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Mile 45 of her first 70.3, in hail and headwind, Chris Ijiomah is one of the last riders on the course. A voice keeps calling out: “Athlete. Athlete, pull on over. Athlete, you can’t proceed.” She keeps looking around to see who they mean. Then it lands. They mean her. She is being pulled from the course in front of everyone, and she is being called an athlete in the moment she feels least like one.

Chris is a registered nurse at a Level 1 trauma center, a mother of four, and she commutes multiple hours a day. She grew up swimming, played water polo in college, raced triathlon in her twenties, and then disappeared from sport for twenty years. Two years ago she walked out her front door and ran for eight minutes. She still remembers reaching for the door handle. Twenty-four hours after the DNF, sore and humbled, she told her husband she wanted to go back. He said, “Of course you do,” and showed her the bike tires he had already been researching.

This is an honest conversation about failing where people can see you and choosing to return anyway. Chris says out loud what most women leave out: that she trains without a coach because a family of six has a budget, that some mornings the alarm goes off four times and the workout does not happen, and that after the race she sat at a restaurant table and told her four kids she felt like she had failed them. She is grounded in what is actually true about her life, and she goes anyway. Her advice for the mom watching from the sideline: give yourself permission to have the big goal. It is not selfish. It is not unachievable.

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 Eight years ago, Jennifer Sylva (@jensylva) stood at the start of a sprint triathlon in downtown Jacksonville with no swim training and a genuine belief that anyone who runs more than three miles during their lunch break is a little bit silly. In May 2026, she crossed the finish line of Ironman Jacksonville as the overall women's champion. 

But her story is not a straight line from there to here.

It runs through years of bulimia she kept secret from everyone around her, through a divorce, through panic attacks in the middle of a masters swim practice, through a DNF at Challenge Roth, and through finishing second. Again and again and again.

What finally broke the pattern was not perfect training. She kept "break the tape" on her vision board all year. On race day, she trusted the goal enough to stop thinking about it. 

Jennifer and I talk about what it actually takes to stay present when you have the win in sight, what it looked like to coach herself through an Ironman build after her husband and coach was no longer in that role, and when she thinks DNF is the right call and why she refuses to call it failure. 

We also talk about what it looks like to train for Ironman as a working mom of three boys, and why Jennifer believes that every time she walks out the door to train, she is teaching them how to become men. 

If you are carrying something behind your perfect profile picture, this episode is for you.

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This summer, Cindy Kelecic (@citakacs) is toeing the line at the Philadelphia Women's Triathlon with both her daughters by her side, all three of them on the course together from start to finish. 

It started with her older daughter volunteering at a water aid station, watching women cross the finish line, and saying out loud: Women can do anything. That was the moment. The younger one has been waiting for her turn ever since. This is her year.

After her second daughter was born, Cindy found her way back to sport and kept going further than she ever expected. What followed was a half-marathon, two half-ironman races, a full marathon she treated as a mile-by-mile experiment, and an eight-mile open-water relay in the Florida Keys with a close friend. She is also a clinical psychologist who spends her days with older adults. When asked what they regret most, her answer is clear: lost connections, friends, family, and not having a support system. It is a thread that runs quietly through everything else she talks about in this episode, the training partners she prioritizes, the community she builds, and the life she is choosing to show up fully.

This episode is for the woman who understands that the life you build right now is the one you will look back on. Cindy has a front row seat to that truth every single day at work. And it is changing everything about how she trains, how she parents, and who she brings to the start line.

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Erin Song (@erinmsong) is a mindset coach, mom of four boys, and first-time Ironman finisher who trained for Lake Placid starting at nine miles per hour, unclipped, on a bike her coach wasn't sure could make it around the block. She got there anyway.

This conversation goes deep on what optimism actually is, not the bumper sticker version, but the trained, practiced, daily decision to believe that something good is coming even when you're at mile 85 with a flat tire and a 10-mile run scheduled for the next morning. Erin draws a sharp line between positive self-talk and actionable self-talk, reframes imposter syndrome as something far more useful, and explains why she coaches athletes to crave the feeling of self-doubt rather than run from it.

She also talks honestly about what it took to train for a full Ironman with four boys at home, the youngest just one year old, and a business she built from scratch one month after losing her dad. Including what made it possible: a husband who was all in, and a support system she built around every gap in the schedule. 

The thread running through all of it is a sentence her father said to her for as long as she can remember: today is the best day of my life, and I'm the luckiest girl in the world. That sentence is the whole episode. 

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Jess Kelly lights up every room she walks into. You can feel it in how she talks about her athletes, her team, her boys, and the two hours on a Friday afternoon that are entirely hers.

In this episode, Jess talks about what happens when you love every part of your life so much that none of it feels like it's pulling you apart. She's a mom, a coach at Sonic Endurance, a studio director leading 60 people at Lifetime, and a competitive athlete. Not in spite of each other. All at once, all the time, all feeding the same fire.

We talk about racing Ironman Worlds in Nice and the tears she didn't expect on the start line. Going back the following year as a coach and crying all over again watching her athlete cross the finish line in France. What she tells the women she coaches who are still figuring out how to make room for themselves. And the life she's building next, one she's not shy about wanting out loud.

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Kate Weaver (@kateweavertri) was a marathoner before she had kids, Boston qualifier and all. Then life got full, and the miles got shorter. By the time her youngest started kindergarten, she was lifting weights in the garage every day, going through the motions.

Her husband could see it before she said it out loud. You're bored. Let's get you a bike. Two years later, she was on the start line in Kona.

In this conversation, Kate talks about what that journey actually looked like. Training on downloaded plans until she realized she needed someone who could see her, adjust for her, and spend months doing one thing: building her engine on the bike. The friend who has walked or run with her every Tuesday and Thursday for ten years and showed up on the Queen K hill in Kona when she needed a hug.

She also talks honestly about the cost. The under fueling, the hamstring that didn't let her run for three weeks before the race, the rebuild year she is choosing now, instead of pushing through.

And about what keeps bringing her back. Not the finish line. The feeling of knowing she can do it better.

This one is for every woman who knows she hasn't reached her full potential yet. 

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When asked to describe herself in one word as a teacher, Jacqui Giuliano said efficient. As an athlete, she said persevere. As a mom, she said loving. Three words. Three roles. One person who has never separated who she is from what she does.

She is a seventh grade math teacher in Illinois, a mom of three kids under four, a nine-time Kona qualifier, and a ROKA STNDRD Racing Triathlon Team athlete coached by her husband Ryan, who races alongside her and shares the weight of everything it takes to make race day possible. The clarity and accountability she brings to her classroom are the exact same tools she uses to hold training, motherhood, and herself together without losing any of it in the process.

She tells her seventh graders that 2.4 miles is from their school to the corner, that 112 miles on a bike is all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, and that the run is from school to the mall. She does not just inspire them. She makes 140.6 miles feel real. That is how she moves through every part of her life. Present, goal oriented, and always making the abstract concrete for the people around her.

This one is for every mom who understands that a strong village is not a luxury. It is the plan.

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Sarah Whelan is a special ed teacher, spin instructor, mom of three, and nine-time Ironman finisher. But the through-line isn't the race count. It's the girl who walked into a Marine recruiting office as a teenager, got laughed at, walked next door to the Navy, and still ended up exactly where she was supposed to be.

In this conversation, Sarah talks about how athleticism became the thread connecting every role she plays, why giving back isn't something she does on the side but the engine that runs everything, and what it actually looks like to show up fully in the classroom, at the finish line, and at home.

None of this happens alone. Sarah trains with Sonic Endurance under the guidance of coach Stacey Miller, and has been inspired and supported by Jess Kelly, her spinning colleague, friend, and the woman who first showed her what an Ironman mom could look like. This episode is a reminder that behind every woman showing up fully, there are other women lifting her.

If you've ever wondered what "anything is possible" looks like lived out over a lifetime, this is your episode.

If this conversation resonated, follow Strong Core and share it with another mother who needs to hear this. Connect on Instagram at @iris_strongcore for more conversations on mental and physical strength in motherhood and sport.

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She watched strangers cross a finish line in Hamburg and cried. A week later she signed up for her first 70.3 on a $200 road bike with no training plan and no idea what she was doing. 

In this episode, Caitlin (@caitlin.thompson.tri) shares how losing one path led her to discover something deeper, a fire she couldn’t ignore. What began as a weight loss journey turned into a relentless pursuit of what she’s truly capable of.

We talk about the moment everything shifted, from simply wanting to finish to choosing to compete, and what it takes mentally to stay in the race when things start to fall apart.

This is a conversation about belief, identity, and the courage to go after more, even when you’re not sure you deserve it yet.

If you’ve ever felt the pull toward something bigger, this one will stay with you.

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Carly (@coach.carly on Instagram) has been coaching Ironman athletes for 12 years. She had the data, the experience, and the athletes who proved it was possible. Then she had her own babies, got cleared at six weeks, and thought: That is absolutely not happening. Everything she knew got tested in a way no coaching certification prepares you for.

What she discovered confirmed what she'd been seeing for years. The moms juggling the most, the least sleep, the tightest windows, the heaviest mental load, were often the ones hitting their best performances. Not despite everything on their plate. Because of it.

In this episode, Carly and Iris get into the specifics of how that actually works. The postpartum PR reframe that stops you from measuring yourself against who you were before. The ten-minute rule for when 'life is life-ing', as Carly calls it. The 2-Day Rule is just a gentle boundary that keeps momentum alive without punishment. Why doubling up missed workouts digs a fatigue hole you can't climb out of. And what athletic maturity really looks like, not in theory, but at 5 am after two solo weeks with a one and two-year-old.

 Carly doesn't just coach athletes. She coaches mothers back to themselves. 

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