What’s Harder Than the Ironman World Championship, with Chelsea Sodaro

Outside Podcast

Sports, Wilderness

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We love our stories of human endurance, from Shackleton’s famed expedition to the 11-hour Wimbledon match to days-long ultramarathons. Hell, even the Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest is broadcast on television; that’s just how much we celebrate a person pushing themselves to the brink. But the moments that inspire the most are the ones in which a solo athlete has spent everything physically and mentally, and is forced to find a new gear emotionally. And for Ironman World Champion Chelsea Sodaro, her moment had nothing to do with swimming-biking-running 140 miles. At the same time Chelsea was standing atop triathlon podiums, she was ravaged by postpartum depression, including near-constant anxiety about mass shootings. What is so stirring about Chelsea is not her ability to push herself past the edge of what’s physically possible, but her emotional abilities to handle what happened when that edge pushed back.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the outside podcast with Paddyo.
0:12.5	I got off the bike and I was only three minutes down to the lead. I mean, I was in business because I'm a runner.
0:19.0	Yeah. And the first section of that course, it's 10K long. It's lined with people the whole way. So you feel like it has this real crowd, sort of big sports moment type feeling. It's like a rocky montage. I mean, it really is. It's amazing. And then on my way back into town, I mean, this still gives me chills. All the amateur women were running out in the opposite direction.
0:40.2	And literally, like, hundreds of women were saying to me, do it for the moms.
0:44.6	Oh, dude.
0:45.5	I'm going to start crying.
0:48.5	And so, like, it really became about more than me.
0:52.7	Yeah.
0:53.2	And that's what sports is about.
0:55.1	It's like, I think, and I think that's why my story has been powerful and it has gone beyond triathlon is that it's not about me.
1:01.6	It's about showing what is possible for female athletes and for women when we're supported as whole people.
1:08.1	We have opportunities to pursue the things that we care about. It makes
1:11.8	us a better mom, makes us a better worker, a better partner. And I am just like a living example of
1:18.7	someone who's trying to do a hard thing will also like be a decent parent.
1:34.1	I am more than slightly obsessed with feats of human endurance.
1:38.6	There are the funny ones like the most hot dogs ever eaten in a 10-minute period.
1:39.5	83.
1:40.4	Yikes.
1:42.7	Or the longest fart ever recorded.
1:47.5	Two minutes and 42 seconds. Double yikes. That one is funny and gross.
1:55.6	I can't help but draw comparisons between an ancient tale like Homer's Odyssey and a real world epic like the famed Shackleton expedition.
2:02.1	Then there are the sporty ones like the 11-hour Wimbledon match, the nine over-times it took the University of Illinois football team to beat Penn State, the 1996 Chicago Bulls, going 72 and 10. But the
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