Age, asthma, Achilles fail to deter Amey Chron.com
THE WOODLANDS — Accomplished duathlete and triathlete Paul Amey ramped up his workload when many athletes are slowing down.
At 39, he’s a first-time Ironman champion.
Amey, a native of Great Britain who lives in California, won the third Memorial Hermann Ironman Texas on a hot, steamy Saturday, finishing in 8 hours, 25 minutes and 6 seconds.
“Ironman’s got nothing to do with speed or heart rate, or anything like that,” Amey said. “It’s got to do with how your body’s adapted over multiple years, an accumulation of years and years of training, and your nutrition plans and all that kind of stuff, so it does suit the older athletes.”
A former champ on the ITU World Cup circuit, where the distances are much shorter than the 2.4mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run at an Ironman, Amey qualified for the British Triathlon Olympic team in 2004 but withdrew three weeks before competition with a broken pelvis.
After recovering, he claimed the first of three World Duathlon titles in 2005.
Then, in 2008, Amey went Ironman. Heat a factor
Going into Saturday’s race, he had recorded six top-five finishes in the last two years but was never first to the tape. He placed second at Ironman Arizona in 2011 and Ironman France in 2012.
“Even though it really hurts doing it, and you always think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Afterward, when you have a good day like this, it makes it all worth it,” Amey said.
The end was good. Most of the rest was bad.
Amey, who battles asthma, had trouble breathing during the swim in Lake Woodlands, forcing him to slow down and breaststroke. He came out of the water in 54:54, well behind the leaders.
“I felt terrible on the bike,” Amey said. “(But) as the day got on, when the other guys started getting tired, I was a little bit used to the heat. So it brought them down to how I was feeling, and so, in compari- son to everybody else, I actually started riding not too bad.
“And then I got to the run, and that was it. I wasn’t breathing too hard, and the heat played a factor and everybody wasn’t running that quick.” Daerr places fourth
Amey finished the bike ride in 4:29:07.
He fought through an injured left Achilles on the last leg of the marathon, which forced him to ease up again, but he still finished in 2:56:18.
“Luckily enough, I got enough of a gap on the first lap to hang on in the end,” Amey said.
“So all in all, I’m so happy to win, but it was actually a terrible day — not the day I was hoping to have.”
South Africa’s James Cunnama, who pushed Amey at the end, took second with a time of 8:27:35.
“I was getting splits and people were saying, ‘(Amey’s) just up the road, he’s 200 meters,’ and I kept pushing, but it was pushing with the hope that he’d cramp and blow,” Cunnama said. “I didn’t really have much hope if he kept running. 1See a photo gallery from Saturday’s Memorial Hermann Ironman Texas.
Ironman
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“Making up two minutes in two miles is not going to happen.”
Californian Ian Mikelson made his first Ironman podium, taking third in 8:30:06. Good friend Justin Daerr, a Houston native who placed second here last year, slipped to fourth (8:30:35).
“It was an emotional day,” Mikelson said. Joyce the top woman
Another Brit, Rachel Joyce, claimed the women’s championship Saturday.
The 34-year-old won with a course-record 8:49:14, including a record bike split of 4:42:29, in her first trip to Texas.
New Yorker Jennie Hansen was a distant second, finishing in 9:25:35, and Kimberly Schwabenbauer, from Pennsylvania, was third in 9:33:01. Jason McDaniel is a freelance writer.