When I first reached out to Jesse, I was about 12kg heavier than my Ironman race weight with one goal in mind. “I need someone in my corner to get me over an Ironman finish line.” Looking back now, I can honestly say working with Jesse was one of the best decisions I’ve made. The obvious result is that I became an Ironman, but the biggest takeaway wasn’t the finish line. It was everything I learned along the way. Jesse didn’t just give me sessions to complete. He completely changed the way I approached training. Over the months, we spent a lot of time learning to separate effort from ego. There were sessions I nailed, sessions I failed, and sessions where I questioned whether I was improving at all. Every one of them became an opportunity to learn instead of something to beat myself up over. We constantly came back to controlling what I could control, focusing on the bigger picture, and understanding that consistency always beats chasing one perfect session. That mindset became invaluable on race weekend. The day before the Ironman I injured my foot, and mentally it was one of the toughest moments of the entire build. I knew my race wasn’t going to look like the one we’d planned. The numbers, the paces and the targets I’d spent months preparing for were suddenly unrealistic. In previous years, I think I would have let that derail my entire day. Instead, I found myself coming back to everything Jesse and I had worked on over the previous eight months. Rather than chasing numbers on a watch or trying to force a pace that wasn’t there, I focused on connecting with my body, managing my effort, staying present and asking one simple question: “What can I give right now?” That shift in mindset probably helped me more than any single training session ever could. It allowed me to adapt, stay calm and keep moving forward, even when the race became something completely different from what I’d imagined. Crossing that finish line wasn’t the result of one perfect training block. It was the result of months of learning how to trust the process, remove my ego from performance and control the things that were actually within my control. I genuinely don’t believe I would have become an Ironman without Jesse. If you’re looking for someone who simply writes programs, there are plenty of coaches out there but if you’re looking for someone who teaches you how to become a better athlete, think differently under pressure and gives you the confidence to perform when things don’t go to plan, I couldn’t recommend Jesse and Forged Endurance highly enough. I’ll always be grateful for the role he played in helping me become an Ironman.