I practise cycling inside to avoid angry drivers, says Ironman star
AN IRONMAN world championship medal-winner says she trains inside to avoid angry drivers.
Lucy Charles, 24, mainly practises on a spin bike using a virtual outdoor track because motorists can be too aggressive. She said: “It feels so much safer in London to cycle indoors than outside. I was put off from hearing horror stories, and there are so many people and they are in their cars and so stressed that having a cyclist slow them down for even a few seconds makes them aggressive, so I prefer to be inside.”
Charles won a silver medal in the women’s Ironman world championships in Hawaii — an annual event since 1978 — this month. The gruelling challenge comprises a 2.4-mile swim, 112mile bike ride and a full marathon.
The former Olympic swimming hopeful from Hertfordshire, who made an unsuccessful bid for London 2012, completed the event in eight hours, 59 minutes and 38 seconds.
She told the Standard: “I only started doing the Ironman in 2014 and this was my first professional world championship. The majority of racers are quite a bit older as you peak in endurance in your thirties.
“[Finishing second] was so far above what I thought I was capable of — anyone there would have seen how proud I was. My ultimate goal is to win that race, but I thought that was three or four years away. It was absolutely amazing.”
Charles quit her personal trainer job to race full-time in April this year. But she said the challenge takes its toll on her body. “I burn something crazy like 7,000 or 8,000 calories when doing an Ironman and I lose around three to four kilograms in body weight,” she said. “So even during training you are struggling to eat enough calories to replace what you’ve burned. There’s a limit to how much extreme exercise is good for you and we take supplements as we can’t physically generate all the nutrients and we have to keep ourselves healthy. It can be a very, very difficult task.
“The Ironman is about the limit of what is good for your body, and maybe a bit beyond that.”