Todd Fuqua
Ruidoso News
tfuqua@elritomedia.com
After years of preparation and work, the dream of the IRONMAN Ruidoso triathlon came true last weekend, culminating with the 70.3-mile race with more than 1,300 athletes entered.
The top male athlete on the day was Conrad Sanders, a dietician who has lived in Zuni for the past three years and is used to the high altitude and climate found in Ruidoso. Sanders finished the race with a time of four hours, four minutes and 52 seconds.
“This is my first time in Ruidoso, and it’s a nice little town,” Sanders said. “It reminds me of Pinetop Lakeside in Arizona. I spend a lot of time up there in a friend’s cabin, and I do a lot of training out there.”
The IRONMAN Ruidoso 70.3 triathlon consisted of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56-mile bike race, and a 13.1 mile running leg, all adding up to 70.3 miles. The race included three laps around Grindstone Lake, two round trips to Glencoe and back on the bike leg, and three laps around the walking trails and roads around the White Mountain Recreation Complex.
Competitors in the Ruidoso event are eligible to qualify for the IRONMAN 70.3 and Olympic World Championships on Sept.12 in Nice, France.
Sanders started off slowly, coming out of Grindstone Lake 12th overall, but was able to make up the difference on the bike leg. By the time he arrived at White Mountain Recreation Complex and switched to running, he was four minutes ahead of John Seddon of Colorado Springs, Colo., in second place.
“I’m not a good swimmer, and I wasn’t expecting the bike run to be this fast,” Seddon said. “With 3,000 feet of climbing on that course, I was expecting it to be about 2:20, and I was around 2:07 when I came in.”
Sanders finished the bike let in 2:06.20.
Seddon ended up 10th overall. Denver’s Josef Stone was second with a time of 4:13:03, while Erik Mahoney from Fort Collins, Colo., was third.
Hanchke the best
Hanchke the best
Alina Hanschke of Puebla, Mexico, was the fastest female of the day, running the course in 4:30:06 and finishing 14th overall. Like Sanders, she was trailing after the swimming leg — by a lot. She was 9th among women coming out of the lake.
“I love biking, and I know I’m good at the run for a 45-year-old,” Hanchke said. “I was just riding and running as fast as I could. I decided to find the nearest man running in front of him and catch up with him, then I’d find the next man.”
That running strategy worked. She was still second behind Albuquerque’s Elisa Woody by six minutes at the transition to the run at White Mountain. By the time she crossed the finish line, she was ahead of Amelia Zwiener-Bray from Tucson, Ariz., by 12 minutes.
Hanchke came to love Ruidoso, bringing her family with her to the Sacramento Mountains to enjoy all the area had to offer in the week leading up to Sunday’s race.
“We came in a week before the race, so I would train in the morning and we’d do something as a family in the afternoon,” Hanchke said. “We were hiking, seeing the sights, shopping. It was a lot of fun.”
Todd Fuqua is Sports Editor for the Ruidoso News and can be reached at 575-937-0344.
