It was never my plan to become a triathlete. At the ripe old age of 44, I was comfortably ensconced in an executive position in the technology industry. My athletic career up to that point consisted of playing badminton at the national level when I was in high school and a lot of local tennis as an adult.
But in March of 1986, I chanced upon the L.A. Marathon on television. I found it fascinating and the next day bought a pair of running shoes and a copy of How to Run Your First Marathon, and started training for next year's race.
Six months later my husband Lee drove me twenty miles from our home in Santa Monica and I ran the whole way back. It felt wonderful, and Lee said, "Why wait another six months?" So I signed up for the Redwood Forest Marathon a few months later. I did well, but more importantly, I loved every minute of it. Then, I discovered a few days later that my time had qualified me for the Boston Marathon that year, which was another great experience. I was hooked. I went on to do eight more marathons and won my age group in most of them.
But at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, I got a pain in my leg at about mile 21 and came in second, later discovering I had been running with a stress fracture. Forced to cut back on running, I started cycling and swimming. Wondering if there was a way to compete, I was introduced to the world of triathlon. It was a perfect way for me to recover that required training virtually every muscle in the body along with developing aerobic capacity and a deep well of mental toughness.
It was great fun doing a few short-distance triathlons, but I sorely missed the longer-distance experience of marathoning. Fortunately, I was able to get back to it quickly.
Then one memorable day in October of 1991, Lee surreptitiously put a copy of Competitor magazine on my nightstand. The issue was devoted to the Ironman triathlon, which he and I had always watched on television but never taken seriously. The World Championship took place in Hawaii every year and consisted of a 2.4 mile swim in the Pacific, a 112 mile bike ride from the little town of Kailua-Kona to the side of an extinct volcano and back, wrapped up with a full 26.2-mile marathon, all in conditions that were very hot and humid and often brutally windy.
This was an event for superhuman madmen and women and it never occurred to me to actually undertake one. "I think you can do this," my husband said after I'd read the magazine cover to cover. "I think you can be good at it."
I laughed it off, but Lee persisted, so I decided to do some research. The first obstacle was that you couldn't just sign up for this race; you had to qualify by winning your age group in another race of at least half-Ironman length. I'd never gone that distance but wanted to give it a shot.
Doing it while working and traveling for my job would be impossible, so I made a deal with Lee. He had toyed with the idea of resigning from his role at Deloitte and writing a book. The deal was that he would do that and, if the book made enough money, I would take a year's sabbatical from my job at Artificial Intelligence Corporation and do the big race in Hawaii.
Lee ended up with an amazing deal for a first-time author and in October of 1992, I found myself in the waters of Kailua Bay waiting for the start cannon.
It was the most incredible experience of my life. People told me later that I had this loopy grin on my face from the first minute to the last, over twelve hours later. In the stands, as I came across the finish line, Lee took one look at my face, turned to my brother, and said, "She ain't never going back to work!"
And I didn't. I came in ninth that first year, sixth the next, and won my age group the following year. From 2003, I had four first place group finishes and 12 total finishes. However, I retired from the full Ironman distance in 2015 and limited myself to the Ironman 70.3 half-distance races. We live in the desert now, and training all summer in temperatures easily hitting 115 degrees just wasn't very enjoyable anymore.
But in 2019 I turned 75, and I was pretty sure I could set a new world record in the 75-79 division. I began training in earnest, but that summer I got hit with two separate cancers, one of which resulted from an old cycling injury. I had two surgeries in September, which sidelined me for a couple of weeks, but I trained all through five-a-week radiation treatments in November.
I missed the 2019 race, of course, but was all set for 2020 when the pandemic reared its ugly head. Okay, I reasoned, I'd go for 2021.
Nope. I had to wait until 2022. Now I was 78, and if you don't know the difference in athletic ability between 75 and 78, you've never been 75 or 78. I had some serious competition and set a realistic expectation of just having a good farewell race and getting to the finish line.
It went well. So well that spectators who were timing me calculated that I could break the world record and began shouting encouragement. But at mile 20 I felt a sharp pain in my back. That had never happened to me before and at first, I didn't recognize it, but it was a severe spasm that bent me sideways. I began hobbling from light pole to light pole just trying to stay upright, and spent the last six miles creeping along like that.
Fortunately, I'd built up enough of a lead to capture my fourteenth win.
I was in terrible pain, but being greeted at the finish line by the new female champion Chelsea Sodaro and my friend Mark Allen, one of the greatest Ironman athletes in history with six World Championships to his credit, buoyed my spirits considerably. As it happened, I became the oldest female ever to complete this race.
One of the most gratifying parts of the day was knowing that a very special group of kids was back in California tracking every mile of my race. Back in 2001, I had started a small foundation called Exceeding Expectations with the goal of helping some at-risk, inner-city kids in San Bernardino move their lives in a more positive direction using the sport of triathlon as the vehicle. The idea was to introduce some structure and discipline into their lives and, most importantly, teach them to set goals and work diligently to achieve them.
I was assured by experts that I was wasting my time, but the program has been a huge success. Within a year of starting it, I realized that the real key was to make sure these kids, who came from families with barely a high school graduate among them, not only graduated from high school but went on to higher education. After over twenty years, nearly all the graduates are either in college or have graduated with a degree, or have begun military careers. Two of our kids have continued on and just last year received their master's degrees.
All of our funding comes from private donations, and nearly all of it comes from within the triathlon community. When I was inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in 2019, I brought four of our college students to the awards banquet. Knowing that many of our donors were in the audience, I asked the kids to stand. I pointed to them and said to the crowd, "There's your return on investment."
All of those Ironman victories aside, that was the proudest moment of my life.
Cherie Gruenfeld is the 2022 age division winner of the IRONMAN World Championship and founder of Exceeding Expectations, a program designed to help at-risk, inner-city kids have successful lives through sports and education. You can learn more about it here.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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