Swim, Bike, Run, Repeat

On Sept. 28, 2025, 21-year-old Taeyoung Lee ’26 finished his sixth international Ironman triathlon, becoming the youngest person to complete an Ironman on six continents — a Guinness World Record. Lee set the record in just 11 months while maintaining a full undergraduate course load in computer science at Northwestern.

A swimmer in high school, Lee had fallen off his fitness regimen during his first year at Northwestern. When he returned to campus after winter break, he started hitting the gym, and in his sophomore year he joined the Northwestern Triathlon Club. “That was a very good community,” he says. “I had a lot of fun [training] with my teammates.”

He completed his first-ever triathlon with the Northwestern team — an Olympic-distance race, roughly a quarter the length of a full Ironman. A few days after that race, he signed up for a Half-Ironman.

During his junior year, he came across an article about the world-record holder, Connor Emeny, who had completed Ironman-distance triathlons on all seven continents by age 26 (the Antarctica race, an unofficial Ironman, was organized by Emeny himself). Lee recalls sending the article to his parents, saying, “I saw this today. I think I can beat that.”  

Hesitant to make promises his body couldn’t cash, Lee signed up for one race at a time, starting with the Paradox Ironman Arizona in November 2024. He trained hard — 14 hours total of running, biking and swimming each week — while living on shrimp and pasta and learning to balance his travels with schoolwork, but Lee met his goal, completing six Ironmans on six continents at only 21 years old.

“Triathlon is really like a bug,” he says. “Once it bites you, you just keep going all in.”