Words by Andy McGrath. Photography by Tom Schlegel.

From her bedroom window on the outskirts of the west German city of Darmstadt, triathlete Lisa Tertsch can see the forest where she loves to run. 

Later, she’ll lace up her trainers and head there, enjoying the crunch of her feet on the soft ground and the sight of spring flowers blossoming next to the path. There’s no chance of getting lost on trails she knows like the back of her hand. “I enjoy the variety, that you can just go where you want,” she says. “I don’t run on tarmac at all – like the Kenyans!”

The 25-year-old saves that for the business end of a triathlon race. Commanding running displays have been cornerstones of her victories at the Tangier World Triathlon Cup race last year and a 2022 round in Valencia, as well as the German national championships.

Performances like that have helped Tertsch up to fifth place in the world rankings and ensured Olympic qualification, where she hopes to challenge for a medal.

Triathlon demands diligence. Focus a little more on your front crawl technique and another area will marginally suffer. Like keeping a sprawling park trim and tidy, it’s a year-round act of constant gardening.

Tertsch trains between 25 and 30 hours a week, including six swims, four to five bike rides, four to five runs and one or two gym sessions. “I’m not a very numbers-focused person,” Tertsch says. “I’m more like a feelings-focused person. And I think that’s a big part of why I’ve been injury-free for a long time.” 

“I’ve always been quite patient,” she adds. “But the patience doesn’t come from me being a patient person. It’s more about having balance, having other things going on and having perspective on that, so I don’t get too sucked into it. And I think if I disliked putting the hours in, I’m in the wrong sport: I should do something else.”

Tertsch’s slight American lilt when speaking is a hint of another accomplishment, far removed from the world of 180 bpm heart rates and post-finish line collapses. 

In the summer of 2016, Tertsch went to Harvard to study economics. “I wasn’t fixated on it, but I’m always a fan of trying. And if it works out, good. If not, at least you tried, you’ll never regret that,” she says.

Despite a second place at the junior world championships in September 2016, she put triathlon on hold for three years during her time at the Ivy League university. “I was thinking I was going to quit triathlon because I just didn’t enjoy it anymore,” Tertsch says. 

With her time squeezed by the academic workload, she concentrated on running as a sport. Alongside completing her degree, Tertsch also took classes in math, life sciences and psychology, which she now studies as a higher degree.

“The red through-line of my studies is that I’m interested in how people make decisions and why they make the ones they do,” she says.

In the summer of 2019, Tertsch made a big call of her own, choosing to go back to the work of swim-bike-run.

“I started missing triathlon. Running became a thing I had to do, not a thing I wanted to do. Running is still my favorite, but if you only do that, it’s not as fun anymore. You don’t have the other two [disciplines] that make you look forward to it.” 

“Also, I saw the people I had competed against in triathlon and they were going for the Olympics. And I was like I’m as good as them, so I’m going to go back and try!”

Tertsch admits she was surprised to win her first World Cup race, in Antwerp, just two weeks after returning to racing action in June 2019. Clocking the only sub-17 minute 5km split in her field, it was like she had never been away.

That summer, Tertsch won the U23 European championship. Yet, in her mind, it was still school first, sport second. When Tertsch narrowly missed out on selection to the German team for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, those priorities changed. 

With only limited energy and time in the day, you can’t go the extra mile in every single activity, but Tertsch does a good job of trying. She likes to draw, knit and bake. She’s learning Spanish and had finished sewing a roundel on her shoes just before we spoke. “I do so much stuff that’s not really tangible, like training and school. I feel I need something creative, and that creative thing changes over time,” she says.

While it’s a delicate balance between new pursuits and the hawk-eyed focus required to succeed at triathlon, study remains a valuable counterpoint. “It’s there to make me better at sport because I’m not stressing and overthinking things,” she says. “That’s not good for me. It’s important to have other things. In sport, I want to maximize what I want to do. In school, it just needs to be good enough.”

When she’s at the start of a race, about to take the plunge, Tertsch wants her head to be as calm and still as the water in front of her. If her nerves jangle, it’s a simple acknowledgement that performing well matters to her. She trusts her body and her preparation, to block everything else out.

If training is long-term growth and theoretical problem-solving over months, races are about reacting to practical issues in the moment. “I think one where I executed everything really well was in Pontevedra,” she says, referring to her fourth place at the World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) Grand Final in September 2023. “But even there, I feel like with every race, there are good and bad parts. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a race where I’ll go ‘everything was great.’ I also don’t feel that has to be the case.”

That result in Spain punched her ticket for the world stage this summer. Part of the Germany team which won mixed relay gold in the test event there in August 2023, there’s potential for team glory alongside individual silverware in the event which dominates every triathlete’s schedule.

“You go with unconscious expectations and it’s about managing them,” she says. “I’m thinking about how I’m going to deal with the pressure. There’s going to be a lot of people and a lot of distractions. I’m thinking about how to stay focused and not get sucked into anything outside too much.”

Tertsch feels that setting a concrete result goal could potentially block her. “Saying I’m only focused on the process would be a lie. That’s not the high-performance sport world, right? Results do matter.” 

“But I think in triathlon, you have a big variation in results. Little things can make a really big difference. You can be perfectly prepared and able to get a medal, but some little thing goes wrong, like not putting on a helmet correctly and getting a time penalty, and suddenly you’re thirtieth,” she says. 

She knows this all too well, failing to qualifying for the second round at WTCS Hamburg later after making that mistake. “I feel like most of your judgment of yourself should be based on how well you prepared, and then the result will come on its own from that,” she says.

Tertsch has training down to a tee. She shows me her colorful, home-made trainingsplan, with Post-it notes affixed on each day of the week – blue for swimming, yellow for strength training, green for running, red for biking. 

While she has a team of advisors who she can consult, from her family to British trainer Gordon Crawford and German triathlon union coach Louis Delahaije, Tertsch is happy coaching herself. “If people tell me too much exactly what I need to do, I don’t like it,” she says. “I need a lot of advice, but it needs to be me making the decisions and taking the responsibility at the end of the day.” 

“I know I’m better because I know my times this year and last year,” Tertsch says. “I would also say that happens if you’re patient, putting in the work daily and not doing anything crazy.”

Excess does not mean success. For Tertsch, balance is better. “I think if you train too hard and burn all your matches, you don’t have anything left in races.” 

As Lisa Tertsch heads into a seismic 2024 season, she’s in the right place to deliver her best performances. “I’m really enjoying what I’m doing at the moment. Learning over time from what’s worked what doesn’t work for me,” she says.

“I’ve found a spot where I feel like I’m really moving forward. And I hope it’s going to show.”