Lanzarote Ironman - Age is no barrier
Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 11:16 am
Lanzarote Ironman is the toughest of the Dot.com races out there, due to the wind and the hills, compared with most Ironman races the time is around an hour slower.
This year I wasn't racing Lanza IM, (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run), but out there coaching one of my athletes who is female and 66 years old.
This was her first Ironman, although she's a pretty accomplished duathlete (run/bike/run) and a good runner (3 years ago ran 3h 42m for London Marathon).
The day started badly, as her weakness has always been the swim, when I say weakness, she hates it. With the cut off time being 2h 20m then we where pretty sure there would be no real problems. However whilst she swam 2h 05m for the 2.4 miles, she still managed to be last out of the water.
Once on the bike she took it steadily and started to catch the occassional person, however once on the run she galloped like a young pony (well not quite) and ran 4h 42m. During this run she caught over 150 people, all but one of them younger than her, some by up to 40 years.
Eddie (Edwina) finished the whole race in 15h 52m and still had the energy to celebrate in a local bar until 2am in the morning. There is a program on Eurosport with Eddie featured on the 10th June, as she is the oldest woman ever to have completed Lanzarote.
So any of you looking for a big challenge next year, might like to consider Lanzarote IM. Stacey and I are both doing it and can help by organising accomodation.
Brian
This year I wasn't racing Lanza IM, (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run), but out there coaching one of my athletes who is female and 66 years old.
This was her first Ironman, although she's a pretty accomplished duathlete (run/bike/run) and a good runner (3 years ago ran 3h 42m for London Marathon).
The day started badly, as her weakness has always been the swim, when I say weakness, she hates it. With the cut off time being 2h 20m then we where pretty sure there would be no real problems. However whilst she swam 2h 05m for the 2.4 miles, she still managed to be last out of the water.
Once on the bike she took it steadily and started to catch the occassional person, however once on the run she galloped like a young pony (well not quite) and ran 4h 42m. During this run she caught over 150 people, all but one of them younger than her, some by up to 40 years.
Eddie (Edwina) finished the whole race in 15h 52m and still had the energy to celebrate in a local bar until 2am in the morning. There is a program on Eurosport with Eddie featured on the 10th June, as she is the oldest woman ever to have completed Lanzarote.
So any of you looking for a big challenge next year, might like to consider Lanzarote IM. Stacey and I are both doing it and can help by organising accomodation.
Brian