Morning People: Gustav Iden

The last several years have brought enormous highs, and some crushing lows, to Norwegian triathlete Gustav Iden. In 2019, he became the youngest Ironman World Champion, and followed up by winning the 2021 Ironman 70.3 World Championships, and the 2022 Ironman World Championships. Then, he experienced what he’s described as a “brutal and humbling” 2024 World Championship race that he wasn’t able to finish. Now, the 28-year-old athlete is looking to take back control. We talked to Iden about his morning routine, his guiding motto, and how manta rays changed his perspective.

Iden’s life motto is “Winning is a choice,” but he clarifies that the choice isn’t made on race day. By then, he says, there’s not too much you can do. Instead, it refers to how he lives and trains day-to-day. “That’s why I want as good routines as possible. I feel like the last few years I've been kind of just floating along,” he says. “Floating along is very good when the boat is floating in the right direction, but lately I've been feeling like the boat has been drifting in the wrong direction. And now I have to take the steering wheel.”

The plan: Getting back to basics, starting with his morning routine.

“Morning, for me, is the opportunity to start things right. It’s a new morning every day. My whole day gets a bit worse if I don’t have a good morning. I wouldn’t say [I feel] pressure to get the morning right, but I definitely do feel like the morning is a very important part of my day. That’s why I tend to trust my routines in the morning.”

Iden steps on the scale first thing, to give him a quick read on his body and its needs. A sudden drop in weight is a good indicator that his hydration is low, while a downward trend means he needs to take a look at his nutrition.

Next step: He gets the coffee machine going, has some yogurt and shakes up his AG1. “I’m super efficient in the morning,” he says. “I do like long mornings, but not before a training session.” He doesn’t allow for any deviations in his pre-training morning routine, either: “Then I'm just going to be late,” he says. “And I hate being late.”

To make his mornings as smooth as possible, Iden commits to going to sleep at the same time every day, which means consuming caffeine only in the mornings, and keeping his phone in the bathroom overnight, not the bedroom. This has a “stacking” effect with another good habit: “It makes me brush my teeth for longer, because I know once I'm finished, phone time is over.”

One big, unavoidable disturbance in Iden’s routine is changing time zones, which are impossible for an elite triathlete to avoid. He tries to mitigate the impact on both his body and schedule as much as he can, by making the time shift more gradual and less dramatic. On the recent race in Kona, he says “We went to Flagstaff first, because it’s only three hours from Arizona to Hawaii.” “So that's quite manageable.”

Iden has also been deeply examining how his emotional state is connected to his physical one. “When I win, I’m smiling, and when I lose, I'm crying,” he says. “Sports really is my life and my identity. So much of how I feel in day-to-day life is tied to how I'm performing in training, and it's not the healthiest way to go about it, especially if you go from disappointment to disappointment, like I've done this year. I'm trying to still allow myself happiness when I'm not performing well. I'm hoping that my identity will shift a bit from only sports to the whole aspect of life.”

His experience in Hawaii this year is an example of how that is, indeed, starting to change. When he returned to his Airbnb with his friends after the race, they took surfboards out on the ocean in the middle of the night. “There were stars over us, and manta rays below us, and it was just the most beautiful night ever,” he says. “Two years ago, I would never have even considered doing something that would give me happiness after a disappointing race. But instead, I had one of the best evenings I’ve ever had.”

Gustav Iden’s First Principles

• When you find yourself drifting in the wrong direction, turn the boat around
• Set yourself up for success in the morning by establishing an evening routine
• Let yourself enjoy life, even when you lose