As if Lucy Charles-Barclay’s second place finish at the Miami T100 earlier this month wasn’t already impressive enough, the IRONMAN World Champion has revealed she did so off minimal run training.
Still battling the impact of the calf tear that almost caused a calamity in Kona, the 30-year-old shared the extent to which the issue hampered her training leading into this season.
Considering she had gone almost four months without running and only properly got back into things mid-February, the adversity makes her achievement in Florida even more remarkable.
“It was never guaranteed that I would make the start line”
With less than two weeks to go until the race in Miami, LCB was still uncertain over whether or not she would compete, having not progressed from run-walk training until the month before the event.
“It was never guaranteed that I would actually make the start line in Miami. I had to have a big period of time off running after the injury I sustained in Hawaii.
“In total it was almost 16 weeks without running, just to let that injury fully heal, so it wasn’t until mid-February that I actually got back to running.”
Having led off the bike in Miami, the Londoner was eventually caught by fellow Brit India Lee in the race for the win, but managed to bravely hold off the likes of Holly Lawrence and Paula Findlay to take second place.
“I had six weeks of running leading into Miami”
With just a month and a half to rediscover her run form before taking on the brutal 100km distance, Charles-Barclay said she built up slowly, before testing her calf at race pace ten days out from the event.
“I had a total of six weeks of running leading into Miami, some of which did include intervals. Ten days out from the race we did a test session, where I ran at my target paces for the race and I got through that without any issues.
“Once I did that, we booked the flights as I was confident I could handle the load from the race and not make that injury from Kona come back.”
That test, along with a small case of FOMO, helped push the PTO World #3 to take the leap and race the first event of the T100 Triathlon World Tour.
“I really wanted to be at the first race of the T100 series and I definitely didn’t want to miss kicking off the season in March to see where I was at compared to other athletes.”
Next up for LCB is the Singapore T100, where having finished fifth last year, she will return seeking vengeance and a first ever win on the T100 Tour.
