Athlete spotlight: Lincoln Atkinson
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I live in Olympia, WA with my wife and 2.5 year old son. I work from home as a software engineer at Google, specifically on making our smartwatches more power efficient. Outside of training, my non-work time is mostly dedicated to toddler care and emotionally/physically recovering from toddler care. Though I do find time for occasional other hobbies, e.g. I'm currently taking banjos lessons 🪕
2. Where did your journey begin?
I first learned about ironman triathlon in high school. I have a vivid memory of sitting at my friend's kitchen table thinking "that's not possible, no way, it's too far". The idea of a race that long completely blew my mind.
Through school and early adulthood I kind of hated endurance stuff. The story I told myself was that I was a bad runner, that's for other people, etc. My athletic pursuits were just gym, a bit of hockey, and throwing events on the high school track team.
I did a number of casual 5ks and half marathons with my wife over the years, no proper training, middle or back of back results (not that I paid attention). In 2017 I did two sprint triathlons just for fun, and actually kind of hated them (swimming was too hard).
Then COVID happened. Suddenly I had massive free time and no social obligations. That Ironman thing had been in back of my mind for 20 years... at 35 it was definitely not going to get any easier if I kept waiting! So I took the plunge and hired my first coach in late 2020, and raced Ironman Tulsa in May 2021.
With proper training and coaching I was blown away by how fast the progress came. I got bit by the bug and I've been doing training + triathlon/run races consistently for the past 6 seasons!
3. What have you had to overcome along the way?
Besides a couple of uninteresting niggling injuries, I've faced a few major challenges in my personal life since starting to train more seriously. The one I'll share here is that my first son died at 1 month old in 2022. He was born very premature and didn't make it out of the NICU. That experience was devastating and really blew apart my naive view of how life is "supposed" to work.
My second son (thankfully healthy and thriving) of course also represents a "challenge" of sorts... Caring for him is physically and emotionally draining, time consuming, and wow I have never gotten sick so often in my life!
4. What helped you move forward?
Losing my son was a huge setback emotionally, but it didn't dampen my motivation to train or stay active. I think I appreciate what endurance sports and racing add to my life more now than before. I have always enjoyed the solitude and meditation of training, and I really needed it at that time.
In terms of adapting to the demands of a little kid in the house, I just accept that this is part of the deal, and nobody is doing anything wrong. I'm going to miss some training or underperform sometimes, and that's not a big deal.
5. How have we worked together as coach and athlete throughout your journey?
By my nature I tend to err on the conservative side when racing. While planning one of my first races after joining with Marilyn, she explicitly encouraged me to hit the gas more. Not quite "please try to blow up for once" but something in that direction. Having that permission from a coach was really exciting and I have thought about that push ever since.
6. What are you most proud of?
I just can't believe the fitness I've built over the past 6 years. At 40 I'm still notching a PR or two every year, and my times are way beyond anything teenage or 20-something me would have thought possible.
7. What have you learned about yourself through this process?
Like I mentioned earlier, I learned that I'm semi-decent at endurance sports! Which I had 100% decided I was not for my first 35 years.
More abstractly, I've gained real confidence that I'm someone who can do really hard things through consistent, steady, deliberate progress. That translates into all aspects of life.
8. What is one lesson you’d like to pass along?
It takes years to really build your fitness and figure out racing. Not that I have fully solved either of these! But starting out, I sort of assumed if I just did "perfect" training and read all the blogs, bought all the right stuff, etc I could just do the "perfect" things on race day. Like many things in life, I just had to be "smart enough" and I'd hit the bullseye. No... You need to accept that it's impossible to be "perfect", you just need to keep stacking "better" over and over. You need to just do some training, just do some races, then you have a real baseline on top of which you can start stacking "better"s. Rinse and repeat for a few years and you will be floored by how far you've come. When it comes to the raw fitness there is no shortcut, no magic supplement or technique, you just need to keep stacking.
9. What does this journey mean to you beyond sport?
Thanks to my sports journey, I think I have a much better persepctive on approaching big (non-sports) challenges with patience and persistence. I've gained confidence. I've made friends and connections along the way and gotten plugged in to so many fascinating subcultures. All of this has greatly enriched my life!
10. What’s next for you?
Short term: I have a few more boxes I want to tick with my running, and I'll have a shot at them in December (next month?? yikes!).
Medium/long term: Don't lose all of this fitness I spent so long building! Maybe come back to strength training with more intention. At some point get back to triathlon.
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Photo: Coming down the finishing chute of Ironman Arizona 2023. By far my best full Ironman race, this one felt really good