Hidden Gems: Meet Conrad Goeringer of Working Triathlete

Today we’d like to introduce you to Conrad Goeringer.

Hi Conrad, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Since I was a child, I had a passion for endurance sports. I played team sports (baseball and football) until high school though always had an insatiable interest in individual sports — running, cycling, swimming, etc. I took the gym class mile very seriously as a fourth-grader. Those passions led me to start Working Triathlete and become an endurance coach/writer.

We lived across the street from a public library when I was growing up and I devoured all of the iconic books related to exercise physiology, running, cycling, the Olympics, cross country skiing, mountaineering — anything related to endurance. By the time I was in 8th grade, I could explain the nuances of Jack Daniel’s training methodology and quote with alarming precision John L. Parker Jr’s cult classic Once A Runner. I read Running with the Buffaloes so many times my copy disintegrated.

In high school, I narrowed my athletics focus and specialized in cross country and track. I continued running in college, competing for Vanderbilt University. It was at Vanderbilt where a stress fracture forced me to bike and swim to stay in shape. I realized then that I was a better cyclist than a runner, and that training for three sports — swimming, biking, and running — was healthier for an injury-prone runner and more interesting than only running.

After graduation, I focused on triathlon and reached a fairly high level as an amateur triathlete, qualifying for a few world championships, including the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, and winning the 2018 USAT Long Course Duathlon National Championships. After a few years of competing, I started coaching fellow athletes.

In my 20s, while juggling triathlon training, endurance coaching, and a demanding job in the investment group of a publicly-traded real estate investment company, I realized that the most successful people I interacted with often thrived in other areas beyond their corporate/business roles. I noticed how many high-performers I met had carefully curated exercise routines, and that success in business also had a strong correlation with success in athletics. I also observed how beginner triathletes I worked with transformed not only physically or athletically, but also psychologically and, dare I say, spiritually.

It was during these early days of coaching and work that I recognized in a more palpable way the importance of balance and how fostering competency in numerous domains makes one more capable, confident, and effective. I recognized early on how working towards challenging goals, testing one’s limits, and doing hard things for the intrinsic purpose of “getting better” is essential for living a fulfilling life.

Endurance sports offer a straightforward path to realizing these objectives, and these principles began governing how I coach athletes. I became incredibly passionate about helping busy athletes integrate high-performance endurance training into their lives.

In response, I wrote the book The Working Triathlete, which teaches time-strapped athletes how to optimize triathlon training by applying principles of deliberate efficiency, and started the triathlon team and coaching group Working Triathlete. After four years of splitting time between real estate and coaching, I was able to shift to coaching and building Working Triathlete full-time in early 2021.

Since 2017, Working Triathlete has grown quickly. I am fortunate to have an incredible business partner in fellow WT coach Derek Stone, and we both count ourselves lucky to have watched the team grow to nearly 200 members, including dozens in the Nashville area. WT athletes range from some of the best triathletes in the world to individuals looking to take their first steps into the sport.

Members include high-powered executives looking to qualify for the Ironman World Championships, serial entrepreneurs, national champions, students, pure beginners, and full-time professional athletes. The common thread among our members is a hunger to be better, do more, and inspire one another.

To say that I am grateful to work with such an awesome team every day is an underestimate.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As with starting any company, there are growing pains. Being a successful entrepreneur is not glamorous. It is hard. Period.

Setting boundaries between my work and personal life is something I constantly try to refine. I owe a lot to my incredibly supportive and patient wife.

In the early years of Working Triathlete, I simultaneously built the coaching business while working full-time and engaging in other pursuits, including writing two books (The Working Triathlete and Triathlon Freestyle Simplified) and triathlon training for 10-14 hours per week.

There were times when responsibilities stacked up and I approached burnout, but these trying times exposed my own limits and led me to develop strategies to achieve more in less time.

They also gave me a greater understanding of how to balance training with more important aspects of life, such as family, relationships, and career — an understanding I harness when coaching busy athletes.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Working Triathlete?
Working Triathlete is an endurance community and coaching group. We are a team of athletes obsessed with becoming not only better triathletes but also better humans.

With a focus on maximizing performance with deliberate efficiency, the Working Triathlete ecosystem includes community, coaching, and education to encourage athletes to become the best version of themselves. We offer group workouts (in-person and virtual), team races, training camps, virtual events, seminars, a book club, one-on-one coaching with veteran triathlon coaches, and more.

What distinguishes Working Triathlete is our emphasis on helping athletes achieve sustainable consistency over time no matter one’s schedule. We are experts at integrating high-performance triathlon training into people’s schedules so they can devote appropriate energy to all areas of their lives, giving them the tools to conquer the competition and the conference room.

We blend self-help concepts, philosophy, and business strategy principles to training to help members achieve more in life and athletics. Members have gotten jobs through the community and even met life partners. It’s a special group of truly inspiring high performers.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was very active, outdoorsy, and book-loving.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania near a trout stream and the Appalachian Trail. I spent a lot of time biking, hiking, fly fishing, playing baseball & football, and exploring the woods with my friends.

I was also obsessed with books growing up, especially non-fiction. We lived across the street from a public library and at any given time I would have six or seven books checked out. This enabled me to discover my passion for endurance training and writing early on.

I embraced entrepreneurial aptitudes as a kid as well. In high school, I started a business tying and selling flies (for fly fishing), which is how I bought my first car — a 1994 green Saturn Station Wagon nicknamed the Ninja Turtle. In college, I started a couple of small businesses (one selling fly boxes and another selling supplements), both of which failed to take off though taught me valuable lessons about starting and running a business.

It also goes without saying that I was very invested in endurance sports — especially running. I was the captain of my high school cross country team for two years and continued to run in college at Vanderbilt. I was fortunate to have many incredible coaches in high school and college who served as role models and who inspired certain coaching styles I now implement in my own coaching.

Contact Info:

• Email: conrad@workingtriathlete.com
• Website: https://www.workingtriathlete.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coach_goeringer/?hl=en
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/Triathlon-Freestyle-Simplified-Stronger-Better/dp/B08CPBJXNK#:~:text=Triathlon%20Freestyle%20Simplified%20provides%20no,open%20water%20swimmers%2C%20and%20coaches.&text=This%20book%20will%20help%20you,training%20and%20your%20Freestyle%20technique.

Image Credits
Moses Berdy