Sue Reynolds gained fame for losing 200 pounds after taking up triathlon at age 65. A few years later, she stunned the sport by winning a world championship as a member of Team USA. Across the Line shares the story of Sue Reynolds’ remarkable transformation into a world champion, revealing Olympic-level training methods and elite coaching techniques. In this excerpt, Reynolds introduces what happened after she asked herself, “What if I train harder?”
Sometimes curiosity comes quietly as a question—a faint sense of wondering that refuses to go away. When I began my triathlon journey in 2013, my only question was, Can I finish? A year later, it became, Can I be faster? And a year after that, Can I qualify for Team USA? Those questions took me from dead last at local triathlons to sixth in the world at the Triathlon World Championship in Rotterdam in 2017—losing 200 pounds along the way. I wrote about that journey in my first book, The Athlete Inside.
After 2019, personal bests became harder to achieve. A new question began to form: What would happen if I began training with Olympic-level coaches? I wasn’t chasing a podium. Sure, results were nice, but I was more interested in the process. In my professional career I had spent decades helping community leaders develop cultures and systems to support high performance. I wanted to understand the machinery of excellence in sports—how highly elite athletes think, train, recover, communicate, and make decisions day after day. More than that, I was curious about mental strength. I wondered whether there was a level of mental strength so far beyond me that I didn’t even know it existed. If so, I wanted to see if I could live into that level of strength. So I went all-in.
The Experience of Elite Training
Over a five-year period, I trained with world-class coaches and sought to incorporate Olympic behaviors and mental mindsets into my daily life. I learned about the meticulous nature of high-performance sports, both in daily habits and mental strength, and it pulled me in. I experienced the challenge of preparing my body for high performance—giving it sound nutrition, proper care, and sufficient recovery. I also discovered how great it felt to push my body to the edge of my ability. I loved the feeling of satisfaction when I nailed two hugely challenging workouts each day. Perhaps the greatest thrill was being on the start line at world championships knowing that I was physically and mentally ready to compete—and then executing the race well.
Pushing Too Hard for Too Long
My limited experience as an athlete meant I lacked maturity, common sense, and wisdom in ways I didn’t yet recognize—and this led to real consequences. Eventually, I crossed a line I didn’t fully see until I was already on the other side of it. It took courage to train at the edge of my human limits with Olympic coaches, but more remarkable was how reasonable every step seemed as I pushed across the line into Overtraining Syndrome, a condition caused by a prolonged imbalance between stress and recovery. It was easy to normalize fatigue, to explain away the warning signs, to keep going even as my performance and overall health was quietly eroding. Once I realized I was on an unhealthy path, I was struck by how difficult it was to stop.
Across the Line is about my experience training with Olympic-level coaches. But it isn’t just a triathlon story.
You don’t have to be an athlete to recognize what happens when the pursuit of elite performance meets the edge of human limits. Elite systems exist everywhere—business, academia, leadership, parenting, the creative arts, medicine. Wherever there are rankings, benchmarks, and top-performance narratives, there are also unspoken rules about toughness, sacrifice, and what it means to be serious.
These systems reward discipline. They reward resilience. They reward people who don’t quit when things get uncomfortable. What they don’t always reward is discernment.
The Language of Pushing Limits
In sport, we talk openly about pushing limits. In other fields, we use different language—grind, hustle, paying dues. And in my own career, I often used phrases like no excuses, whatever it takes, find a way. The underlying message is the same: If you’re tired, try harder; if it hurts, that’s proof you’re committed; if you slow down, someone else will pass you. Most of the time, this works—until it doesn’t.
Many sports books are victory laps, and my first book, The Athlete Inside, is one of them—a celebration of my personal transformation and discovery of triathlon. Across the Line is not a victory story, although there are plenty of victories along the way. It is effectively a case study that explores how the same qualities that carry us upward—commitment, hard work, meticulousness, perseverance—can also pull us downward.
What You Can Learn
In sharing my experiences, I hope to illuminate the daily habits and mental mindsets of highly elite athletes and the practices of their coaches. I also hope to expose the line between healthy and unhealthy training—a line that is far less obvious than we assume—and show how crossing that line can lead to a variety of health issues including overtraining syndrome, burnout, RED-s, and overuse injuries. Coaching plays a central role in this story, and that’s not accidental. Every coach I’ve had the opportunity to work with is skilled, thoughtful, and deeply invested in athlete success. Observing how they coached and reflecting on how I responded helped me recognize the factors that inform whether an athlete thrives or falters, and how elite-level coaching addresses those factors holistically.
I am grateful that all the coaches mentioned in this book took the time to review my writing about our work together for the purpose of accuracy. I owe special thanks to Darren “Daz” Smith for encouraging me to write about our complex journey into overtraining in the hope that others will learn from our experiences.
What We Gain from Loss
My daughter-in-law recently asked me, “Do you regret pursuing elite performance given that it led to Overtraining Syndrome?” The question caught me off guard. It would be reasonable to have regrets. After all, I lost almost two years of training and competing. But although I find myself grieving the loss from time to time, my primary emotion is gratitude.
The road that led me across the line into Overtraining Syndrome gave me the chance to discover how deep I could dig. It taught me life lessons that most people never have a chance to learn. It allowed me to reprioritize my values, rediscover a love of sport, pair joy with my quest for excellence, and begin shaping a healthier balance between performance and the other parts of my life.
How Hard Will You Push?
What follows is not a guide to unlocking performance. Rather, it is an invitation to reflect as you read a story about ambition, values, and the routes we choose in pursuit of what matters most to us. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find questions for personal reflection. I hope this book helps you learn more about yourself, facilitating the pathways to your dreams and the discernment required to make those pathways healthy. I also hope this book opens a lively discussion about the process of coaching, the coach-athlete relationship, and what it means to be “all-in.”
Oh, and I am over 70 years old! Some people may assume that high-performance is restricted to aspiring Olympians, elite athletes, or professional sports. I disagree—the drive to excel has no age limits. The quest for excellence is timeless.
Explore Across the Line
In Across the Line, Sue Reynolds shares a story-driven case study of her transformation into a world champion triathlete.
Reynolds gained fame for losing 200 pounds after taking up triathlon at age 65. In this sequel to her debut bestseller, Reynolds shares her single-minded pursuit of performance, revealing Olympic-level training methods, elite coaching techniques, Overtraining Syndrome, and the dark side of personal ambition.
How good can you be? How hard can you push? Across the Line reveals truths about human limits and shares lessons on balancing joy and the pursuit of excellence.