How Tampa executives train for Ironman while running businesses

On most afternoons, as lunch crowds moved through Harbour Island and the pace inside Jackson’s Bistro held steady, Chris McVety, the restaurant’s managing partner, stepped away from the restaurant, crossed the parking lot and headed toward a pool, a bike or a treadmill.

He kept that schedule for months leading up to his Ironman in October 2022, a race defined by a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a marathon, with distances that remained fixed as his days shifted around running a business and raising a family.

That structure did not come together on its own

Rosa Laura Saggese Elbooz, owner of Tampa-based ForzaFit, coached McVety through his first Ironman, building his program around an already full schedule.

“All the hard work was in the time management,” McVety said. “Setting aside three hours per day to train, just that discipline.”

Elbooz coaches a small group of clients, most of them business leaders, and keeps her roster to about 15. She builds each program around her clients’ calendars, placing sessions between flights, meetings and late nights, then adjusting as those schedules change.

“They want control over their time,” she said. “They want discipline.”

Her work follows a structure she has carried from career to career. After moving to the United States from Italy about 25 years ago, she left her career in fashion to become a personal trainer and endurance coach. She traded show schedules and production timelines for training plans and race calendars, but the approach stayed the same.

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For her clients, the week is planned in advance, with sessions mapped around what is already in place, as long rides go early before flights, swims fit between meetings and runs take the hour that opens when something cancels. When a session is missed, the plan adjusts and the next day carries the load.

“Consistency is the most important,” she said. “To show up every day and be strong mentally.”

That consistency was built over months for McVety while he ran a restaurant and raised a family. He rode before the city woke up, swam between lunch and dinner service and ran after the kitchen closed.

“It was lonely,” McVety said. “But being a business owner is also kind of a lonely place.”

Elbooz sees that shift with many of her clients as their schedules tighten, the work becomes more internal, decisions come faster and open time disappears unless it is planned.

“They become more organized because we prepare one week ahead,” she said.

Business clients, she said, often have less free time and less margin in the day, which makes consistency harder and planning more important. Coaching them means adjusting the work to their availability without losing the larger goal.

“They got less time, so it’s hard for them to be consistent,” she said. “But it’s possible.”

Her own schedule follows the same approach, with her training set on her calendar as she advanced this spring to the semifinal round of Ms. Health & Fitness, a national competition whose winner appears on the cover of Muscle & Fitness HERS and raises money for The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, which supports families and funds childhood cancer research.

She has also qualified multiple times for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, training under the same structure she builds for her clients.

When she talks about the work, she stays focused on execution: sessions, recovery, pacing and sleep.

She also understands the appeal. For some of the executives she coaches, the draw is the chance to take on something that looks impossible and finish it anyway.

That repetition is what drew McVety to the race

“I want to do that,” he said. “For no other reason other than it looked hard.”

By the time he reached the starting line, the race itself mattered less than the work behind it.

“I remember being driven out to the swim start thinking to myself, I already won,” he said. “All the training I did, I already won.”

When the race ended, the structure stayed with him and carried into his work.

“If I have a problem, I’ll go for a run,” he said. “Usually in that time period, I have a solution.”

To support Rosa Laura Saggese Elbooz in the Ms. Health & Fitness competition, vote here.