Ruth Astle might only have improved by two places from her 14th position at last year’s Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, but the Leeds-based triathlete could look at the positives with a sub-9hr performance, her fastest marathon on the Big Island and a $6,000 cheque for finishing in the prize money.
“I thought if I had the best possible day I could maybe fight for the top five, but everything had to go right,” Astle said. “I would have to get in the right group, work hard on the bike and have freakishly good run legs. Top 10 would have been pretty cool after this year, but I knew after missing the swim group that it would be tough with this field.”
Facing one of the finest women’s fields ever assembled for an Ironman race, Astle’s chances hadn’t been helped by a continuously recurring calf issue that made for her most frustrating season since turning pro on winning the overall age-group title in Kona in 2019. It had led to a curtailed race calendar with only a seventh and fifth places at two low-key middle distance races to show for 2023.
“After this year I was just delighted to finish,” Astle said, who qualified for the race by winning Ironman Israel last November. “I was a bit disappointed with the swim. I thought after the practice swim I might come out with Anne [Haug] and Laura [Philipp] which would have put me in a better place.
Instead, Astle exited the water in 29th place but then started making inroads into the field on the 112-mile bike leg. “I felt really good on the bike until 160km, then the wheels fell off in a fairly big way,” she explained. “But I kept moving forward and on the run I felt really good until 33km and then started cramping. I had to walk and chill out a bit until I could get moving.”
Astle also had a word for new Ironman world champion Lucy Charles-Barclay, whose gun-to-tape victory set a new course record. “It was insane. We’ve seen glimpses of it before in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship she won [in 2021] when she was so much better than everyone else across everything,” Astle said.
“She’s obviously had a challenging couple of years so to see her come back and put together a performance like that here where she’s had four second places is unbelievable and really cool to see.”
While it was not the first women-only Ironman World Championship race (there was a double race-day here last year with the women on Thursday and men on Saturday), it was the first time that the women had the stage completely to themselves.
“It felt really friendly on the course with lots of shouts from age-groupers,” she added. “I think you get similar from the men as well, but there is something different and special about a women-only day.”
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