The two-time Ironman world champion believes mental focus as much as his fleet-footed running will be the key to success in Sunday’s Ironman World Championship
This time last year Patrick Lange was one of the first on the scene to help training partner Kat Matthews after a horror bike crash in Texas that left the Brit with multiple fractures.
Emotionally if understandably rocked by the incident, he eventually flew to Kona to finish 10th – respectable, but not the result the two-time Ironman world champion wanted.
In May 2021, Lange had taken the tape in Ironman Tulsa and dedicated the victory to his late mother, who died from cancer during the pandemic. Her passing words were that he should go on to win many more triathlons.
- How to watch the Ironman World Championship
- What will the course be like for the world champs in Nice?
- How much can athletes win at the Ironman World Champs?
The mental side
If some athletes race to cold, hard numbers, the 37-year-old knows that it’s more than physical attributes he’ll need to tap into for success in the south of France on Sunday.
“No one talks a lot about it, but working on the mental side of things is really important and is getting more important in professional sports,” Lange said, as he prepares to try and regain the title he last won in 2018.
“I have my help on that side. We’ve worked on it ever since my mum died and it has made me a mentally a stronger athlete.
“I can reflect differently on certain things that put me in a position where I was anxious or overly stressed before races. I’m grateful to be here, and embraced the build-up with no bumps in the road.”
Time to shine
Not that it will be all smooth rolling from here. Lange faces a loaded field including fellow German Jan Frodeno, last year’s runner-up Sam Laidlow of France, and Denmark’s much-fancied Magnus Ditlev, who he is yet to beat in five races and who he has previously termed his “kryptonite”.
That losing streak includes their latest meeting in Challenge Roth in July where even Lange’s 2:30:27 marathon and finish time of 7:30:04 (under Frodeno’s existing course record), couldn’t get him within 6min of the storming Dane. What will it take to turn the tables on Sunday?
“First of all, to have a good day,” Lange said. “Especially in a sport where it comes down to this one particular day, it’s kind of a lucky game as well.
“But the work has been done over the last three months since Challenge Roth and I had a really good build-up.
“If I look back I wouldn’t do anything differently. I think that’s the biggest confidence-booster you can get as an athlete.”
Expecting the unexpected
With coach Bjorn Geesman’s influence, Lange hasn’t started a high profile race since that epic day in Roth, which looks to be a smart choice given how others who raced in Bavaria such as Ditlev, Laidlow, USA’s Ben Kanute and even Switzerland’s Daniela Ryf have misfired in events that followed.
Three German men on the Ironman 70.3 worlds podium a fortnight ago – the first time it had been achieved by a nation in Ironman world championship racing since Frodeno, Sebastian Kienle and Lange went 1-2-3 in Hawaii in 2016 – may also be a promising omen, but Lange also knows to expect the unexpected.
“Racing at a world championship level is different from racing the normal Ironman France in Nice,” he explained.
“The first 200m-400m is going to be vital. We’ve seen over recent years that the swim gets more and more important, so I’m going to give everything to be in that front pack and if in contention on the first 15kms on the bike it makes life a lot easier to settle into the race.”
Is flexibility the key?
With the event likely to run over 8hrs, Lange will be faced with a constant choice on the 112-mile bike leg of whether to push harder or save his reserves for the marathon. How flexible his approach will be could be key.
“If the bike course really starts after 15-20k [with the main climb] we segment the race into different parts,” he continued.
“We learnt that from the professional cyclists. If you look at their bikes when they have a hard stage in the Tour de France, they have stickers on the stems.
“My coach tries to calculate the perfect range to have the fastest outcome, but it’s not just dictated by my own numbers.
“If Clement [Mignon, this year’s Ironman France winner] goes, I have to go with him because he knows the course perfectly. If he attacks I have to respond for a certain amount of time and then reflect whether the pace is too high or too low.
“So, it’s going to be a reactive game. I have a plan in my mind on how to execute a perfect race, but we all know that races are not decided on paper.”
It’s not all about the bike
If Lange is in the mix on the marathon, a flat, four-lap run on the Promenade des Anglais, then he will be a favourite for the podium.
While he did cede the Kona course record to Gustav Iden in October, Lange is consistently the premier runner in iron-distance racing, frequently running 2:40 or lower, including two 2:30 efforts in Roth and Israel in his last two outings over the distance.
“I’m pretty sure that in 10 years time it will be the norm to run 2:30 to take the win – especially in the world championship,” he said.
“But this is a different race. In Israel, it was pouring rain all day long, it was colder, and the course was more undulating, and I like that more than a flat course.
“We don’t talk enough about the tough run course here. Of course, the bike course stings super hard, but the run has the heat, humidity, the wind, you cannot use different muscle groups, it’s all-in for a flat run.
“It’s going to be super challenging, especially the first lap when you come off the bike.
“I expect massive crowds on the Promenade des Anglais shouting, so keeping ourselves calm going to start the run is going to be hard, but I’ll try my best to clock another 2:30.”
Top image credit: by Alexander Scheuber/Getty Images for Ironman