the fastest response — but if you prefer email, send it to podcast@saltwaterexperience.com, a dedicated address just for the show. If you like the show, post about it on social media and tag me, text the link to a couple of friends who might enjoy it, and subscribe and leave a five-star review if you feel like I've earned it. The website is tomrowlandpodcast.com, and that's where everything lives — every past episode, the how-to Tuesdays, the full links, and the physical Fridays. You can find us on social media at tom_rowland on Instagram, or our main account, saltwater_experience. I hope to hear from you soon. So now, let's get on to today's show.

Adam Hill: I'm Adam Hill, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Welcoming Adam Hill

Tom Rowland: Alright, Adam, how are you, man?

Adam Hill: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on — this is awesome.

Tom Rowland: I appreciate it, man. I'm interested in hearing your story — I've watched some video of you and what you've been able to accomplish in your life, especially recently, and it's very impressive. So, what's your story?

Adam Hill: Well, I come from a completely non-athletic background. I did try ball sports — baseball in particular — and ended up as a second-string benchwarmer on a team that went 0 and 10. I got into music instead and decided that was my path rather than athletics. I also grew up with a bit of an anxiety disorder I didn't know I had, which became a descent into a drinking problem that got much worse over time as I tried to manage that anxiety. Making a long story short, I eventually got sober, which changed my mindset to a perspective of being able to do a lot of things I didn't think I'd be able to accomplish before — and that's what got me into triathlon. Then I started practicing a lot of discipline in that sport and developed quite an adventure out of it.

Tom Rowland: And making it all the way to Kona, right?

Adam Hill: Yeah. That was the dream of a lifetime and a thrill of a lifetime to achieve.

The Ironman Broadcast and the Seed That Was Planted

Tom Rowland: That's really amazing. I've actually been on the course — I went to Hawaii this summer, and having watched the Ironman on TV, I thought, man, we're on the course, this is the road they ride their bikes on. It's such a cool thing, and it's such an amazing production, the way they bring in human-interest stories. It's really one of the best-produced athletic events — you even see the NFL doing similar things now, bringing in human-interest stories, because instead of just watching people swim, run, and bike, you understand these people. You understand that a lot of them are just like you and me, or were in a completely different place in their life not long ago, just like you. That's one of the things I like most about the production of the Ironman event.

Adam Hill: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. That was the first thing that brought me into the sport — that seed was planted maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, while I was still in the depths of anxiety and a drinking problem. I saw it on television and was amazed and inspired by the stories of normal people — doctors, lawyers, teachers, all these different kinds of people. I thought, wow, that looks amazing, I would love to do that — and then the next thought was, yeah, but you could never do that. I didn't think about it again until I did, once I was sober and my mindset shifted. Ultimately it was great, because closing that cycle about a decade later and qualifying for Kona, I had a chance to meet some really great people, including the producer of those Ironman broadcasts, Evan Hathaway, who was an amazing person and created some amazing stories in that process.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, over the years he definitely has — it's really one of the better things on TV.

Breaking Through the "I Can't"

Tom Rowland: I'm interested in the mindset shift. We talk a lot about mindset on this podcast — accomplishing things you didn't think you could, throughout your whole life. Mindset is so important: the way you think about something, whether you have confidence in it or not. You were so definitive that you could never do that — you had this negative self-talk telling you that you can't. So what changes that? What has you even question, well, maybe I could? Because that's the first step.

Adam Hill: Right. It was just that little spark of being able to break through the wall of "I can't." For me it came a year before I remembered that experience of watching the broadcast — I was a year sober at that point. What happened was, I'd reached a bottom in alcoholism so bad that it forced me into a decision: either continue down that path and end up in jail or dead or worse, or turn my life around and go to AA and listen to people who knew what they were doing in sobriety. At that point, as hopeless as I felt with anxiety and depression and a drinking problem, I didn't think I could stop. I just decided to completely let go, attend meetings every day, and listen to people with experience in sobriety. Going through that process of doing what other people told me to do, focusing 100% on that first, showed me that when you put enough focus and discipline into something, you can make a major life change. That's what led me down the path a year later, once I had a year sober. I was always told in recovery rooms to wait a year before making any major life changes — but I heard it as, once you hit a year, make major life changes. So somehow that thought ended up in my head again, and I remembered sitting on the couch watching the Ironman World Championship, feeling inspired. At that time I was recovering from shoulder surgery, so I was immobile — but my mindset had shifted enough to slightly break through that wall and ask, well, what if? What if, instead of "I can't," I try it? So in the spirit of extreme accountability, which is one of the best methods for achieving anything, I put down the $750 and signed up for an Ironman a year out, without knowing how to do any of it, and decided to build a parachute on the way down.

Committing to the Goal

Tom Rowland: I think that's so important — having something on the schedule. I remember when I was thinking about my first marathon, and that was a lot of the advice from people like Hal Higdon and Jeff Galloway: sign up for the race, just do it, put it on the calendar. Now you've made this major step toward committing to something — telling people, signing up, and more importantly putting nonrefundable money down. Now you've got pressure from a lot of directions: you've told people, you've put money down, and if you don't do it, you lose money and don't look so good. Was that pressure good for you?

Adam Hill: It was — very good for me, at least internally and from the support of my immediate family. My wife is incredibly supportive; I could never have done this without her. I told her expecting her to say, "you're crazy, you've never done anything like that, why would you think that?" But instead she said, "no, you should do that, that's awesome." And I thought, oh crap, now I have to do it.

Tom Rowland: When you sign up for that race, that first day you decide to do it — what's your physical state at that point?

Adam Hill: I was injured — recovering from shoulder surgery for a torn labrum. The doctor told me I wasn't allowed to run for two months and couldn't swim for five months. That didn't matter at the time, because I wasn't doing any of those things yet anyway. I was still on a shoulder sling, thinking, okay, how am I going to do this? I was injured, but I was also unhealthy — not very active, because I was going through recovery from a mental and spiritual standpoint and hadn't focused on my body. I was still smoking cigarettes and eating a lot of peanut M&Ms, so it wasn't a healthy lifestyle by any means. I started with nutrition, because that was the first thing I could control — I decided to keep it simple and clean, eat whole healthy foods, and started walking. That was the first step.

The Maffetone Method and Learning to Walk Before You Run

Tom Rowland: Were you reading any books, or getting nutritional guidance, or did you just jump into it yourself?

Adam Hill: A little bit of both. Pretty early on, while researching, I found a book by Phil Maffetone called The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing. Maffetone's method is very whole-foods based — lots of vegetables, lots of fruits, higher-fat diets so you become fat-adapted. That resonated with me a lot, along with the idea of easy aerobic fitness paired with clean nutrition. In the past I'd only heard the "no pain, no gain" stuff — go hard or go home — and that's part of why I kept injuring myself. This philosophy resonated, and I found out a lot of Ironman-level triathletes had succeeded with it, so I put all my chips in that basket. And it starts with walking.

Tom Rowland: It starts with walking. How much walking were you doing at the beginning?

Adam Hill: Probably about thirty minutes a day, just to get active — that was all I was allowed. If the doctor gave me leeway to walk thirty minutes, I'd do the full thirty and build from there. Part of what motivated me was knowing that running, swimming, and biking were on the horizon — things I hadn't done — so I was chomping at the bit to get to them.

Tom Rowland: I don't know if you're being fully accurate calling yourself a non-athlete — had you done any running before this?

Adam Hill: A little bit — I'd suffered through a couple of half marathons, maybe middle-of-the-pack, weekend-warrior stuff, running when I could without much of a plan. But the whole time I was still drinking and smoking, which wasn't healthy.

Tom Rowland: So you'd try to blow it all out with a 13-mile run — I've seen that before. So from walking daily, how did you transition into running, and eventually into the distances you'd need for an Ironman?

Adam Hill: One thing that really helped was running for time rather than distance — thirty minutes instead of three miles, since everyone's three miles takes a different amount of time. Running for thirty minutes sounded a lot more doable. I was also forced to ease into it, because I couldn't let my ego get in the way while recovering from injury — I'd have hurt myself trying to run an eight-minute mile right away. Following the Maffetone method, I also had a heart-rate governor, training under a specific heart rate to meet a specific goal. Pretty quickly, with consistency, I saw my paces improve under that heart rate, and as I recovered and gradually increased volume, I got fitter and saw the benefits.

Exercise as a Supplement to Sobriety

Tom Rowland: How were you feeling at this point — how was adding exercise into your life helping you deal with everything else you were going through, like getting off the booze?

Adam Hill: It was an amazing supplement to sobriety — and I call it a supplement because it's by no means a replacement; you can certainly develop unhealthy addictions in many different ways. But getting into this community and meeting great people focused on health and wellness leveled up my energy, leveled up my mental state, and leveled up my ability to realize what was possible in my life. All of that became a flywheel, propelling me into a virtuous cycle of believing in myself — something completely opposite of what I used to be: a hopeless drunk with no hope or belief in myself. This was a big sea change.

Tom Rowland: So far we're painting a pretty rosy picture — you stop drinking, go to a few meetings, start running, and everything gets better. But surely there were challenges along the way. Did you ever think, what have I gotten myself into, I don't know if I can do this? Did you encounter doubt in this process? We're going to take a short break and get right back to the show in just a moment.

Self-Doubt, Family, and Finding a Community

Adam Hill: Oh, absolutely. Even at the very beginning it was very challenging to tell anybody. I told my wife and my close inner circle, but wouldn't go beyond that — I didn't want to tell my parents or anyone else, because I was afraid, not necessarily of them laughing at me, though that was an irrational fear too, but more of them trying to protect me by saying things like, maybe you should set your sights lower, maybe Ironman isn't for you. So I always had that self-doubt ringing in my brain, especially about the swimming — as a non-swimmer, really, who'd started life surfing in easy shorebreak but never really ventured out past the buoys, hundreds of yards offshore where sharks lived. It was scary to me, and still is to this day, kind of an intimidating process. I had a lot of self-doubt and a lot of setbacks along the way, and it was a tough thing to get over.

Tom Rowland: When people have big dreams, often the most well-meaning people in your life do exactly what you described — try to protect you from it. "That's a big dream, are you sure you want to do that?" The people you're hoping will support you most can actually be the most damaging, because they just don't want to see you get hurt — usually parents, siblings, people really close to you. What advice do you give people after going through this yourself — whether it's an Ironman, a marathon, a new business, or quitting a job to start something? Do you hold it in close, or talk to them, knowing that doubt from your own family can fuel some people and damage others?

Adam Hill: I think it helps to know what motivates you. If you're fueled by people telling you no, then by all means tell the world and go after it. But be self-aware about the type of person you are. I'm a hypersensitive person in a lot of ways, so I take that stuff personally — if someone told me "you probably should," in that state I might have taken it to heart. So I was very strategic, maybe too strategic, about who I told, because I didn't trust the endurance community to embrace me, which was a mistake. I'd encourage people to find those communities — especially now with social media, there are encouraging, supportive communities out there to help beginners. With triathlon in particular, there are beginner triathlon groups with tens of thousands of people, and Ironman communities that will welcome you in and help you through the process if you reach out and are vulnerable. I'm almost certain every extreme adventure has that kind of support.

Tom Rowland: The community aspect of anything is great, but sometimes you don't have one — a big part of this podcast is being a fishing guide, and when you pull into a new area wanting to guide, you're immediately competing with everyone already out there. There's no welcome committee, and nobody's going to offer you respect until you prove yourself and show you're not going to step on toes or try to recreate the wheel. You have to expect that, and expect there won't be much help. But on the other hand, so many people have done exactly what you did — gone from physically incapable to doing it a year later, even at the highest level. It's a pretty incredible transformation. When did you decide to start picking up the other two disciplines, given you only had a handful of months?

Adam Hill: I started as quickly as my injury would allow. After walking, the first thing I did was get on a bike trainer in my garage — which was a comedy of errors, since I hadn't reached out to anybody and didn't know what I was doing. I didn't even attach the flywheel to the back wheel at first, so I was just spinning in the air thinking this is so easy. I had to learn a lot as I went. Swimming came a little later, and that was more difficult, because I was overcoming a significant fear of being out in open water — you probably don't have that fear as a fishing guide.

Facing Fear: Sharks, Traffic, and the Unknown

Tom Rowland: Plenty — I know exactly what's under that water, and there are plenty of things that will bite you. My fear mostly comes down to fish behavior: when the water's clear, I don't think a shark's going to attack you, or it would be a very rare occasion. You're more likely to get bit when the water's muddy and full of bait fish and you happen to be in there too — that's probably why most shark encounters happen in less than three feet of water, because your whole silhouette isn't visible. They don't typically try to eat things as big as you, but if they only see a foot of you, you're just like everything else, and they test things with their face, which happens to have a lot of teeth. I don't like swimming in muddy water. And sharks are funny creatures — the movies and Shark Week tell you they're drawn to commotion, but that's not how it works when you're actually fishing for them. They want the freshest bait, not old stinky stuff, and they don't want noise — you can scare them off just by stomping on the bottom of the boat. A lot of what you see in movies just isn't true, and when you actually target them, they're harder to catch than you'd think. Shark attacks do happen, but at an Ironman swim start, with that many people going in at once, I'd think that's about the lowest-risk scenario there is, unless there happened to be one right there and everybody swam over it. It's a legitimate fear, but a rare one.

Adam Hill: Yeah — and you're dressed like a seal. You always hear the statistic that you're more likely to get hit by lightning than attacked by a shark, but that's until you dress like a seal and swim into their environment.

Tom Rowland: But you're also training outdoors most of the time except on your indoor trainer, so you've got a pretty good chance of getting struck by lightning too. It's a dangerous sport — you've got a good chance of getting hit by a car. When I was running marathons, I thought about adding the bike, since I was always a good swimmer, but the roads in the Florida Keys are so bad, and my wife — who rarely asks me not to do anything — asked me not to ride on those roads. Probably a smart call, given how many people are down there on vacation, having a beer and driving around. Is that a legitimate fear for you, getting hit on the bike?

Adam Hill: Certainly a legitimate concern — if there's one out of a hundred negligent drivers out there and you're on a five-hour bike ride, how many are you going to run into? For me, fear and anxiety are weird things — never rational, at least for me. The anxiety I experience is always of the unknown: chances are I won't get attacked by a shark, but what if a rogue wave comes, what if this happens, what if that happens — all those "what ifs" lead to a panic attack, and it comes down to a lack of control. When I'm riding on the road, which isn't that frequent anymore, the risk is right there in front of me, visible, almost tangible, and somehow that's less anxiety-inducing than the irrational things, which is a weird thing to say as someone with an anxiety disorder, but that's how I experience it.

The Roots of Adam's Anxiety and the Descent into Alcoholism

Tom Rowland: Is that what was happening before this transformation, with the anxiety attacks — just not knowing something? How would that occur for you?

Adam Hill: The panic attacks started when I was in college. Before that it was just a kind of murmuring, under-the-surface worry — we didn't really talk about anxiety back in the nineties, so I didn't know that's what it was. The first panic attack in college was a completely irrational fear of something I shouldn't have been worried about: my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, and I hadn't been tested for HIV, and I had this massive panic attack with total certainty that I had it — which was ridiculous, there was no reason to assume it, but in my mind it felt certain. Of course it didn't come to pass, and then the next fear that came up was cancer, or things like that. It wasn't just an under-the-surface fear — it was a legitimately paralyzing panic attack that left me on the floor, frightened.

Tom Rowland: How do you get over that — when you think you have cancer and you're having panic attacks, do you go get checked out at the doctor? What's the process, or does it just subside after the attack passes?

Adam Hill: It would come in waves, but mostly it stayed as a sense of dread. I did go see a doctor a couple of times — got tested for HIV, for example, and came back negative, which gave immediate relief for a few days until another panic attack replaced it with something else. I'd go to the dentist convinced some bumps in my mouth were cancer, they'd say no it's not, and I'd get that little sense of relief — but it always came back. The one thing that immediately relieved it, which certainly wasn't healthy, was alcohol. That's where alcohol became a much bigger presence in my life for the next decade.

Tom Rowland: So did you eventually replace alcohol with exercise — is that what's going on?

Adam Hill: Without the recovery element, I never really replaced alcohol with anything — I just tried to add things to it. I'd try ninety-day fitness programs, or train for a half marathon a couple of months out and push myself too hard and burn out, all while still drinking. I'd have periods of white-knuckling sobriety, not drinking for a couple of months just to show myself I could and to get the heat off from family, but it would eventually come back because I wasn't addressing the psychological reasons I was drinking.

Tom Rowland: So did the recovery groups help you get at that root — or was there another mechanism, some introspection about why you were drinking, so you could come to terms with it, realize you didn't need it anymore, and start to thrive?

Adam Hill: Yes — first it was recovery groups and a lot of therapy. That's the one thing I'll say right now: we can never do these things alone, especially in states of hopelessness. We just can't do it alone, but there is help — whether that's a recovery program like AA, therapy, or finding a licensed confidant. I had a therapist I'd been working with while actively drinking who was also with me through recovery, so she knew me well in both states. In the first few years of sobriety I went to AA pretty religiously for my own recovery. What I found for myself, though this isn't true for everybody, is that part of overcoming my anxiety was being more open and sharing my story more openly, hopefully to help other people — it also holds me accountable to staying sober. So I found that putting anonymity aside and sharing openly was helpful for me.

Tom Rowland: What strikes me is that, on the surface, it almost looks like you replaced alcohol with exercise as a coping mechanism. But the more you talk about it, it sounds more like you got to a place where you realized you could do so much more, and this was something you wanted to try — not a coping mechanism, but a new experience you ended up liking far more than you expected.

Adam Hill: Yeah, absolutely. One important thing I'd step back to add: learning what my anxiety was, learning that I had it, and giving it a name was just as important as starting the recovery process. It was like, ah, okay, this is a thing — this isn't just me being crazy, it's actually a thing, and I'm validated in that, and I can start moving forward and healing from it. And ultimately, the next level that came from doing something like an Ironman was realizing that pushing past the comfort zone just a little bit was almost an antidote to that anxiety, because it increases the elasticity of your comfort zone. Adventure became an antidote for anxiety for me.

New Adventures Beyond Triathlon

Tom Rowland: What other kinds of adventures were you getting into?

Adam Hill: That was probably the biggest one — I had a pretty big focus and pretty big goals there, so for a long time that was the main adventure. But even now I try to keep pushing into new things — I got back on skis recently and found it a little scary, so I figured I'd better keep doing it. Foil boarding, surfing, things like that also help — just pushing a little beyond the comfort zone.

Tom Rowland: So you're in shape, riding your bike, and now swimming — did you start in a pool or in open water?

Adam Hill: I started in a pool, definitely — I was very scared.

Tom Rowland: So how does the graduation to Kona happen? We're going to take a quick break and get right back to the show in just a moment.

The Long Climb to Kona

Adam Hill: It started very gradually, and that's where a lot of the trouble with self-belief happened. In that first year, preparing for my first Ironman, I already had it in my head that I really wanted to do the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii — even before I'd done my first one. In fact, the very first thing I did once I decided I wanted to do an Ironman was look up how to sign up for Ironman Hawaii. I looked at the qualifying times and realized that wasn't where I was at, so it became about breaking that goal down into incremental steps — signing up for a sprint triathlon six months out, then scaling up: a sprint, then an Olympic, then a half Ironman, then the full. Each time it gave me another baseline to build on.

Adam Hill: Once I finished that first full Ironman, I reached a plateau pretty quickly — about 10% off from where I needed to be to qualify for Kona. In that first race I finished in the top third of my field, which made me think, maybe there's something to this, maybe I should see how well I can do. I moved into the top 20 of my age group over the next few races and stayed there for a while, which got a little frustrating — to the point where I thought about taking some time off to reevaluate. But around the time of my sixth Ironman, doing pretty well and moving up the rankings, I learned about a reality show called Ironman: Quest for Kona, which my wife — my biggest cheerleader — actually showed me and told me to apply for. So I did. We sent in an audition video and, again, caught the attention of Evan Hathaway, who I mentioned earlier, and they cast me for the show. That added a whole new level of accountability, knowing I'd be on TV trying to qualify. That's when it got real, and I started to really focus on the mindset side and finding that extra 10% — doing more higher-intensity work and getting more surgical about my training to find that last, hardest bit. I found it, and pulled it out in my seventh race.

Tom Rowland: What's the timeframe between deciding to sign up for that first Ironman and doing your seventh race?

Adam Hill: I made the decision to sign up for an Ironman in January 2013, did my first Ironman in March 2014, and qualified for Kona in July 2017 — about four years, a little longer, between my first race and my qualification.

Tom Rowland: What age group were you in when you qualified?

Adam Hill: The 35-to-39 age group — very competitive.

Tom Rowland: What were the qualifying times for Kona in that age group?

Adam Hill: At Santa Rosa, where I qualified, my time was nine hours twenty-nine minutes, good for third place in my age group — the winning time was just north of nine hours.

Tom Rowland: That's the winning time for your age group, or the whole race?

Adam Hill: The age group — I don't remember the overall winning time, but it was somewhere below nine hours, which is pretty ridiculous.

Tom Rowland: So you qualify for Kona and know you're going — what's the timeframe between qualifying and actually arriving?

Adam Hill: Kona happened in October 2017, so that was about three or four months later.

Tom Rowland: And had they been filming you the whole time, qualifying and all?

Adam Hill: They did — they filmed me up until I qualified, and then that was basically the show, with a bit of a follow-up that year during the Ironman broadcast, which was a great experience: actually seeing myself on the show I'd once watched and told myself I could never do. That was a thrill. From there it was about three months, July to October, and I just trained as normal — my goal for racing Kona itself was simply to experience it and finish it, so I took it very conservatively rather than risk not finishing, and just enjoyed the whole experience.

Tom Rowland: What was the mindset during those four months of preparation — just trying not to get hurt, maintain fitness?

Adam Hill: Trying to maintain fitness, doing a lot of the same training that got me to Santa Rosa, and staying healthy and uninjured. When I was cycling indoors or running on the treadmill, I'd constantly have the Ironman World Championship broadcasts on and watch them — especially helpful for the swim, because that part still terrified me. This was going to be a swim without a wetsuit, without that buoyancy, in the rough waters of Hawaii.

Tom Rowland: Had all your other swims been wetsuit swims?

Adam Hill: Yes, this would be the first time without one. There is a real difference in buoyancy without a wetsuit, though saltwater helps. Actually, I stand corrected — I did have one non-wetsuit race in Texas, and I had a panic attack on that swim. It was tough to get through and I was a lot slower. It's a big difference, and there's a lot more comfort with a wetsuit.

Arriving in Kona: A Week Full of Doubt

Tom Rowland: So you're staying uninjured, not changing much, and then you arrive. Tell me what it's like — checking into the hotel, seeing all these other athletes, maybe some world-class people you recognize, everybody with their bikes and gear, spotting people from a mile away who are there for the same reason as you. What's that like? After telling yourself you'd never be able to do it, now you're actually there — did you ever feel like you ought to get back on the plane and go home?

Adam Hill: It was a week full of doubt, let me tell you — I never wanted to get on the plane and go home, but it was simultaneously the most thrilling and frightening time of my life. I couldn't believe I was there, watching and seeing all these people. The last time I'd been in that exact spot in Kona, staying near the Royal Kona Hotel, was years earlier, during a stretch of a few months of sobriety, when I decided to break my sobriety at that very hotel. So it was very meaningful to finish what I'd started there — to know that just yards from where I'd broken my sobriety, I was about to participate in one of the most defining events in our sport. It was terrifying, especially the idea of getting in the water — some days the water was really choppy and swelly with a lot of current, and the next day completely calm. We made the mistake of booking a condo right on the water, and the night before the race I sat up listening to the waves crash against the rocks, which would normally be an amazing sound, but that night it was terrifying, thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to be rough — it was raining and stormy, and it looked like a tough swim was coming. But when we woke up the next morning, all was calm — an amazing, beautiful day.

Tom Rowland: So when you're suiting up, is it just excitement, looking around like you can't believe you're there? I've had that happen a couple of times in my life, where you've visualized something so many times — like you, running on the treadmill and the trainer watching this exact race over and over — that it's ingrained in your mind, and now you're there, in this surreal moment thinking, I can't believe I'm here. And I imagine when the water hits you, or somebody kicks you in the face at the swim start, it becomes real. Did the race go as expected, and did you just take it easy without any trouble?

Adam Hill: It did — it went basically completely as expected. I got the royal treatment as far as what you can expect from the island: a headwind both ways on the bike, super clear water, riding up and around with the wind going crosswise, and going fifty miles an hour down the hill. It was everything I could have hoped for. Running through town for the first ten miles, you get amazing crowd support — it's incredible. Then you head out to the lava fields and you're mostly alone for the next sixteen miles, with racers next to you and aid stations, but not much spectator support, so there's a lot of time to just think and reflect. The whole time, that finish line keeps you going, and by the time you get close you're so exhausted you only remember bits and pieces — but every piece I do remember was just soaking in that finish line I'd been watching for so long. It was incredible — even just setting up in transition around the pro athletes I'd been idolizing for so long, meeting the media athletes with cameras, having a car drive by and film me while I raced. It demonstrated the power of what you said earlier: visualizing things with certainty in your mind before they happen. It was one of the few experiences in my life where I got to visualize exactly what I wanted to happen, and then look back and say, that happened. I can speak to the power of visualization from that standpoint.

Life After Kona: Coaching and the Family Business

Tom Rowland: That's so awesome. So at this point you've finished — when was this race, your first Kona?

Adam Hill: My first Ironman was in 2014, and Kona was 2017.

Tom Rowland: So 2017 — what's happened since then?

Adam Hill: Since then I've done a couple more races, but I've focused more on shorter-distance events, because I've looked inward and wondered whether doing the work to get back to Kona is really something I want, or just something that would give my ego a boost. It would be exciting, sure, but at this point I haven't found the motivation to chase that again. I've wanted to do something different, so I've turned my attention more toward coaching and helping other people who might want to get started in triathlon. When I first got started, it was a comedy of errors — a lot of me trying to figure things out on my own because I was embarrassed or afraid to reach out. I want to build platforms to help newcomers get involved in the sport who might want to elevate the way I did.

Tom Rowland: Have you built platforms like that?

Adam Hill: I do have a platform for beginner triathletes at Extra Life Fitness, which helps people with no triathlon experience get to their first sprint triathlon in twelve weeks. I also do a little coaching, but right now I run a family business that's taken a lot of my time too.

Tom Rowland: What's the family business?

Adam Hill: We're a fourth-generation family environmental chemical company.

Tom Rowland: Environmental chemicals — like what, cleaning products?

Adam Hill: A lot of water treatment and sewage treatment — a lot of the things you don't want to think about before you turn on the water and after you flush it. That's where our products go, to help treat those systems.

Tom Rowland: We think about that a lot — we've got plenty of water issues in the state of Florida, with quite a few years of algae blooms in the ocean.

Adam Hill: Water treatment is a big part of it, yeah. We're also in the construction industry, supplying different chemicals for different applications.

Tom Rowland: And all of that is meant to be environmentally sound — what are you using, and replacing what with what, to make it more friendly to the environment?

Adam Hill: There are different processes we put our products into. For example, we have products like ammonia used in industrial systems to help reduce NOx emissions, which helps keep NOx out of the environment. For some refineries, we help make sure their emissions are much lower, and for water treatment plants, we help make sure the water going back out is clean. We've been doing this for about ninety-nine years now.

Tom Rowland: That's a super cool business. Has it always been environmentally conscious, or did that develop over the ninety-nine years as you saw a need to help clean things up?

Adam Hill: The origin was really as a broker — that's how the business started, with one man on a bike making sales calls to a variety of places, getting into laundry products and things like that. It evolved over time into pool chemicals and flooring products used on military ships in World War Two, and eventually into more industrial applications, where companies are required to meet emissions standards. We supply the products to help them do that and run their processes more efficiently and effectively.

Big Takeaways

Tom Rowland: That's great, man. So what are your big takeaways from this whole journey? You made a total life transformation in your own way, and there are plenty of other ways people could accomplish something similar — it doesn't have to be exactly how you did it. But looking back, what are the big takeaways?

Adam Hill: My biggest takeaway is that if you have enough focus and discipline and work consistently, anything truly is possible. If I could get from where I was to where I've been, you can achieve anything you put your mind to, as long as you're committed and practice it with discipline. There are periods in all of our lives where things seem hopeless, where we can't seem to get past the brick wall — but there's always a tomorrow, and as long as we keep pushing and have the willingness to push past it, we can. There is hope.

Tom Rowland: I love it — that's a great message.

The Book: Shifting Gears

Tom Rowland: So where do you go from here — what are you planning besides the coaching we talked about?

Adam Hill: My book, Shifting Gears, comes out in about a week — Tuesday, February 8th. I'm in the process of putting that out there, and hopefully getting in front of people, speaking, and sharing more about this experience to give people ideas on how to get started in their own journey.

Tom Rowland: Tell me a little about the book — is it along the lines of what we've discussed, or is there more to it?

Adam Hill: It primarily shares my experience dealing with an anxiety disorder growing up, the details of that, then my alcoholism and recovery, and of course the journey into triathlon. It's broken into those parts — first the psychological and spiritual transformation of recovery, then the physical transformation, and the life transformation that came with pursuing the Ironman.

Tom Rowland: What kind of discipline did it take to write the book?

Adam Hill: A lot — it actually took me four years.

Tom Rowland: I've always toyed with the idea of writing a book myself, and I know it's a pretty big bite to chew — there's more to it than just the writing. Did you have help with the process?

Adam Hill: I wrote the first draft myself, which took a few years — writing, rewriting, rearranging, making sure it felt like my voice. That was the most important thing to me; I didn't want a ghostwriter. After that, I had no clue what I was doing as far as publishing or copy editing, so I hired a company to help with that process. Just like we talked about community being helpful, the community of writers and authors is very supportive, so my suggestion to anyone starting that process is to find help — if I had to do it again, I'd find it earlier.

Tom Rowland: Would you consider it published by a traditional publisher?

Adam Hill: I'm self-publishing, but in a hybrid model — I'm getting help from another company that's self-publishing it for me. I looked into traditional publishing for a bit, but for the type of story I was offering, I felt it was better to go the self-publishing route and control my story a little more.

Tom Rowland: That's really cool. When the book comes out in a week or so — you said February 8th, so this might air just after that — where would people go if they want to read it?

Adam Hill: You can always find me at AdamHillTri.com, and I'll have a link to the book there. It'll be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other e-bookstores — we'll have both a paperback and an ebook.

Tom Rowland: Do you have an audio version?

Adam Hill: Not yet, but I'm planning on it, probably in about a month.

Tom Rowland: You reading it yourself, with that good mic you've got?

Adam Hill: Yeah — now I know how it works.

Tom Rowland: Don't record it with the laptop mic. I think you'd do really well with audio, honestly — you'd probably reach people walking and training for their own triathlon. That's why I listen to a lot more books than I read; I do a lot of driving. I love audiobooks, and yours would be a good one.

Adam Hill: Thanks — yeah, I'll definitely be doing that, hopefully a few months down the line as another release. Exciting stuff.

Closing

Tom Rowland: Well, man, congratulations on everything — it's really a remarkable transformation, and now you're using it to help a lot of people, which you should be commended for. That Kona story sounds amazing — that would be high on my list of things I'd want to qualify for. I missed my Boston Marathon qualifying time by three minutes in my age group, which was a tough miss, though it took me years to realize I probably learned more from that miss than I would have gained from actually going to Boston. My nutrition was all messed up — I had some gastrointestinal problems about six miles from the finish that slowed me down by at least three minutes. But if you're introspective enough, you can learn more from those disappointments than even from the wins, even though I would have liked the win. Kona would be so cool, though — what an incredible place to have it, beautiful everywhere. When I was there with my daughter this summer, we drove all the way from Kona up to the top of the mountain — Mauna Loa or Mauna Kea? — and down the other side to the ocean. It was one of the most incredible days ever; I guess there are seven temperate zones in the world and six of them are represented on that island, and from one side to the top to the other side you experience all of them. Hawaii, that particular island, is just one of the world's true wonders. Anyway, I loved hearing your story, man, and thanks for being on the podcast — I really appreciate it. If you all want to read this book, I highly suggest it, I bet it's going to be really good, I'd like to read it myself. So, thanks, Adam, I really appreciate it.

Adam Hill: Thank you — it's my pleasure and my honor. I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks.

Tom Rowland: Alright, thanks. See you.