Here’s how the former Cincinnati Bengals halfback is competing these days.
A professional football player’s body has to be made to take punishment. It’s a violent game, and if a player can’t absorb hits and keep on ticking, there isn’t a place for them in the league.
There is likely no position in which this is truer than running back. They’re tasked to carry the ball forward, either between the tackles or around them, shrugging off hits and would-be tacklers, all while continuously moving forward. And then, when the play is over, and the ball carrier is under a pile of larger men, he gets up, dusts himself off, and does it again.
It’s no surprise the average length of a running back’s career is only 2.5 years, meaning the vast majority of them don’t make it through their rookie contracts.
That wasn’t Giovani Bernard, though.
Bernard was selected in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft out of North Carolina. He was the first running back selected that year and went on to play for the Cincinnati Bengals for eight seasons, then two more seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In his time with the Bengals, he ran the ball for 3,697 yards (8th in franchise history), added another 2,867 receiving yards and scored a total of 33 touchdowns.
This isn’t a football story, though.
This is about what Bernard is doing after football.
Bernard gained 6,564 yards while in stripes. That’s just under four miles, if you were curious.
Of course, he “ran” for longer than four miles in the games. He ran between plays. He ran off and on the field. He ran his whole life to get ready for the NFL.
He’s still running, but now it’s a different style and for a different reason. Bernard has left behind football and has taken up a new challenge, completing a half ironman.
“I remember I was in Tampa, and it might have been like two or three days later, like after the season ended, or might have been the next day,” Bernard said when we spoke. “I just went outside, and I just ran like, I obviously wanted to work out, but I didn’t want to go into the facility, so I was just like, let me go around a couple miles outside.”
He said he got hooked on running, not just because of the physical side of it, but because of the mental grind as well.
“Football is such a physical sport, but there’s a mental grind component to it that I don’t think a lot of people necessarily look at it,” he said. “So, for me, running was one of those things that kind of filled that little moment.”
Bernard said he used an app called Nike Run Club, and through it, he began a half-marathon program. He did that, on his own for a year and a half and used it to link up with others. Through connections he made while running, he ended up meeting Bryan Spellberg.
“Gio is an incredibly explosive athlete,” Spellberg, the owner of Plan B Fitness in Davie, Florida and Bernard’s coach, said. “But that discipline or that skill is almost to your detriment in my space. Because, you know, I must have told Gio no less than 100 times the first month we trained together he has got to slow down. He’s always been coached to speed up, right? So I think that was one of the biggest deltas between our sports. But he had, really, from the get-go, a huge respect for the discipline that it required. I think that’s partially what drove him to the sport is that he liked the structure.”
A half-ironman is a daunting task. It’s comprised of a 13.1-mile run, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 1.2-mile-long swim. Slowing down would be training for an event like that for weeks or months. Slowing down isn’t something Bernard is great at, the former Cincinnati Bengals running back admitted.
That’s how he signed up for the half ironman in Savannah, Georgia, before he ever took his first dip in a pool to train for the event.
“Yeah, dude, I signed up. It might have been like a few days before I got in the pool,” he said, laughing. “I think it might have been the next day I went to go get a swim pass, and then the following day, I met my coach in the swimming pool for the first time, and I was like, here we go.”
According to Spellberg, swimming was the toughest part of the half-ironman training because of Bernard’s body density.
“He was great with the running, and he had to learn to be efficient on the bike, but his body density didn’t hurt him — he could kind of get away with it. The pool was different, though.” the coach said.
Bernard said a part of what he has enjoyed about the training was going “into the dark places” of his mind, where he says he learns things about himself. Bernard found out, by literally jumping in the deep end, that he’s got what it takes to compete in the world of endurance sports.
“The swimming has been one of the things I’ve been most proud of,” Bernard said. “Before, like seven weeks ago, I’ve never swam at an aquatic center or in lanes in my entire life. I go to swimming pools right down here in South Florida. No big deal. But when you have to go and do 1900 meters, that’s a little bit different.”
Bernard is obviously an athlete, playing football at the highest level for as long as he did. He obviously has the drive to succeed, even when the barricades he’s smashing through are coming from within, he strives to best himself.
Bernard’s coach said his greatest attribute when it comes to competing in a half ironman, though, is something different.
“I would say it’s his ability to suffer,” Spellberg said. “I would kind of let him know ‘Wednesday is going to be a suffer fest.’ He would smile. I always was coached by and have continued to coach with transparency, and I’m going to let my athletes know when things are going to suck.”
Unfortunately, the Savannah Ironman was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, but his coach believes Bernard would have finished “somewhere near the middle of the pack,” which would be a true achievement considering many of those who were competing had trained the majority of their lives for such events. Bernard said he plans on signing up for another one, though, when he’s ready.
His coach agrees, saying, “They’re not done yet.”
Bernard said he knew when he was done with football. He said he misses it, but he knows he doesn’t want to play. When asked if he’d like to coach, he said he doesn’t like it when people don’t listen to him.
“I’ve spent many years, you know, learning and doing this and doing that, but being away from it [football] has truly been an absolute blessing,” Bernard said. “And I’ve been able to find a lot of passions outside of the game, and I just hope, you know, other guys that retired can find that same passion in whatever it may be.”
For now, Bernard’s passion will have him running, biking, or swimming.
So, if you’re one of those people who just likes pain and you find yourself running a half-ironman one day, keep an eye out for Bernard.
He’ll be the one not slowing down.
