By R.L. Bynum
Giovani Bernard was again ready wear a helmet and show off his athletic ability on Sunday, as he did for 10 NFL seasons. But it would have been unlike any football challenge.
This time, the competition would have started in the morning, and he wouldn’t be constantly change directions, baffle defenders with spin moves or prepare to deliver a stiff-arm or get hit.
He would have quickly put on a helmet before a 56-mile cycling portion, the second leg of Ironman 70.3 Augusta — a Half Ironman — in Georgia. The event was to begin with a 1.2-mile swim along the Savannah River and finishes with a 13.1-mile run.
On Friday, race officials canceled the race because of damage from Hurricane Helene, but Bernard hopes to find another race where he can take on a challenge.
The year began with the heartbreak of losing his newborn son, a moment that made his two ACL tears and other career setbacks seem minor.
“I just like difficult things. I think that’s what it is,” said Bernard, who wanted to try something tougher than a marathon, and hired a coach, Bryan Spellberg, to help him train. “I think when you add two other components to it, that’s what makes it hard. There’s just so much that is involved with it that I wanted, and, quite frankly, I need it.”
Bernard still dabbles in real estate as he did during his NFL career and does some football analyst work. He knows many players struggle to determine what’s next athletically after retiring.
“Running outside, to me, was plenty. I enjoyed that,” Bernard said. “And that was difficult; I had a good routine. But there’s just something about challenging yourself even more. So, when it comes to trying triathlons, that just spoke to me.”
During one of his indoor workout sessions, Spellberg quipped that Bernard is “ridiculously strong.”
Everybody who remembers Bernard’s legendary game-winning 74-yard punt return in Kenan Stadium to beat N.C. State 43–35 in 2012 would be surprised by his contention that he isn’t fast.
“No, it wasn’t fast. I was definitely more quick,” said Bernard, who ran the 40-yard dash in the 2013 NFL Combine in 4.52 seconds. “I’ve always been a kid who just enjoyed getting outside and running. But, obviously, on that play, I got very lucky with Mr. Tom O’Brien sending it off to me and making it a thing. So, I got very lucky. We just had a good team that year, and the guys on that punt-return team obviously made it happen.”
Jones Angell’s call on the Tar Heel Sports Network, including “No he’s not; yes he is!” and “Are you kidding me?” still gives UNC fans goosebumps. Bernard said that he is still asked a lot about that play 11 years later.
“Over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate it more because I know what it meant to a lot of different people,” Bernard said. “When you’re in it, you’re not really necessarily thinking about it. You’re moving on to the next play or the next game.
“The fact that I’m retired now, I have an opportunity to really go back and look at some of these things,” he said. “The fact that people are still talking about that day at Kenan Stadium just shows and just proves what that game meant to a lot of different people.”
Although he’s been running since retiring in 2023, this will be his first race of any kind, and it will be after only seven weeks of training.
Bernard did most of his running and cycling training in the blazing sun and high humidity around where he lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He went from never swimming pool laps to “busting out 2,000 meters,” but he says he has a new respect for swimmers.
Bernard said that the swimming portion would be the most challenging.
“I put in so much work into the water,” Bernard said. “I put in a lot of time into perfecting my technique and drag efficiency. It’s not perfect by any means, but I’ll be fine there. But I think it’s really just pacing and trusting your numbers that you’ve done throughout training and just applying it.”
He never worried about nutrition during his football career but has concentrated on it during training and calls it the hardest part.
He figures that training in the heat will help him. Some work over bridges will compensate for the lack of hills in south Florida and a treadmill can obviously simulate running on hills.
“It’s been fun, man; it’s a new challenge,” said Bernard, who added that many retiring players love to play golf, but not him. He says he’d rather run and stay fit than spend four hours on a golf course.
He expects to run the 13.1 miles at an 8-minute, 30-second pace and, by monitoring his Garmin watch, keep his cadence in the mid-80s with a heart rate in the 140s during the bike portion.
“I really thoroughly enjoy the run. I’m not like a 6–2 guy with long legs,” the 5–9 Bernard said. “I’m not that guy. But I feel most comfortable on my run, more than I do bike or swim.”
Paying to run a local 5K never appealed to him. He’d rather go outside and run for free, even though he admits the adrenaline might go up a little.
“Probably one of the most difficult things about signing up for a triathlon is the fact that I had to pay to go suffer for a little bit,” said Bernard, noting that his registration fee was around $800.
Training for a triathlon is rigorous but quite unlike a football season.
“Playing football, you’re cutting, there’s so much more force going into the body going laterally, versus triathlons — you’re going straight the whole time,” said Bernard, who has no intention of running a full Ironman or a marathon. “So, there’s really not much bang and wear on your body. So, I think my body’s so used to just going side to side and having to recover week by week that when I’m able to go straight for a very long time, it’s less strain on the body.”
It’s just the latest challenge Bernard has taken on with full force.
He had hamstring issues that hurt his numbers during his senior season at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale before he tore his left ACL in 2010 during his first UNC preseason camp.
“I was so eager to get out there,” Bernard said. “I’ll never forget that day. It was the third day of training camp, and going against one of the linebackers. It was a one-on-one pass route, and just went to go cut, and my leg just kind of gave out. My knee buckled. And that was that. And that was really my first real surgery.”
Bernard said he was miserable maneuvering around campus on crutches in muggy conditions.
“Those little moments built me to have the type of career that I had,” said Bernard, who tore his right ACL in 2016 with the Cincinnati Bengals.
During his redshirt freshman season in 2011 after recovering from surgery, Bernard ran for 1,253 yards — the most by a freshman that season — and 13 touchdowns as a tailback under interim coach Everett Withers. That effort after the devastating injury earned him the ACC’s 2011 Brian Piccolo Award.
He turned pro after rushing for 1,270 yards and 12 touchdowns and returning 16 punts for 263 yards and two touchdowns under first-year coach Larry Fedora in 2012. He was First-Team All-ACC in both seasons at UNC.
Cincinnati picked the 2012 ACC Offensive Player of the Year in the second round of the 2013 draft. He became the first UNC running back to go in the first two rounds since Natrone Means, currently on the Carolina coaching staff, in 1993.
“Going to some of those dark places by yourself and knowing that, ‘hey, this, this could be it,’ as far as your football career … Thankfully enough, I was able to bounce back from a lot of those situations and make something out of it. Very thankful for it,” said Bernard, who rushed for 3,783 yards and 22 touchdowns during his NFL career with the Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
A hip injury in 2021 and an ankle injury in 2022 limited him to 20 games in his final two NFL seasons with the Bucs.
Bernard’s triathlon training has come in a year that started with heartbreak when his newborn son Gabriel died in February. But he said that his wife Chloé, a Carolina grad he met at UNC, was an “absolute warrior” through it all.
“Everything else seems so minuscule, what I’ve gone through my entire life,” said Bernard, whose son Julien is 3 years old. “ACLs, different surgeries, Ironman this, football games that, all of that is like pennies in comparison to what happened back in February. I’ve been built to work through different things. I’ve been able to surround myself with really good people. And my wife — she is one of a kind, and how she’s been able to deal with that. And it’s been awesome to see and to be able to witness that day by day.”
All of that makes his first triathlon seem easy. He’ll add another big performance to his athletic career when he competes in a triathlon if it’s like the other athletic challenges in his life.
Photos, training videos courtesy of Giovani Bernard
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