Chef Dale MacKay: Quiet Work

“I call it quiet work. I love quiet work. I don't post on social media a lot, I don't need that type of gratitude. Triathlon is 98% hard work that no one sees and 2% people celebrate. My favorite part is the quiet work.”

Celebrity chef Dale MacKay knows a lot about quiet work. After struggling in the school system, he left home at 15 and found himself washing dishes in Vancouver, Canada. With a work ethic modeled and honed by his mother, washing dishes turned into running kitchens for Gordon Ramsay all over the world, competing and winning Top Chef, and opening several of his own restaurants. 

“I was going to have to find other ways and I was going to have to work harder than everybody else to find other ways of being successful,” he says, remembering how challenging school was for him. “Whatever I was going to do, I was going to be the best I possibly could be at it. When I get something in my head, I get really hooked on it and I have the ability to be quite singly focused, doing the same thing day in, day out. I love long goals like that so being a chef was perfect.”

“Moving to London and working for Gordon Ramsay, that really came into play because I could work 18 hours a day and I didn't care about having days off. I didn't need entertainment, I didn't have to have a social life, I didn't have any of that kind of stuff and it didn't bother me.”

“And that's why I'm good in competitions too, like Top Chef. You go into seclusion, you don't have your telephone, you can't talk to your family, you can't go out, you're secluded. Other people, it would bother them and it would stress them out, whereas I would just thrive.”

Turns out, MacKay’s mindset is also great for swimming. 

It wasn’t until the pandemic that MacKay found sport. With his restaurants closed under the restrictions, MacKay felt aimless. 

“The pandemic was really tough for me right at the beginning because I have to have a goal. I'm one of those people where I'm really unhappy if I don't have something I need to work on physically and mentally all the time."

Luckily, a local outdoor pool remained open and MacKay’s partner was a swimming instructor so he took to the water and got busy doing what he does best: work. 

“Everybody thinks that they can swim. I knew I really couldn't, but you kind of say you can swim when really all you can do is just not drown. That's pretty much where I was at and I really realized that I barely could do that once I actually got in the pool.”

MacKay says during the first lesson they had to dial it right back to floating.  

"I started from scratch, scratch,” he laughs. “Then I just kept going and kept going and honestly, it took a lot. I would say it took me six months before I passed the first hurdle.”

But it was exactly the type of challenge that MacKay relishes. He talks about learning the mechanics of swimming, watching videos on social media about stroke corrections and drills, working with his partner Jenna, gaining confidence, making mistakes, learning and adjusting, getting faster and then slower and faster again. 

“I love discipline. I love dedication. What gets me up in the morning is the fact that I know I have to do these sessions. I think about it before I go to bed. It’s the first thing I think about when I get up. I'm hard on myself in the sense that, I know if I was lazy or if I didn't do the things that I could have done, then I would be annoyed with myself.”

His work in the pool was all driven by his goal to do a triathlon. With the additional work of cycling and running, MacKay turned the pandemic into opportunity. Ultimately, it led him to the men’s Ironman World Championships in Nice, France. 

By the time he arrived in Nice, MacKay had several races under his belt but, he says, he was still a bundle of nerves at the start. 

“I thought I was going to be okay— this time, I’m confident, I’m feeling better. But I got super nervous again. I turned into an 8 year old,” he laughs. “I kept looking back to see if Jenna was still there when I had to leave her like I was going to school for the first time.”

“And then as soon as I hit the water, it's gone. It’s weird because I don't get nervous in food competitions but it's specifically for the swim. The wild thing about triathlon is, when you're in the corral and you're about to go out, it’s like that’s it. It's not like a soccer game where you're going to have quarters or you can stop and talk and reassess things; once you start, you're on for four hours or 10 hours or whatever length of race it is. There's no stopping. It's what I love but also makes me nervous.”

MacKay conquered the ironman distance, swimming the 2.4 mile (3.9km) swim in 1:12:34. Along with his bike and run, his total time was 13:16:51. 

What’s more impressive is that MacKay finished the race despite severe stomach distress. 

“I strangely think it was almost better that my stomach blew up because it just made it harder. It expands your mental capability and your knowing that you can deal with it, you can handle it, and having the opportunity to overcome it in the race and finish strong to me is—when I think about that race, that's what I think about. I don't think about nailing the bike or having the best swim I've had, I think about those tough parts.”

“I'm always trying to search for greatness. Greatness is dedication and setting a goal and, it doesn't mean you win, it’s doing something you didn't think you could do or doing something that's above what your eight year old self or others never even thought they could see you doing. So when you're given an opportunity to show that, I think that's the best part.”

Whether he is in the kitchen, in the water, or on the race course, MacKay is defined by his drive to work and overcome any challenge and he includes his personal growth in that. 

“Three and a half years ago, I’d probably just be laying on the couch smoking cigarettes and really not that happy. I was moderately happy but this is just a whole new world.”

“It just makes you think how much you can change in a year or two with the right mindset. I think the pandemic, in general, was really negative for some people, but it was also really positive for a lot of people, and I would definitely put myself on the positive side because it gave me an opportunity to live a completely different life—and I'm not going back.”

The only place he does want to go back to is the Ironman world championships. MacKay convincingly beat Gordon Ramsay’s ironman time by a massive margin of 48 minutes and MacKay is dreaming of a head-to-head showdown in Kona. 

Whether the battle royal comes to fruition or not, no doubt MacKay is quietly working and doing whatever it takes.