I’m 12-years-old now, but ever since I can remember, my grandma has been a champion athlete. Grandma Karin has been a member of the SaddleBrooke Swim Club ever since it first started under Coach Doug Springer at the HOA-1 pool. And it was during those early years that she began swimming competitively as part of her training for triathlons, made up of the three events of swimming, biking, and running.
But her sporting career really took off when she turned 50-years-old and decided to run a marathon. After some serious training, she competed in her first marathon through the Redwoods in Humboldt County, California and promptly qualified for the Boston Marathon with her race time. The next few years resulted in winning a number of various distance running races and completing more of the top marathons such as New York, Boston, London, Bordeaux, France, and even a half marathon up Pikes Peak in Colorado.
Grandma Karin then took up the sport of triathlon, while living in the Bay Area of San Francisco. She joined Team In Training, a group devoted to fund raising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Her first competitive swim was in an Olympic distance triathlon held in the bay near Monterey, California. The swim was known as the kelp crawl since there was so much kelp growing in the cove, and swimmers had to swim up and over the kelp in order to avoid entanglement. The successful completion of that triathlon led to many more triathlon competitions, such as the “Escape from Alcatraz” triathlon in which competitors have to swim from the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to the coast of the city (approximately a 1.5-mile distance) in swift tides and water temperatures in the 50’s. She has finished the “Ëscape” triathlon five times.
Then Grandma Karin (now almost 60) decided to challenge herself further by competing in Ironman distance Triathlons. That distance consists of a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike, followed by a marathon run. Her training was humongous, and after having moved to SaddleBrooke, she traveled to New Zealand to finish her first Ironman triathlon, where the swim was in beautiful (but cold) Lake Taupo on the north Island. Then, ensued a number of additional Ironman competitions (10 in all) in the exotic locales of Canada, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, and multiple times (5) in the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. The swims in each of these races was unique. For example, the swim in Ironman Switzerland was in the beautiful Lake Zurich and entailed swimming around an island, exiting the water, running across an island and reentering the lake to finish the swim.
But of course, the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii are the “big dance” where you must qualify by winning an entry slot from competition in other IM races, and thus, all the Pros and Elite age group competitors are there. Grandma Karin competed in the famous 2006 Ironman World Championship on October 21, 2006, one week after the 6.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked the Hawaiian Islands. The 2.4-mile swim was in roiling waters and extremely difficult, but she finished that race as well as four other Ironman World championships, notably finishing third in her age group in the 2009 World Championship.
She has also swum in many Masters swim races for the SaddleBrooke Swim Club, where she has won her age group in various events and also was named three times an All American on SaddleBrooke Relay teams. But her multi sport credentials also include Duathlons, which generally consist of a 10-kilometer run, followed by a 40-kilometer bike, and then a five-kilometer run. Grandma Karin has raced in many duathlons, becoming a U.S. National Champion in her age group twice, and racing with the U.S. Duathlon team in the World Championships in Nancy, France in 2012. She continues to race, having won her age group in the Oro Valley Triathlon last March and having signed up for the race again this March.
My grandma is a true Multi Sport Champion.
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