IRONMAN athletes are some of the most relentless competitors on the planet. Right up there with ultramarathons and HYROX races, these events push human endurance to its absolute limit. To complete an IRONMAN—a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run—you need months of intense training, dialing in every nutrition detail and balancing swim, bike, and run workouts. And outside of training, competitors still need to carve out time for work, family, or any other responsibilities. Yibin King, a 51-year-old molecular biology professor at Princeton University, just crushed his second IRONMAN, and he knows better than anyone what it takes to juggle it all.
His secret to squeezing in training without sacrificing family time, research, or teaching? Rising before the sun. Though he once thrived as a night owl in grad school, when prepping for an IRONMAN, King hits the hay by 10 p.m. and sets his alarm for four a.m.
“You know, I can get a lot of training done,” he says. “By five a.m., it’s already daylight, and it’s still cool, so I can do a lot of outdoor training, running, cycling, and swimming. I get all done and am still the first person to show up at work and can still spend time with family, so it works.”
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He also learned plenty from his first IRONMAN, lessons he admits he wasn’t fully prepared for. Beyond keeping his training and life balanced, nutrition became a top priority. After long days in the lab following early-morning workouts, it’s easy to forget to eat. King found a simple solution: set phone alarms to remind himself to refuel, even when his mind is buried in research. The prep he’s done for both races is something he often compares to his work as a researcher.
“Research is a long process,” he says. “There’s a lot of iteration, trial, and failure. Optimization…eventually bringing things to perfection is the same mentality. It’s a lot of practice runs of the gears, how to optimize each time, and then how to balance three different sports and other disciplines. Nutrition is another discipline of triathlon.”
King admits that when he’s locked in prepping for a race, every other area of his life seems to fall into place. His meticulous approach to time, whether waking for early training sessions, grinding through long days in the lab, or coming home to his family, leaves no room for error. Every detail is planned, every moment accounted for.
And it’s not just him who’s inspired: His discipline and love for the sport have rubbed off on his family. His son, Evan, who was born with cerebral palsy, recently completed his first sprint triathlon, an achievement that brought King to the brink of tears. Watching his son embrace the challenge with the same determination he instills in himself has been one of his proudest moments.
